Write What You Love, Write What You Know

Today I read a story called “Intro to Creative Writing” by Dani Johannesen for my creative writing class that caused me to wonder, what is the point of writing if you don’t like what you are writing about? If you have not yet read this piece of creative nonfiction, you really should, in one page, the clear and concise story depicts a moment that so many of us can relate to as writers, constantly seeing our classmates write to “get it done” or to write what they think sounds smart or overly intelligent. Although this story is creative non-fiction and thus, a different style of writing than we will most likely see as writing consultants or many of us are used to writing, the story’s narrator emphasizes how important it is to “write what you know,” which I believe directly correlates with what I see as a growing problem with College writing: students are still writing about topics that are of no interest to them.

In high school, I was given precise and specific topics that were supposed to guide us as writers to certain subject matters or schools of thought. Like a film editor controls how an audience views the world, so did my teachers in regards to how I was supposed to view what my thesis or topic or overall paper should concern. In so many ways, we were writing what they wanted us to write because their essay topics dictated it to be that way. With Johannesen in mind, I look back on my high school work and have come to the conclusion that there is no point of writing something yourself, if you aren’t going to put you in it. Although you can insert your personality depending on your style and tone and the way you acknowledge your reader, really, the best way of all is to do so by liking what you write about.

When I got to college, I remember being both liberated and frightened by the idea of having the freedom to not only chose my topic, but also, chose the texts I wished to work with. I have had moments where figuring out my topic is 100 times more work because there is so much to chose from. My own personal problem is that I often spend more time swaying back and forth between ideas and texts and outlines than I do writing and I am always looking over my shoulder thinking maybe I should have written about something else. Even though it can be harder at first, I believe there is no point about writing what you don’t care about, especially when you encouraged to do so.

I remember one of the first times I really experienced the joy and rewards of deciding for myself what I was going to write about was during my second semester of Core when I decided to write my essay using the texts, House of Mirth and The Love Suicides of Chikamatsu. For some reason, when I read House of Mirth, I have this weird moment that I have had only a few times in my life, when I feel that I completely and utterly understand a characters and seem so much of me in them. Although comparing myself to Lily Bart could in many ways be doing myself a disservice, I acknowledge this in order to make the greater point that I felt a true connection to the work because I identified it and felt passionate about it. I felt like I understood Lily, and therefore, that I understood Wharton’s meaning and words more deeply than many of my other classmates. When we read The Love Suicides of Chikamatsu, I felt connected to the work for another reason: I am a huge romantic. Although one could argue that the work was incredibly depressing, I would still argue that put into context, the text was littered with rich examples of human love and emotion that was very different from any of the other texts we were reading. Therefore, when it came time to write a paper, and I was allowed to write about whatever I wanted, I jumped on the chance to not only write about the two texts I loved, but to write about what I knew. As a result, my paper had greater depth and insight and won me my first A in Core.

However, Core was not the only time I have been given the opportunity to write about what I know or love, seeing as in almost all of my other classes during which I have written analytical papers, I was given at least one assignment where I was forced to chose my own text and topic. Knowing that this is often the case, I am left to wonder why so many students still chose topics that are incredibly dull to them because that’s what they think the teachers want and just want to get their paper finished. The wonder of being in college is that, for the first time, we get to take the classes we want, chose the professors we want, and even think the way we want. Therefore, it amazes me that so few students take this opportunity to actually do so.

In one of my upper level English classes last semester, I had to peer edit two of my classmates work as a part of our revision process. Although the text I chose to use was one I found challenging and I would be no means ever pick up on my own to read casually, I still selected a topic that focused on the diverse female characters in the work, which were far and few in between. However, I was amazed to see that the students whose work I was editing had not only chosen the texts that, despite being one of my teachers favorites, were universally thought to be the most confusing and unexciting. One writer overly simplified a complex subject and the other’s paper was so verbose and puzzling that poking my eyes out seemed a better alternative to finishing the paper. I think the reason the drafts resulted the way they did was the direct result of the students choosing a topic they didn’t really like and therefore, did not really work to fully understand. Instead, they were writing to write. What amazed me though was that our teacher had explicitly encouraged students to choose a topic that excited them and that made them passionate. Therefore, it seems to me that not only are the writing patterns established in high school hurting the freshman writers of Core of FYS, but, to some extent, still plague the minds of even more advanced writers.

http://www.creativenonfiction.org/brevity/brev34/johannesen_cw.html

Link to the story, “Intro to Creative Writing” by Dani Johannesen

Sorry To Be the Bearer of Bad News

The only thing worse than being wrong, is being wrong and thinking you are right. The article “Helping students write literary analyses: Some challenges and opportunities for writing center consultants specializing in literature,” by Brian Yothers, got me thinking about this idea. Ignoring the fact that this article has an obnoxious and unnecessarily long title, this text articulates one of the types of encounters we might experience as writing tutors and that I myself confess I have been both a culprit off and witness too. The article focuses in on the situation of “Kevin” who is described as entering into a writing lab wanting nothing more than “another set of eyes” to look over his work. The author describes that ,although, Kevin believes that his work is fairly complete, the writing tutor soon discovers “that [Kevin] has not understood the material he is discussing at all.”

