Kyle E. Coons

ERH 250W

Reading Response 2

2/15/18

Help Received: Microsoft word, A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers pg 86-108, course syllabus, previous RR for citation

In the reading for this week, Erika Lindemann discusses “What Do Teachers Need to Know about Cognition” in chapter 6. The section of this reading that appealed to me the most was the one on Creativity. In particular, Janet Emig’s view on creativity and Graham Wallas’ four stages of creativity. I personally believe writers need their own form of creativity to help encourage and support their writing process. Emig states creativity can be seen in two ways, “(1) as a tension or moment of intersection between two or more opposing variables, and (2) as a series of several aligned stages” (Lindemann, 87). I’ve never personally thought of creativity coming in “stages”, but Lindemann continues to include Wallas’ four stages of creativity. Wallas’ four stages include preparation, incubation, illumination and verification. When reading this I never saw my creativity in different stages, rather something unique to myself.

After reading Wallas’ explanation of these stages I gained a better perspective on my own creativity and that in fact I follow the same stages without noticing it before. When thinking about my own process of creativity, I find myself going through the preparation stage when I do research (i.e. reading texts and different sources for papers commonly assigned in my history courses). My incubation stage is present when I form my paper outlines and I debate which parts of information I want to include and which parts I find not useful to support my thesis. My illumination stage comes at different times for me, as Lindemann defines as the “Eureka moment” (Lindemann, 87). I typically experience this stage when I put pen to paper in my outline process but have also experienced this while writing my draft of certain papers. The verification stage in my case is typically reached at the conclusion of my outline but again also in my drafting process. It was interesting to break my own creativity process up and find how it fits in both Emig’s and Wallas’ claims included in this reading.

Works Cited:

Lindemann, Erika. A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers. “What Do Teachers Need to Know about Cognition” pg 86-108. New York: Oxford University Press.