What is comp theory

What is comp theory? Well, to the carpenter in me, it is a much simpler thing. It’s the way to compose a house—the most ergonomic way to hold the nail gun, the proper order of walls to be built, nailing patterns and bracing. It’s spacial and sequential, and revising is not a thing one plans on. It’s a one-way method that I’ve grown comfortable with. Unfortunately, that isn’t the comp theory I’m probably supposed to be talking about. Writing about.

In my mind, comp theory presupposes a teacher and students. A teacher has some sort of knowledge or understanding that he or she is trying to pass on to the students. Comp theory is about that relationship.

Comp theory questions both sides. Of the teacher, it asks: what is the nature of the understanding that a teacher possesses? Is it an objective knowledge of proper syntax and grammar? Or the themes that have been embodied in literature—how they are manifested in the words; the historical changes they undergone? Comp theory would seem to say that this is an old fashioned view—by objectifying knowledge, by considering it to be a factual as a rock, one’s underlying motive is more to preserve the status quo than enlighten the student as the forces that are constantly shaping one’s view of one self and the world.

Comp theory would seem to be about enabling students to express themselves. But if—in theory—the objective self is a sentimental illusion and the world keeps surpassing the concepts and attitudes that describe it, what exactly can one teach another? It would seem that the only thing properly taught is a process of change and flux.

Comp theory is about strategies to deal with the changing nature of understanding the self and the world. What type of assignments are given to enable the diversity students to each acquire this understanding? Are the assignments given to groups of students to work on collaboratively or individually?

At this stage in the class, my understanding of comp theory is awfully theoretical. I am not a teacher. I don’t have the hands-on experience to be able to immediately transfer these ethereal concepts into flesh and blood situations.

I came back to the university a few years ago because I wanted to write. I’d gotten my undergraduate degree twenty five years earlier and spent a good of intervening years trying to write stories—without much success. At the start of every writing workshop I’d entered during those years—and even the ones I’ve taken here at CSU—the teacher usually threw out the disclaimer that “no one can teach you how to write.” I’ve spent a number of years figuring out exactly what is meant by that.

These days, I think it relates to something Jane Smiley said. She was being interviewed about the process of revision in developing character and theme. “Where every student eventually arrives is a place where the formal problems of the work are the same as the psychological problems of the student and the philosophical problems of the student’s world-view.” At that point, only the writer can make the story work.

But although there is definitely a psychological aspect to writing and one would hope the process is therapeutic, writing is not psychotherapy. Writing seems to be a much more self contained act where both teacher and student, analyst and analyzed, are located within the writing individual. At least it seems so in my case—not being a teacher and unsure whether or that profession lies in my future. At this point, I’m more interested in comp theory from the student’s perspective than the teacher’s, how it applies to the act of writing itself. How, exactly, does one learn the thing that no one can teach?