Thinking on the Page and the Myth of Bad Writers

We wrote Thinking on the Page because in our work teaching college-level writing, we've constantly met students who told us that they're "bad writers." That's because our students, like most of their peers, were taught to write as though they were English majors--people who think primarily in words and narrative. But most students don't think like English majors. They think in numbers and equations, or in images, or in clusters. That doesn't mean they can't learn to write well--it just means they need approaches that work with their modes of thinking. So we developed a book that provides visually oriented, hands-on reading, writing, and research methods that work for a wide range of students. 

Thinking on the Page is based on a simple, but powerful premise: that there is no such thing as a "bad writer." There are only writers who don't yet have techniques and approaches that work for them, writers who haven't found productive writing processes, writers with great ideas who haven't been given the tools they need to engage with texts and ideas on the page. And we know--from long experience with students who thought they were "bad" writers--that once students have methods that work for them, they can get past the fear of writing, get their ideas on paper, and produce great work.