My reaction to Boice’s active waiting was influenced both by my own writing tendencies, as well as what I consider to be reasonable expectations for my students’ writing.

I tend to work in all forms of madness—and yes, when I first begin to create a new piece, I absolutely need to feel inspired and will sit down for hours to write nonstop. When I am struck by the need to write a scene, memory, event, etc.—I write it. Slowing down those moments in which I’m inspired to write by only entertaining those ideas in my mind and not putting them to paper, will, inevitably, cause me to lose the perfect rawness of them. Hence, active waiting is not always a viable option for me. What I’ve learned over the years is that I can’t force those, for lack of a better term, inspired moments. Now, reworking those creative pieces outside of that moment is entirely a different matter. However, even when I’m working outside of the initial inspired moment, it’s more of an intuitive practice, one that typically requires I revise as I go. Meaning, I don’t always know what/how I’m going to revise until I engage with the actual writing.

On the other hand, I can understand that active waiting might be more useful in the sense of writing critical papers. Certainly it’s a good idea to live with research material, to process it many times before beginning a paper. Still, some writers do need to write, to start out with a bit of a mess, then go back and rework/continue to mull over text, notes, theories, etc. Many of my students have already commented on their writing styles this semester, indicating that for them, knowing where to begin writing is the most difficult challenge they face. I can’t help but wonder if active waiting might be a good strategy for them, but then I feel slightly doubtful; again, it just seems too prescriptive. I feel like Boice is making the assumption that passive waiting is the best way to approach writing. This assumption is problematic to me. I don’t feel I’d being doing justice to my students if I had them go through the process of engagement, arrive upon an idea(s), and then instruct them to passively wait before they begin to work out their idea(s) on the page. I suppose my main issue with the idea of active waiting is that while it may be an option for some writers, it’s simply not an option for every writer.