Undoing the Silence
Six Tools for Social Change Writing
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Undoing the Silence offers guidance to help both citizens and professionals influence democratic process through letters, articles, reports and public testimony.
Louise Dunlap, PhD, began her career as an activist writing instructor during the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s. She learned that listening and gaining a feel for audience are just as important to social transformation as the outspoken words of student leaders atop police cars. "Free speech is a first step, but real communication matches speech with listening and understanding. That is when thinking shifts and change happens."
Dunlap felt compelled to go where the silences were deepest because her work aimed not just at teaching but also at healing-both individual voices and an ailing collective voice. Her tales of those adventures and what she knows about the culture of silence-how gender, race, education, class and family work to quiet dissent-are interwoven with practical methods for people to put their most challenging ideas into words.
The author gives writing workshops around the country for universities and social justice, environmental and peace organizations that help reluctant writers get past their internal censors to find their powerful voice. Her insight strengthens strategic thinking and her "You can do it!" approach makes social-action writing achievable for everyone.
Details
ISBN-10
0-9766054-9-X
ISBN-13
978-0-9766054-9-2
Publication Date
Nov 2007
Nb of pages
240
Includes
Index; Appendices
Illustrations 30
Illustration type
Illustrations, black & white
Dimensions 7 x 9.3 x 0.8 in.
Summary
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Gary Delgado
Chapter one: We Are the Second Superpower
And six tools for powerful writing
True democracy requires it, but mainstream Americans are reluctant to speak out in writing—even when it can make a real difference. This chapter looks at how to shift that reluctance. It previews six tools to undo the silence by setting aside self-judgment, releasing fear, and tapping our common heritage as powerful thinkers.
Shifting pressures
The Free Speech Movement
Hidden silencing
An ally for silenced writers
Tools to undo silencing
How to use this book
Chapter two: Understanding the Silence
What keeps us from writing that can make a difference?
Brazilian educator Paulo Freire saw "silencing" as part of our culture. This chapter explores what keeps us from writing and shows people at all levels of education undoing their silence and using the written word to play more powerful roles in a democratic society.
Struggling with the silence
A "culture of silence"
The knot of silencing—the "isms'
Pressures from institutions
Silencing and fear
The culture of judgment
Undoing the silence
A rainbow of writing projects for our times
Writing for social transformation
Chapter three: The FREEWRITING Tool
Letting go of self-judgment
Most people will do just about anything but sit down to write, even though all of us have powerful voices somewhere inside. This tool helps end harmful self-criticism, reach buried insight, and create pages of energetic writing. Stories and exercises make getting started easy.
Part one: Getting Comfortable with Freewriting
Part two: Tapping Deeper Insights with Freewriting
1) Your freewriting environment
2) Sensing and “simulsensing"
3) Metaphor
4) Diving deeper
5) Painful or negative material
6) Affirmations
7) Clustering
8) Signs of freedom
Part three: Doing Something with Your Freewriting
Chapter four: The PROCESS Tool
Finding a flexible writing process you can trust
There's no single recipe for all situations, but you almost always save time by doing more than one draft, taking things step by step. Writing comes more easily when you know you'll be able to change it later. Stories and exercises show five core mental activities to mix or match for each project.
Part one: Why We Need a Process
Part two: The First “Half” of the Process: As Far as Your Draft
First core activity: Generating ideas
Second core activity: Organizing and strategizing
Third core activity: Writing a “mad draft”
Part three: The Second “Half” of the Process—Revising
Fourth core activity: Incubation
Fifth core activity: Revising the mad draft
Part four: Adapting the Process to Fit Your Situation
Short-term or long-term writing projects?
Familiar or new subject matter?
Familiar, easy-to-write-for audiences or “tricky” audiences?
Familiar or new formats?
“Sponsored writing” or your own voice?
Co-writing or writing alone?
Part five: Some Final Words on the Process Tool
Chapter five: The THINKING Tool
Organizing ideas and framing your message
Learn how experienced writers organize ideas more powerfully with techniques not taught in most schools. Stories and exercises boost your ability to think critically.
Part one: What Makes Thinking Powerful? Freire's Peasant and the Intellectuals
Part two: Six Ways to Generate and Deepen Ideas
1. Freewriting and clustering
2. Conversation and questions
3. Explaining code words
4. The funnel
5. Listing and grouping
6. Contradictions
Part three: Two Ways to Organize and Connect
7. The grid
8. The tree
Part four: Three Ways to Sharpen Your Argument
9. WIRMI
10. After-the-draft outline
11. Gists and headings
Part five: Three Forgotten Roots of the Thinking Process
12. Metaphor
13. Drawing and other art forms
14. Storytelling
Part six: Your Message and the Legacy of Thinking
Chapter six: The AUDIENCE Tool
Who’s going to read it?
