About Invitations
To view featured invitations, click on the titles in the left column. To find out more about the history of invitations or for advice about how to use invitations, read on!
The History of Invitations: The idea of "invitations" to write was developed by Lou Kelly, who directed the University of Iowa's Writing Lab (now the Writing Center) from 1965 to l989. She designed the first invitation to counteract the alienation of students who had been sent to the Writing Lab for remedial purposes--because they had failed an exit exam or because their teachers had given them a form letter that declared their writing to be "unacceptable."
Needless to say, students who thought their high schools had prepared them for college writing were disappointed and unhappy to find themselves in the Writing Lab, at least at first. Kelly's first invitation asked them to write about their reaction to being sent to the Writing Lab. Kelly was amazed that the writing she received in response to this invitation was clear, fluent, and passionate compared with the dull and disengaged writing they had been producing in their classes in preparation for the exit exam. She was thus motivated to develop an entire pedagogy and course around sequences of invitations.
These informal assignments were designed to take writers through a writing and thinking process--from a stream-of-consciousness "Talking on Paper" to "Thinking on Paper," that is, explaining to readers why writers think events happened or why they believe as they do about certain issues. Kelly explains this pedagogy in her book From Dialogue to Discourse: An Open Approach to Competence and Creativity (Glenview, Illinois: Scott Foresman, l972) as well as in her in-house publication, Context and Response.
Some of the initial invitations in Kelly's sequences (for example, "Self as Writer" and "Self as Reader") elicit information about writers' literacy backgrounds---the kinds of writing and reading they have done inside and outside of school and how they feel about it. Tutors benefit from finding out "where students are coming from" in their reading and writing, and students from having to trace their literacy histories and probe their feelings about their own reading and writing skills and interests.
How to Use Invitations: Writers of all ages can use invitations to prompt freewriting, to stimulate their memories and associations, and to articulate and discover connections between their experiences, ideas, thoughts, and feelings.
For autobiographical topics, begin with invitations such as: "An Invitation to Talking on Paper," "Self as Writer," "Roots: Where Do You Come From?" and "Skills Exchange." Next, try "Autobiography of a Reader," "Indulging Dreams," and "Growing Up with TV."
The "Creative Writing" sequence guides the development of your own short story.
Invitations under "More Creative Writing" are designed to help writers play with words and explore their memories and imaginations.
The "What can you see?" sequence invites you to examine some images and write about what comes to mind.
For more academic topics, "College: What Language is Spoken Here?" "Creating Words," "Instances of Injustice" and "An Issue of Interest to You" are very helpful.
"Culture Shock" and "A Letter to Someone Like You" are especially for non-native speakers of English from other countries.
"An Invitation to Evaluate Your Work" invites students to assess their Writing Center experience at the end of the semester.
Rhetoric and writing instructors who use invitations should make sure to adapt them to the curriculum, assignment sequences, and interests of the particular classes they teach.
New Invitations: The Writing Center has new invitations available for creative writers, particularly involving multimedia such as paintings and popular music. Please ask for the new invitations during enrollment hours.