The more experience we gain as writers, the more we know what possibilities we might be leaving behind with our choices, which is indeed hard. This is the kind of wrestling we should strive to get students to reach. Better indication of proficiency than any assessment.
https://twitter.com/DanaGoldstein/status/1401984148122882048
Big part of developing as a writer is having the confidence to put something down knowing its provisional, but is enough to move forward to develop the idea and then go back to fix what's not right. It's revision driven by the writer, rather than the "teacher."
A big part of achieving this for students is freeing them from focusing on instructor assessment, and instead letting them write to authentic purpose and audience. Let student solve a challenging authentic problem and watch them go to work.
I often ask instructors that if someone supervising them asked them to write in the ways we often ask students to do, would they be likely to do their best work? I know for me as an instructor, for years, the answer was "no."
The best way to help students develop as writers is to let them engage in the struggles of writing. My advice is to not let schooling get in the way of that goal.
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