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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

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of their written language, along with such matters of correctness as grammar, usage, spelling,
punctuation, they are free to transcribe their inner speech and observe their inner pictures.
For several years, Bill Bernhardt and I had been using "blind" or "invisible" free writing on
the computer with our own students in the City University of New York, both in our regular
composition classes and with remedial students, who come to our classes having failed the
university's standardized reading and writing tests. We have also conducted workshops for
both native and ESL writing teachers, to introduce them to the various advantages of
"invisible" free writing for them and their students.
In the summer of 1989, we were invited by Fusako Allard, Director of The Center for
Language and Intercultural Learning and by the Japanese Association of Language Teachers
(JALT), both based in Osaka, to conduct two weekend-long workshops in creating greater
fluency and confidence in writing. It is here where we first introduced the Invisible Writing
Kit. Participants of both workshops included Japanese teachers of English on the high school
and college levels and an international range of English-speaking persons.
At The Center Workshop, we asked participants to write freely with the Invisible Writing Kit.
This was followed by writing the first draft of an essay or short story, which participants
immediately revised and read in groups. At the JALT Workshop, participants first drew
pictures to create a cartoon story, which they continued and expanded on the Invisible Writing
Kit. They also tried the first draft of a more formal piece of writing, writing in English or
Japanese. In both workshops, we followed Invisible Writing Kit activities with questions and
discussion for participants to realize the possibilities of the instrument in developing their
fluency and confidence as writers.
Over the course of the following academic year, we introduced the Invisible Writing Kit to
our own students and colleagues, and at a number of citywide and national writing
conferences. We have also created an INVISIBLE E-X-P-A-N-S-I-O-N KIT, which
incorporates a variety of prompts we found ourselves using it with our students, and an
INVISIBLE JOURNAL KIT to increase fluency and confidence by tapping the most private
and perhaps the strongest resources for most writers.
To each one of the writing activities in these kits, we incorporate feedback questions about the
activity, so that students can become aware through class discussion immediately after their
writing of the attributes, abilities, resources, and mental processes that contribute to their
fluency. This discussion becomes the basis for students to change their perceptions about
themselves and their habits as writers.
© Peter Miller New York, November 1990
Each kit comes with "Notes to Teachers" explaining why and how the kit is useful, how to
introduce the different writing activities to students, how to handle the feedback questions,
how to use the kit in ESL and ELF classes, and so on. TheInvisible Writing Kit packet
contains 25 sets. The INVISIBLE E-X-P-A-N-S-I-O-N KIT and the INVISIBLE JOURNAL
KIT each contain 12 writing activities, which can be xeroxed for classroom use. The Science
of Education in Questions - N° 4 - December 1990
"The Invisible Writing Kit" by Peter Miller is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.