A Limited Exchange

I wish I could say my experience with the writing partnership had been wonderful, amazing, fantastic, or any other adjective in that realm, but unfortunately, I cannot. All I ended up receiving was a week-late first draft of the autobiography, and all I received for comments on my work was something akin to, "It's good. I couldn't really find anything to fix." I tried to be encouraging, letting my student know that I was looking forward to reading his work, and also told him when I sent my last draft that I would still love to read his second draft when (I very purposefully used the word "when", as opposed to "if") he completes it. I haven't even received a response. Naturally, I can't help but assume this is a student who just blew off the assignments. I have to remind myself, however, that since I am not the teacher, I really don't have any idea if this is true or not. I have no idea what is going on in this kid's life. In fact, even if I were his teacher, I still might not know what is really going on with him.

That said, I suppose if I've learned anything through this very one-sided exchange, it's that even teachers need to try and free themselves of those assumptions. Yes, there are plenty of students who simply blow their work off, but there are also students who are struggling in some way. It may be educationally, but it may even be something deeply personal that the teacher has no idea about. That makes the assumption that the student purposely neglected to do the work out of laziness a dangerous one. Having this attitude could even exacerbate the problem. If I do go into teaching, I hope that I can remember not to be so quick to make negative assumptions about my students.

I wish I had more to say about the exchange, but as I said, it was extremely limited. Even though my experience wasn't exactly wonderful, I am not opposed to the idea of the partnership. I realize this is just one experience and that another experience may have turned out totally differently.

To Write...Something Else

I don't know if anyone read my last blog, as it didn't receive any comments (I just changed my settings so that ANYONE can comment...if you have problems, please let me know so I can make sure), however, I'd like to follow up on it now anyway. As I said before, my original essay began to take a direction I didn't want to go in, but I strongly felt that if I kept writing the essay that that is where it was determined to go. In order to write it, I would have had to relive painful memories about someone I've recently come to realize I don't have negative feelings toward anymore, and I A. Didn't want to think about that and B. Didn't want to start feeling negative toward him again. So I had to decide: Do I keep writing this essay or do I start a new one?

The verdict: I started a new one. We've discussed and others have blogged about how writing is a journey, and I firmly believe that. But I also believe that there are some journies we are just not willing to make, and that that's okay. Maybe someday we will be ready, or maybe we never will be. Sometimes forcing yourself to write something you aren't sure you want to write can be a good thing. You may end up being surprised by how wonderful it turns out, but at other times, forcing yourself to write turns out just that way: coming off as forced.

So I started with a new writing memory, and this one takes me into territory I've been thinking about A LOT lately. Now I feel like I'm writing something I want to explore and I feel like anyone that reads it will really be able to see my mind at work. And I think it will help me sort out my feelings.

To Write It or Not to Write It: The Emotional Pain of Writing

In Christina's most recent blog she wrote a sentence or two about how during the writing process we are sometimes forced to remember certain experiences. That inspired my blog for this week. During the writing of my essay for this class, the essay has ended up going to a place that I'm not sure I want to go again, and a place I didn't expect. It's actually something I've already written about before. Without going into too many details, the essay started to go into a relationship I had which lasted through most of three years during high school. It was a horrible relationship, in which I was very emotionally abused. And only just recently, I've come to realize that I don't have any bad feelings toward this particular ex-boyfriend. My essay is definitely going in the direction of exploring that relationship again, however, and I just don't know if I can do that. As soon as it started to go there, I just stopped writing. And I haven't come back to it this week. I'm afraid to.

So my decision tonight, as I sit down to write yet another draft...do I even write another draft or just scrap this essay and start a new one? Or do I keep going and relive painful memories, yet again?

What do you do when your writing travels into territory you aren't sure or maybe you definitely know you don't want to cover? Do you keep going? Do you start writing something else entirely instead?

My Writing Process

Last class period, we talked a little about how the writing process is different for every writer. It got me to thinking about my writing process. As I said in my last post, I myself am an unmotivated writer, so the only writing I seem to be able to get myself to do is for class. When I do sit down to write, however, I find that I am very finicky about the apparatus I must use and the conditions in which I write.

What I mean in this: It seems I can rarely write anything on the spot. In all of my writing classes, we're given some kind of in-class writing assignment, and often I find myself drawing a blank. I don't know if it's the pressure of knowing I only have a few minutes that freezes me up or that I'm too critical of the ideas that come into my head. The fact is, I get very little accomplished, if anything. Along with that, I feel like I can rarely write with a pen and paper. I NEED a computer. I don't know why I just do. And I need to be in a room, alone.

So then the question becomes: If I'm at a computer, alone, with time to consider what I want to write about, what do I do? Most of the time, I've spent some time considering the assignment before I sit down to write, so I already have a pretty clear idea of what I want to do. But sometimes, I don't know. So I just sit there, and stare at the screen, thinking and thinking, and eventually I usually come up with something. I can't remember which essay it was, but one of the author's in Inventing the Truth mentioned something about simply thinking hard about the writing as being hard work, and I agree. The problem is, sometimes I just feel like I'm getting nowhere.

That said, I think it's time for me to consider Ballenger's ideas in "The Importance of Writing Badly". He says, "Giving myself permission to write badly makes it much more likely that I will write what I don't expect to write, and from those surprises come some of my best writing." When I'm stuck, I need to just do it, just sit down and write. Even if it's just writing it out like a journal, get SOMETHING down. Maybe then I won't become so frustrated when I don't know what to write. Because sitting and thinking can be helpful and it can definitely be work, but sometimes it just feels like I'm getting nowhere.

For those of you that read this: What's your writing process like? Are there certain conditions for you that must be met before you can write?

Unmotivated Writers?

In Bruce Ballenger's "Reconsiderations: Donald Murray and the Pedagogy of Surprise", I had a rather significant pause at, "The professional writer isn't always the best study subject for theorizing about the composing processes of composition students, most of whom are inexperiences and relatively unmotiviated writers in a required course" (301). The reason I paused here is because a question came into my mind: What if you yourself are an unmotivated writer? What then? Can you possibly teach writing if you are unmotivated yourself? If not, how can you fix this problem?

If it's not already obvious, I'm asking this question because I can't say that I'm a motivated writer. I'm not even sure if I would call myself a "writer" at all. I've taken four different courses on creative writing during my time in college. As an adolescent, I spent a lot of time writing sad (mostly love) poems. I thought maybe taking this courses would inspire me to want to write. They did. But only for class. Even after all of those courses, in which I churned out some pretty decent stuff even, I still have no drive to write outside of the classroom.

So I'm wondering, am I alone in this? It may be important to mention that I have not actually settled on a career in teaching. I will graduate with my BA in English in December, and I am seriously considering returning in a couple of years (when my youngest is closer to school age) for the teaching certification. If, in fact, I do decide to take this path, would I ever be able to successfully teach writing to students if I am not motivated myself?