How Writing Centers Make Better Writers: Tutor Interference

In "The Idea of a Writing Center," Stephen North advocates that one way that writing center tutors can alter the writing process of a tutee, and thereby improve that writer's successes beyond the text under tutorial, is to observe and interfere and then "to get in the way, to participate in ways that will leave the 'ritual' itself forever changed (439)."  This strikes me as a particularly useful way to begin our conversation about what being a Hofstra Writing Center tutor might be or what any writing tutor might initiate.  Tutors can impede the rapidity in which tutees write and finalize their writing.  Afterall,  it is the writing process that needs to change for most writers.  For example, Jeff Brooks in "Minimalist Tutoring" mentions that students often don't re-read or read closely their writing before declaring it finished.  A tutor can might put the brakes on a too-fast draft by challenging a writer to rethink a position or rework data in an argument.  Or, a tutor might just ask questions --   albeit the right questions -- e.g. is there a step missing here?  are you finished with this idea?  can you relate this point back to your main argument? -- about the writing that can help the tutee re-envision the whole paper.