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Welcome back! For this blog post we were asked to create a scenario where we have the opportunity to talk to these 3 authors about the writing process. The three texts that we had to read are Teach Writing as a Process Not a Product (Don Murray) -- introduction is not required reading, Against Vanity: In Praise of Revision (Mary Karr) , Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life | pp. 28 -34 | Short Assignments & Shitty First Drafts (Anne Lamott). I will use quotes from these reading to create the conversation and atmosphere.
Let me tell you a story about the day that changed my life as a writer. I was browsing the stacks at the Trinity College Old Library in Dublin, Ireland. I spent most of the day wondering past books older than your grandparents, past the Book of Kells. Eventually, after losing myself in the splendor I ended up in a small pub tucked away in a corridor right behind the library. Around a table, filled with empty beer mugs, are Don Murray, Mary Karr, and Anne Lamott. I head up to the bar and ask the bartender for 4 more of whatever they are drinking, muster up my courage, and head over to the table. “Mind if I join y’all for a round? I’m Petunia and I have an assignment for my English Composition I class due soon and could really use some advice!” At first, they looked unsure until I explained to them about our digital portfolio project that we would be working on all semester. They whispered amongst themselves and turned to me with a curious look and a wave as if to say go on… “What advice would you have for someone who is new to writing?” I ask tentatively. Mary is the first to speak, “(1) Writing is painful—it’s “fun” only for novices, the very young, and hacks; (2) other than a few instances of luck, good work only comes through revision; (3) the best revisers often have reading habits that stretch back before the current age, which lends them a sense of history and raises their standards for quality.” Don follows up with, “[the writer] uses language to reveal the truth to himself so that he can tell it to others. It is an exciting, eventful, evolving process.” “Wow you make it sound so intimidating and time consuming. How do stop from feeling overwhelmed with writing what needs to be written and with all of your other responsibilities in life?” Anne replies with something I will never forget, “I go back to trying to breathe, slowly and calmly, and I finally notice the one-inch picture frame that I put on my desk to remind me of short assignments.” I stop and think for a minute before asking, “what if I can’t get over the initial hump of writer’s block? What if you don’t know where to start or where you want to go?” Anne quickly said, “Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it…the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts. The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place.” Mary adds her two cents on this, “The idea is to get some scenes down. Let your mind roam down some alleys that may land in dead ends—that’s the nature of the process.” Anne counters with, “There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you’re supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go—but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages.” I turn to Don, who I know teaches writing to ask my next question, “I went through school taught that the end product is all that mattered, from the little bit of reading I’ve done on you, I noticed you teach writing in an unconventional manner. How would you describe your belief in one sentence. ” Don sits pensively for 30 seconds before answering, ““Instead of teaching finished writing, we should teach unfinished writing, and glory in its unfinishedness.” “Would you elaborate on this process?” I ask. Don had this answer ready to go, “What is the process we should teach? It is the process of discovery through language. It is the process of exploration of what we should know and what we feel about what we know through language. It is the process of using language to learn about our world, to evaluate what we learn about our world, to communicate what we learn about our world.” I check my watch and note that my assignment is due in just a few short hours! I thank them profusely and give them my website URL and email address. Just last night I received a selfie from the 3 of them in our little pub!
2 Comments
Sabatino
2/10/2020 13:44:54
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Patrick
2/11/2020 18:02:55
I found it really cool that you chose the scene to be at a table in a pub I just found that really interesting and I enjoyed reading it because it was set up like a casual conversation within the pub and it was just so different from the others
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LISA CLAIRE WILEY
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