Personally I believe that the article did a good job of suggesting a solution to such a situation. I have found that when helping a friend or one of the students I have tutored in their work, getting them to summarize their paper like the article suggests is not only helpful, but exposes many of the elementary flaws in their interpretations and arguments. I remember I was helping one student who had come to me wanting help with her grammar, word choice and style in her paper, seeing as English was her second language.

She sat down and informed me that she had literally been working on this paper the entire weekend and her tone suggested that she was not only tired of writing it, but seemed to hint that she was also pretty “over” working on it. However, as I began to read the first few pages, I soon realized that she had absolutely no argument at all. She had obtained credited sources and had great ideas, but her paper made no viewpoint or source of tension. When I asked her to tell me what her paper was about, it took her 5 minutes to get out what, in theory, she should have been able to articulate in 30 seconds. Like Kevin, her paper lacked a focus because she was not fully understanding the material and thus not only using it incorrectly, often contradicting herself, but not using it effectively to prove a specific claim.

However, when we went back to her sources themselves like this tutor did with Kevin, she was able to look more closely at specific key phrases and by braking the articles and books down piece by piece, was able to get an accurate and more clear picture of what her sources were really saying and eventually, what she wished to argue and how to support that argument with a deeper analysis.

Although my own experience matches that of the Kevin, and I too found Yothers’ approach worked, what the article does not address is the reluctance and frustration of a student who thinks that they are merely having their paper proofread who soon discovers that there are fundamental problems with their ideas and therefore, often have to rewrite sections of their papers.

I remember being a freshman in high school and asking my mother to check over what I thought was a truly brilliant paper for my paper on the Tempest. My mother, being an editor, has a great eye and although she did not pass down her talent for being great with grammar and spelling to me, she served as both my sounding board and mentor for most of high school when it came to writing. I distinctly remember her calling to me from her bedroom where she was reading my paper. She had been reading it for no more than 20 minutes, which for her was incredibly fast, and I sauntered in thinking that her speediness must be a testament to how good my paper was. I remember her looking at me and saying, “Honey, I am sorry, but this makes absolutely no sense.” To say the least, I was crushed. As a result, she, being my mother, was forced to calm me down as I ranted on about how she didn’t know what she was talking about. Angry, I set off to my computer to rewrite the entire thing. As it turns out, she was completely correct. My paper had been confusing and inarticulate and I had not reached deep enough into Shakespeare’s work. I rewrote my paper, thus rewording my already throughout ideas and searching for new quotes, and ended up with a piece of writing that got me my first A in an English class ever.

With that said, however, I think that frustration of the student must be something that the consultant must be aware of. Although obviously, I acted in that way because it was my mother, and I therefore had freedom from social constraints, my emotions were normal. Although it is ok for a student to be frustrated, I think it must be noted that sometimes that frustration can turn in to reluctance to hear what the consultant is suggesting and to walk out of the session feeling pissed off and it ending up to be a waste of time for both. 

Using Personal Examples to Respond to "My Teacher Hates Me"

 Blog Entry 1

When we read the article “My Teacher Hates Me” for our last class I found it to be very applicable to my own experience teaching and as a high school student. When Perry says that “students often engage in “pseudo-academese,” an artificially inflated prose style that they believe is a key to success,” I felt as if I was back in my Senior Year struggling to figure out why my teacher in my creative writing class had given me a B when I had worked so much harder than anyone else in the class who had received an A and I concluded that she just disliked me. However, several months afterwards when I was cleaning my file cabinet, I found a copy of my paper again and finally understood. I had written it in an attempt to sound more creative and intelligent and therefore, more mature. In actuality however, all I had really done was leave my paper bleeding with too many adjectives and had lost my reader by using words I didn’t really know how to use effectively, but that I thought sounded “good” in my paper.

Although I have yet to have any experience working as a Writing Consultant, I have for several months worked as a writing tutor for international students whose first language is something other than English. I have found several common trends amongst my students that this article also addresses, but the most applicable is the statement that students often “express frustration over the “devaluing” of personal observations and experience in the sciences, and the need to couch everything in order to achieve credibility.” The sentiments that the article expressed by making this claim were often, in my experiences, translated into two types of writing: unsupported arguments and summary of one particular authors ideas, as well as, repetition of previously stated thoughts. I remember the first student I tutored came to me with his essay that was supposed to be a research paper on a topic of his choosing. I read through the paper and it not only became clear to me that he was doing everything he could to be “done” with the paper, but also, I was amazed to find that, although he summarized the ideas of a few authors, repeating himself, he had failed to use a single quotation in his entire paper. Although shocked at first, when I asked him about what he was arguing, I realized he himself had very little idea. I have seen this patter repeat with several of my students. I find that its not necessarily just a frustration in having to reiterate someone’s words the way Perry states, but more over this problem stems from having an unclear argument or lack of thesis, but wanting to just “get it done” and therefore, the student just writes a brain dump of information that often only shares the common trend of being about the same topic. When I finally figured out that the statement explaining what my student seemed to want to talk about and argue was actually on page 3, it became clear to me that his inability to find quotes to support his argument came from his not really having any focus when he started writing, but had just kept writing to finish it. When we moved those few sentences he had written from page 3 to the beginning of the paper, he seemed to feel more focused and understood how he was going to alter the rest of his paper and began thinking of evidence he could use to support his idea.