Writing My Way Out

So, I'm trying this new thing with my writing.  I think I've mentioned that I'm terrified, blocked, horribly pained when it comes to academic writing.  I produce the most convoluted, smarmy sentences you've ever seen.  I have anxiety about it, and about revision, and about rejection.  I become someone I do not recognize on the page.

I've used my best skills to tackle the problem.  I've prayed and written visioning statements.  I've asked friends for advice.  I've gotten more comfortable at shopping my work around with friends and colleagues, and at being open to criticism.  I've meditated.  I've visualized the block as a hard nut in my chest, which is where the anxiety locates, dissolving into millions of pieces of light.  I've affirmed that I am a conduit for creativity.

My new age hocus pocus is failing me.  The problem is resisting treatment.

As a last ditch effort--one step shy of abandoning my career and running away to Alaska--I picked up a book by the composition guru Peter Elbow.  He's a guy who flunked out of graduate school at one point because, like me, he couldn't write a coherent academic sentence.  Everything he wrote was circuitous and belabored. 

So he took some time to figure out why he was struggling so much, and solving that problem became his life's work. Now he is a beloved and respected writing maven.  I've had one of his earlier books, Writing with Power, on my to-read shelf for years now.  I first picked it up because I thought it would help me be a better teacher.  Of writing.  Little did I know I would be reading it years later because my own writing was so miserable.

Yeah, I hear you saying, I like your blog, you write fine, you teach writing, you're too hard on yourself, what the hell did you expect, all that jazz.  But I will reiterate:  this academic writing stuff is hard for me.  Like, bloodletting hard.  Like, Everest hard.  I just can't figure out why.

No more figuring, then.  I'm just going to try something new.  I'm putting on the Peter Elbow patch and letting it course through my veins.  I'm smoking the Peter Elbow crack.  I'm diving head first into the Peter Elbow pool of writing instructions.  Cowabunga.

A few observations as I begin.

First, I just have underestimated what a process it is.  I was always the kind of student who just felt my way through things.  I've had very little writing instruction myself, and through a series of lucky encounters just fell into being a writing teacher (irony of all ironies).  Being the dutiful writing teacher that I am, I teach the importance of the writing process.  Dirty little secret:  I hadn't treated it much as a process myself.  As a writer.  So when I'm faced with revision and rejection it freaks me out.  And yes, I plan to incorporate my own lame story into my teaching from now on, assuming this all works out.

Second, Elbow recommends lots and lots of freewriting.  Write tons and tons without revising or editing, he says.  Then put down your creativity pencil and pick up your analytic red pen.  Figure out the best parts of your freewriting--there will be some in there--and begin to shape them.  But don't try to be creative and analytical at the same time.  It just won't work.  This is also something I thought I had "taught" my students. 

Do as I say, students, not as a I do.  Because I almost never turn the editor off.  And especially not with academic writing, where I'm always fretting about audience, purpose, format, prose, punctuation.  What ends up happening, then, is I spend many painstaking hours building what I think are perfect sentences and paragraphs, and when they end up sucking, I'm shocked and dismayed and feel a failure.  Better to produce what Annie Lamott calls some "shitty first drafts," and then go back and just comb through the shit for the pearls. 

I hope this works.  I'm now officially on the Elbow writing diet plan.  I plan to gain many pounds of freewriting in the coming weeks as I work on a paper on communicating climate change.  I'm scheduling in freewriting.  I'm scheduling in research.  I'm scheduling in revision.  As separate processes. 

I'll let you know how it goes.  In the meanwhile, you're stuck with the single process on this blog.  Love it or leave it.

'Tis My Fate to Write...

 

I try not to brag too much here at the 'spit, because, well, any parent worth her salt thinks her kids are the greatest things on the planet, and I know all of you would much rather hear about me being pooped on, or going berserk over an errant mouse.  But permit me, just this once.

I walked out onto the patio yesterday morning, hoping to have some quality time with my hammock.  But I heard Eric and Addie jabbering over on the side of the house, Eric letting out big, "Oh, Addie, that's amazing!"-type phrases.  So I checked it out. 

And lo and behold, Addie is hanging out with these gigantic pieces of chalk Eric got her, and she's writing.  SHE'S WRITING.  I mean, I should qualify.  She's actually dictating.  She asks Eric, "Daddy, how do you spell 'house'?" and he spells out the letters, and she writes them down.  And the handwriting is like something out of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.  But it's legible, for sure, and she's doing it pretty fast, and fairly accurately. 

I stood there with my jaw dropped, because up until then she hadn't shown much interest.  Most of her "pictures" have been massive scribblings, and though she's done some tracing in a letter book Eric got her, she seemed to tire of that pretty quickly.  So it was strange and delightful to see her sprawled out on the walk, chalk in hand, writing. 

In that moment, as a parent, you try not to freak out overly much.  You don't want the kid to get a complex or anything.  But I definitely felt proud, and also really excited.  It was like a glimpse of things to come--reading (she's started picking up some sight words this week, too), writing things down, making representative pictures.  It's like this whole world of expression and learning that's just about to become available to her.  And that's really cool.

Of course, I don't want to age her too fast.  She's still a baby in a lot of ways.  She is constantly scratching at her butt because she doesn't wipe well enough after going to the bathroom (be careful shaking hands!) and she has really cute sayings still, like she says "bor" instead of "or," as in "Mommy, is your favorite color red bor yellow?"  She's completely obsessed with Peter Pan the book, and incessantly drags three stuffed animals around the house, calling them "Wendy, John, and Michael," but can't sit still for the movie because it's too long.  She still drools a little.

But I have this feeling we're rounding a corner, that things are changing, and fast.  It's heady.