Recent research has invited critiques of the authoritative descriptions of composing found in many rhetoric textbooks. The concept of "convention" may be especially useful in rethinking the teleological basis of these textbook descriptions. Conventions found in composition textbooks need to be unmasked as arbitrary concepts which serve to perpetuate the decisions of others and to impose a linear order upon what is necessarily a chaotic process. The authority of printed textbooks coupled with the inclination of many students to reduce the complexity of writing tasks may outstrip some composition teachers' recent efforts to qualify textbook conventions and to encourage a more critical perspective. While the distinctions of invention, writing, and revising should be preserved, English teachers need to re-examine their attitudes toward these distinctions and how to best teach students to appreciate them. Instead of using clusters, Pentads, and brainstorming lists, a writer could begin with pleasure reading, physical exercise or dreaming. Requiring students to proceed with composition in conventional ways excuses them from the requirement to judge the contextual appropriateness of composing conventions and from inventing their own strategies for writing. (Two pages of references are attached.) (MHC)