Speaking and Writing Benefit from Each Other's Strengths

Here's a quick quote from a book review — Gotham Writers. It ties in to an earlier post on intelligentwomenonly.com about public speaking for writers. Not exactly the same but related to speaking, although public not private. http://intelligentwomenonly.blogspot.com/2010/12/post-is-article-that-i-wrote-for-asja.html

What Speech Can Bring to Writing

In Vernacular Eloquence, Peter Elbow makes a vital new contribution to both practice and theory of writing. The core idea is simple: we can enlist virtues from the language activity most people find easiest -- speaking -- for the language activity most people find hardest -- writing.

In this book, Elbow reviews how writers can marshal the "wisdom of the tongue" to produce stronger, clearer, more natural writing.

Here's a peek:

Reading Aloud to Revise:
A Role for the Tongue During the Late Stages of Writing
by Peter Elbow

If people read aloud carefully each sentence they’ve written and then keep revising or fiddling with the words till they feel right in the mouth and sound right in the ear, the resulting sentence will be clear and strong. This is a bold claim. For skeptics I formulate it more rigorously: the resulting sentence will be much clearer and much stronger than if the writer relied only on an understanding of what sentences are supposed to look like -- that is, relied only on knowledge of rules or principles.