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The Invisible Writing Kit - Peter Miller
Imagine a class of 20 students all sitting at their desks, heads bent to the task of writing. As
their 20 pencils glide along, the words seem to spill effortlessly onto the page. But an air of
unreality, of magic and hidden possibility attends this scene, for while the students are
composing fluently, none of their writing appears before them on the page.
They are using the Invisible Writing Kit, a piece of carbon sandwiched between two pieces of
paper wrapped in a sheath of plastic. The students write with pencil on the plastic cover, using
a piece of lined paper underneath the cover as a guide. Since the plastic does not pick up the
carbon from the pencil, the students do not see what they are writing. It appears, instead, on
the piece of paper behind the carbon.
One might think that apprentice writers would reject or perhaps resist the idea of not being
able to read their work or correct their mistakes while they are writing. In fact, they write
easily, take the invisibility of the situation for granted and respond with apparent
nonchalance. Even more important, the invisibility of their writing neither stops them nor
slows them down, but increases their fluency.
And this is just the point. Most of us are well aware of the crippling effects of trying to revise
or correct our writing while we compose. How easy it is, when we momentarily run out of
things to say, for our eyes to wander back over our writing, looking for mistakes or listening
for a more felicitous turn of phrase. For most of us, the temptation is so strong as to be almost
irresistible and with disastrous results. Before we know it, we have become so distracted, that
we are no longer composing but editing. All the curiosity, openness, attention, imagination,
patience, understanding, memory, concentration, intuition, experience, and questioning we
bring as learners to the activity of composing we have replaced with the spirit of criticism and
correctness, being right or wrong.
Over the past ten years, universities and high schools throughout the English-speaking world
have adopted computers as one of the principle new features of their writing classrooms. It is
not unusual for many students to arrive at college now with significant computer literacy. It
has become apparent to many writing teachers that one can darken the computer screen and
compose "blindly", so that it is impossible for writers to read over their work. This has
become known as "blind" or "invisible" writing.
Research has shown that for most writers the practice of "blind" or "invisible" writing leads to
dramatic increases in fluency and confidence. When one's eyes can no longer look over one's
writing, the mind is free to roam more readily over one's personal store of images. Moreover,
students often remark that the images are clearer and stronger, since they are not tempted to
look at the page.
Students have been struck by a similar awareness about their inner voices. With the screen
darkened, they are no longer preoccupied with the exact content of the writing as it appears on
the page. Apprentice writers can listen to their own inner speech more easily as it finds its
way into their awareness. Moreover, this inner speech seems to be speaking more clearly and
strongly.
The Invisible Writing Kit offers a way to bring this technology to students who are unable to
buy computers and into the classroom where computers cannot be taken. It is an appropriate,
lost-cost instrument which attempts to free students from their critical censors, the eyes and
voices one hears over the shoulder, so to speak, constantly organizing, editing, revising,
criticizing, or correcting, and ultimately getting in the way long before one's original thoughts
and feelings get down on the page. When students can temporarily put aside the conventions