Put yourself in your readers’ shoes. Figure out how they see things and how to get their attention. Stories and exercises help you strategize to get your message heard.
Step one: Writing to communicate
Step two: Demystify your audience
Step three: Analyze your audience
Step four: From analysis to strategy
Strategies for persuasion
Strategies for sequencing
Strategies for introductions
Strengthening the “leads” in your introductions
Step five: Conflict, confrontation, empathy, and respect
Step six: Fine-tuning this tool and going further
Chapter seven: The FEEDBACK Tool
How do I know it “works” for readers?
Receive real support from a group method that sidesteps traditional critique to help you develop ideas more fully and build democracy at the same time. Stories and exercises help you give and receive empowering feedback even without a group.
Part one: A quick overview of the feedback process
Part two: Fine-tuning the process
Part three: Fifteen common questions about the feedback process
Part four: Starting a group and adapting the method
Part five: How this tool can help you, your writing, and social change work
Chapter eight: The WORD-POWER Tool
Review it all and fine-tune your language for readers
Check the action in your sentences, cut out the “lard,” and learn what you need to avoid the “grammar gatekeepers” that make so many writers uneasy. Examples and exercises show how to clean up all those little things that frustrate readers and strengthen your power with words.
Part one: Looking at your draft with readers’ eyes
Part two: “Keeping it simple” by cutting
Cutting to make it shorter
Hidden agendas, big words, and ego
The paramedic cutting tool
The noun habit
The passive verb habit
The myth of the short sentence
Part three: Linking and transitions
Part four: “Grammar is power”
Punctuation
Pronouns
Spelling
Part five: High-energy language
Use detail—“Show don’t tell”
Finding the source of powerful language
Part six: Recognizing your power with words
Chapter nine: “Lift EVERY Voice”
Getting active with writing
Finding subjects we’re passionate about
Balancing urgency and joy
Seeking small and larger ways to go public with writing
Finding supportive community
Appendix A: Letters for two audiences: funders and editors
Appendix B: Two kinds of opinion columns
Index
About the author
Reviews
Press Reviews
Undoing the Silence
Gustavus Myers Center
Let me begin this personal reflection on Louise Dunlap's book, Undoing the Silence, by stating that I wish that I had had this book in my "toolbox" a long time ago. Although I have always been an adequate writer, I now realize that I have let my "inner judges" prevent me from freeing my own authentic voice in my writing. As I read this book and worked through the exercises, I felt as though the author was speaking directly to me.
In one of the first writing exercises, called "Naming the Judges", Dunlap asks readers to think about early experiences that have formed our ability to write. Before I even put my pen on the paper, I was transported back to my eighth grade classroom. The teacher was passing back a writing assignment and stopped at my desk. As she handed me my paper, she said something like "You write well, but your story is not creative, like Lorna's." It was a crushing blow for me - I had always been an excellent student and Lorna was my friend. We both had high aspirations and eventually attended the same university. I knew intellectually, even at the time, that the teacher had given me negative feedback in a rather callous manner, but the emotional impact of that feedback has stayed with me ever since. My "lack of creativity" has haunted my efforts to write!
One of my longstanding volunteer roles is as a literacy tutor trainer. My organization trains volunteers to be tutors for people who wish to improve their reading and writing skills or their conversational English. Before we introduce the techniques we use for helping beginning students with their writing, we always ask the volunteers to share their own experiences as writers. I often share my 8th grade story and many people offer similar ones. Only a very few people in our tutor training workshops consider themselves "good" writers. In my own experience, I have observed what Dunlap points out in the opening chapter of Undoing the Silence. Most adults in our society have a very difficult time writing to express their own thoughts and concerns. Even fewer are comfortable expressing views that advocate social or political change.
I didn't fully realize until I read this book that the silencing of writers' voices is far deeper than our individual experiences of having our writing criticized by parents or teachers or editors. The author makes a strong case that we live in "a culture of silence". In some societies, ordinary people are denied freedom of speech, and that denial is used to maintain oppression. But even in our free society, large numbers of people are afraid to speak out. In many different ways, the culture has taught us that we don't have the proper standing to appear in print and that our written words are not good enough to be expressed in the public square. The power dynamic in our society makes most of us feel that we are less important, less smart and less powerful than those who somehow deserve to carry on the public dialogue. Dunlap shows that the "knot of silence", as she terms it, has many strands, all of which have taught us to be afraid to write what we really feel, think and believe.
