Giving houseroom to our waifs and strays: questions for the writing workshop and the writing self

Starting from a practical session aimed at granting a written work autonomy to reply to its author, this paper points up choices individuals make in constructing a ‘voice’, a writing self. It takes the case of the creative piece rejected or distrusted by its author for reasons other an that of quality, and uses it to map some disputable parts of the borderline between the critic’s and the writer’s use of theory, with implications for the practice of the writing teacher too.