Overcoming the Gruesome Legacy of English Composition

Like many in education, I have been plagued for some time by just how useless the whole endeavor seems to be -- and how meddling in education by non-educators has made it even more lame, bored more students and made teachers' jobs even harder than ever (viz., the disproportional amount of time spent preparing for and taking standardized tests that focus only on what can be quantified--therefore multiple choice questions at the expense of  descriptive/analytic responses). It's more than this, though.  It's sacred tradition as well. 

I taught Writing 121 - Introduction to Composition this summer, trying once again to make it both interesting and useful. The class, as you might suspect, is dedicated to the production on large scale of unreadable essays whose uniform badness exerts an intellectual lethargy on those who must write or read them. 

Half-wits will work for less.

The essay as a form was invented in the 16th century by people who were no good at writing poetry. It did not reach its apex of unpopularity, however, until the late 19th century. Then it became the most ubiquitous and effective means of ensuring that students became disengaged from their educations and asked only the questions that would get them through the assignment. After all, who wants the world to be full of thinkers, when half-wits work for less?

In any case, the notion that emphasis on formal essay-writing is not only responsible, but also right and good, has become so fixed in the traditions of writing departments that debate is all but pointless. And as for students, is there any among you whose heart actually cried out with joy at the notion of outlining, creating a thesis statement, adding supporting details whether or not there were any to be had? If so, you were not among my charges who lined up obediently, if listlessly, for their dose of educational castor oil. They knew (because they'd been told) it was good for them, no matter how bad it tasted. Even when I allowed students to chose their own topics, write from experience and share with peers, the writing was lackluster more often than not. It was still something they had to do to get through my class on the way to some other goal.

From The Hapless Child by Edward Gorey (with my textual addition)

Age prompts us to be reflective and reconsider the various decisions we've made in life; for example, I used to require essays. Age also makes us less fearful -- we know where we're headed, so the threat of temporal consequences (losing my contract!) becomes less frightful than a sprinkling of gnats. Age has its benefits.

Taking advantage of the courage age bestows has brought about one of the most successful writing classes I've ever taught. How?  By not requiring any essays. Students don't want to write them and I certainly do not want to read them. 

So what did my WR121 students doing instead? What they did instead was focus on research and reflect on what they'd found by keeping an online blog. "The blog," I told them at the beginning of the term, "has not yet defined itself as a form. We are pioneers, exploring a new, emerging genre. There is no length, except what your reader will bear. There is no formulaic way to begin or end. It is interactive. There is a real audience beyond the teacher." 

And what were they to write about? Donald Graves, one of my dissertation advisors, was keen on allowing students to "pursue their obsessions". So I told students to write about whatever drove them, fascinated them, made them angry or confused. They were in charge of the topic and the form. Graves' friend and colleague, Donald Murray, famously said, "We don't write with words. We write with information." So they would use the information they discovered as the raw material of thought.

I didn't know what would happen, but I knew that the writing could be no worse than what I had read over the years. I was floored, however, when I read the first posts: it was some of the best student writing I'd ever seen. Topics were important and unexpected: government surveillance, NRA funding, child soldiers, art therapy, rape as a weapon of war... Gone was the awkward flailing about for topic and theme, the padded sentences and crippled logic so often prompted by the need to support a thesis or find accordance with format. Instead, their writing was tip of the pen (or cursor) excitement. 

In some mysterious way, the requirements of the course combined to create a successful writing and learning experience. I have some notions as to why -- the discovery that their readers included not only me and their classmates, but perfect strangers who had stumbled across their blogs ("I have a reader from Russia!"); the luxury of deciding the content of their studies and the time to investigate it over weeks and weeks; the comfort of knowing no one was counting words, telling them how many paragraphs they needed, or even expecting them to arrive at a conclusion. Magic arises from the interaction between reading and writing, and from a marriage of investigation and reflection. 

There's a lot to consider about this pedagogical experiment. For instance:

• Why did students think that this was one of the best writing classes they'd ever taken, when I didn't teach them about writing? Our discussions focused on where their research was leading them, which direction to follow, what new questions had emerged. 
• Is this the kind of experience necessary to bring students to the point where a great piece of writing could really be crafted? In the past I'd spent untold hours trying to help students revise writing not worthy of revision. 
• Why have teachers become an unimportant, nearly invisible audience for their student writers? 

... and more.

I'll try it again this fall with two more classes. I'll let you know what happens.

Writing What You Don't Know

Beginning fiction writers are often urged to "write about what they know." That may be the single most useless, misleading, dangerous piece of advice anyone ever gave a writer. Aside from the surety that most of us don't know anything to begin with, the fact is that we don't write fiction in order to document what we know, but to discover what we don't.

Most of us who write fiction do so in order to find out why a new character is hanging around on the threshold of awareness, what a new obsession means, why we're drawn to a locale or historical period, and what would happen if we put them all together. It's possibility, not certainty, that drives us.

Fiction writing comes close to mysticism. Sometimes, especially in the early stages of a book, I feel as if I am channeling. I started writing The Fool's Journey because of a random image that came into my head: a woman is walking through the clogged aisles Seattle's Pike Place Market. A hand reaches out from the crowd and cuts off a handful of her long red hair. That was it -- to start with. I didn't know who she was, whether she was a random or deliberate victim, or what she was doing in the Market, but I started writing anyway and the ensuing years of writing the book revealed everything.