Louise Dunlap has worked with writers throughout her career and has a wealth of experience helping activists around the world to free their voices and to use their writing to help transform communities. She draws on this work to illustrate her approach to social change writing. The book includes the experiences of students in her classes and workshops who strengthened their writing - from early drafts through revisions to the finished product. In her first chapter, the author says, "Everywhere I found that speaking out vocally and taking action with the written word were closely related. Maybe one skill is stronger than another to begin with, but when you work on writing, the silence starts to unravel on other levels. A tenant named Mark confirmed this for me four years after a workshop where he had written (and published) his first letter to the editor. 'That's where it all started,' he said in a group evaluation meeting. 'Before I wrote that letter, I had no confidence in myself.' (Mark was a working father of four so this was a big thing for him to acknowledge.) 'After that, I just learned how to do things: I went onto the steering committee, I started speaking before City Council, and now I am on the Board where I live. I feel like a leader because now I can say what I mean.' "
Undoing the Silence offers six tools to help us write. They are: The Freewriting Tool, The Process Tool, The Thinking Tool, The Audience Tool, The Feed-Back Tool and The Word-Power Tool. As I read through the explanation of each tool and tried the exercises, I noticed that, by trial and error, I have used some of them when I tackle a writing project. However, my employment of such techniques has been pretty haphazard. This toolbox is a wonderful resource because it includes strategies to help us overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of effective writing. Dunlap encourages us to step back from the pressure to make our writing perfect on the first attempt and to let a piece sit while we do something else to recharge our minds. I have found that the freewriting tool is quite liberating and has already enriched my writing. Another very important perspective I have gained is an understanding of my tendency to write in the passive voice. One of the exercises helped me to convert my passive verbs into active ones. A statement such as "it is believed" becomes "I believe". It may be scary to put my own opinions and thoughts into words, but they immediately become more powerful when I do.
There are many more wonderful suggestions and tips for strengthening writing in this book. I believe every writer can benefit from reading it and trying them out. With the help of Louise Dunlap, may we all use our voices more effectively to change our communities for the better!
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Nancy McKinney
Undoing the Silence
Louise Dunlap's new book, "Undoing the Silence, Six Tools for Social Change Writing," (New Village Press) has arrived at a perfect time. First, because it celebrates her full life of teaching and struggle, and second because the movement that it serves is finally getting off its knees.
The system, with war and injustice at its core, has managed to stave off a major downturn thru ever- loosening credit. This strategy has finally broken under its own weight. We are now in need of a whole new cadre of thinkers who can describe the problem and point toward solutions. We need "writers for social change." Dunlap's book will help turn them out.
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Bill Shortell
Undoing the Silence
Green LA Girl: Urban Eco Living by the Beach
Join an environmental group, and it won't be long before you’re urged to write for your cause — whether a letter to the editor, an op-ed, or a blog post. But if the mere thought of putting pen to paper (or fingers to laptop) about issues so vast as ocean pollution or global warming — or even smaller, neighborhood issues like a plastic bag ban in your city — makes you want to hide in the nearest recycling bin, here’s a book that can help.
Undoing the Silence: Six Tools for Social Change Writing by Louise Dunlap is like The Artist’s Way for social change activists. This book kicks off by examining why we often find it so difficult to put our thoughts, ideas, and motivations into words — much less share them with the public — even when we’re passionately dedicated and feel strongly about the issues we’re involved with. On top of our own personal fears of inadequacy that lead to self-silencing, we’ve got institutional silencing to deal with — The social structures that discourage anyone from rocking the boat.
"No matter how well meant, politeness is a kind of organized silence," writes Louise Dunlap — then dedicates the rest of her book to illustrating 6 steps you can take to overcome this silence:
1. Freewriting — Getting the ideas out from under your inner critic by writing quickly, much like the morning pages in The Artist’s Way.
2. Process — Starting to organize those ideas into a first draft.
3. Thinking — Improving, expanding, and refining your ideas and your argument.
4. Audience — Refining and revising your writing by taking on a reader’s perspective
5. Feedback — Receiving and incorporating constructive feedback on your work from others.
6. Word-power — Polishing your writing to make it tighter and prettier.
While these tools may be generally familiar to many writers, Louise’s emphasis on breaking down the psychological barriers to get your personal opinions and beliefs out will seem especially novel to those who’ve often been taught to make their own ideas subservient to the prevailing cultural status quo. Louise provides lots of writing exercises to familiarize you with these tools — and peppers her book with encouraging anecdotes to show how your writing could lead to positive changes.
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This review’s part of the Green Books campaign, an initiative organized by Eco-Libris to get 100 bloggers reviewing 100 green books on Nov. 10 at 10 am (PST). All the reviewed books are printed on recycled or FSC-certified paper, with the goal to encourage publishers and readers to take the environment into consideration when printing or purchasing books.
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Siel
