In 1987, Peter Elbow published an article that generated a buzz among composition scholars due to his argument that writers should, at least in the beginning stages of drafting, ignore their audience. “An audience is a field of force,” he explained. “The closer we come—the more we think about these readers—the stronger the pull they exert on the contents of our minds” (94). In Elbow's conception, although some audiences are “enabling” and some “inhibiting,” most audiences are simply distracting. The eff ects of these audiences could be devastating to the writing process, as Elbow wrote: “Sometimes we get so tied in knots that we cannot even figure out what we think ” (97).

Elbow's claims, by his own admission, are ambitious; they go against a common mantra repeated by teachers of writing: Keep your audience in mind. Some scholars responded to Elbow with shock and concern, but a fan of Virginia Woolf might read Elbow's work and express no surprise at all. The trials of writing are a familiar subject in Woolf's works, and she was an author who spent an unusual amount of time describing her drafting and revision processes to others. One of her most discussed topics was the relationship between writer and audience. Over fifty years before Elbow's work made waves among compositionists, Woolf published “Professions for Women” (1942), which included a passage describing how her own imaginary audience member, “The Angel in the House,” haunted her early writing.