John Fowles writes of a similar experience:

 The novel I am writing at the moment [provisionally entitled The French Lieutenant's Woman] ... started four or five months ago as a visual image. A woman stands at the end of a deserted quay and stares out to sea. That was all.

Alice Walker says,

If you're silent for a long time, people just arrive in your mind.

 Sometimes a "what if" moment starts a story, as Roald Dahl jots in his notebook:

What about a chocolate factory that makes fantastic and marvelous things--with a crazy man running it?

Fowles, Walker and Dahl clearly did not find their way into their stories by writing what they knew about.  Each was led into a mysterious realm where nothing was known, but everything to find out. Writing what we already know is an assignment. Writing to discover is a quest. I am working on two books right now. One, a serialized sequel to Pride and Prejudice, came about because I have always wondered what became of Mary and Kitty Bennet. I am writing to find out.

The other project, my next paranormal mystery, was triggered by a question a woman asked me at a party about fifteen years ago. I had tagged along with other friends and, as they were showing me around the beautiful old craftsman, we came upon the darkened nursery where the hostess was putting her baby to sleep. The walls were lined with old toys, many of them antique dolls. As I began to look more closely at them, the hostess came up to my side and asked, "Do you think a doll can be haunted?" There's more to this story, but it was her question that stayed with me and finally found its way into a story. So far, I've discovered a little about two characters, I know there will be a haunted doll and I sense that reincarnation will play a part. I'm well ahead of the game on this one.

Well, fiction writers are odd people. We all know that. But does "writing what you don't know" work for non-fiction as well? Let's see what the writers say:

Rachel Carson: The discipline of the writer is to learn to be still and listen to what the subject has to say.

V.S. Pritchett: I write to clear my own mind, to find out what I think and feel.

C. Day Lewis: We do not write in order to be understood, we write in order to understand.

I am constantly surprised by what I write in this blog. That's what makes it fun. I start with the germ of an idea that's been echoing in my brain, like one of those songs you can't get rid of -- ear worms, I understand they are called. Perhaps these are "thought worms," boring their ways from our unconscious through subconscious to consciousness until we're either driven to find out why they're there, or something more pressing -- or catchy-- displaces them.

I ask myself whether this all means writing teachers should stop giving their students "prompts" for story writing or structured assignments that focus on character development and scene structure. Do they produce anything readable? Not in my experience. Do they enlighten the writer? Unlikely. Instead, students should have the opportunity to pursue writing as if they were writers rather than monkeys.

We write to find out what we don't know. With pen or keyboard in hand, we enter our strange minds not knowing what's up there, and step into a sprawling Winchester Mystery House of memory, desire, fear and delight. We'll find nothing we're looking for and everything we're not.

Let's follow the hall to the upside-down window, climb the stairs that lead four ways, rattle the bars that fly away like owls into the night -- and write without fear, without guidance, and without expectation.

All quotes plucked from my friend Donald M. Murray's remarkable Shoptalk: Learning to write with writers.

Writing is like sewing -- in public

I watched the finale of Project Runway last night and was delighted when Anya Ayoung-Chee won. She started as the sure-to-lose contestant -- former beauty queen and target of snarky remarks who didn't even know how to sew. Really -- this was the first time she ever sewed. And she triumphed over the worst snark of them all.

Project Runway is one of my guilty pleasures, but I don't watch it for the behind the scenes drama or even because I like high fashion. I watch because I love seeing process become product. From the moment the designers are set their tasks, we see the creative process with all its false starts and seaminess, from sketching to fabric selection to creation, to tearing out seams, asking for help and re-creation until time runs out and whatever they have passes for final.

Sounds like pre-writing, drafting, critiquing, revising, and publishing, doesn't it? We see that the task set the the designers has everything to do with audience and purpose-- which they ignore at their peril. The guidance of Tim Gunn, collaboration among team-members, a broad knowledge of tradition combined with a quest for innovation results in designs with take our breath away -- or make us want to hold our breaths till the next commercial. We see hard work and frustration and triumph.

For teachers of writing, there's a very good lesson about setting the task. The design will only be as reasonable and wearable as the task set. There's a huge difference in garments arising from a challenge to make something out of recycling materials and another that asks designers to use a work of art for inspiration. In the same way, students who choose their own topics and forms based on experience and preference produce more readable texts than those direct to write 500 words on irony in Macbeth. The former, even if seriously flawed, have a spark of life and a potential for something like literature. The latter barely make a dent in meaning, and address no real audience or fulfill a real purpose.

All metaphors break down eventually, and this one is about to. Before I go, I'll make one more observation. Anya didn't know how to sew, but she won anyway. She learned along the way and proved that it wasn't the mechanics of garment construction, but the inspiration and dream that led to victory. She learned to sew by sewing what she cared about.

Watch the finale On Demand -- and think about writing.

Showing Up

My old writing mentor, Donald Murray, loved the stately Latin phrase: Nulla dies sine linea. Not a day without a line. A lot of writing, he said, was just showing up at the page every day. And that's what I am going to try to do.

I write for a living. I write for fun. I write because I am driven to write. However, I have never been disciplined about it. I am 59 this year, and perhaps it's time to start. I began my last book, The Fool's Journey, more than 15 years ago. I can't fart around like that anymore.

Hence this blog. I will try to write here every day. You can try to keep me honest. I hope you will.