Please respond by start of class this Thursday to the observations from an acquaintance of mine, Adam Penna, poet, writing teacher and editor of the zine Best Poem. This is an opportunity, as midterm approaches, to reflect on what we're doing in class and why:
I've found that the best and only way to teach writing is to begin to redefine for my students what it means to write. I spend a lot of time defining terms. Essay = to try; revision = to re-see; research = to look again. For me writing and the teaching of writing are opportunities to listen to oneself talk. Usually, the consequence, for those who are willing to listen, is the realization that they haven't been paying close attention to what they say. Once they begin paying attention inevitably many of the mechanical irregularities improve. And paying is the important term here, considering that it implies a metaphor most people understand. That is, care = time and time = money. Further, I steal an equation my former mentor taught me, which is care = talent. Or, rather, talent is a way of caring, as he put it.
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20 comments:
My favorite part about Penna’s observation is “… writing and the teaching of writing are important opportunities to listen to oneself carefully.” I relate to this line because for so long and even until this day, I didn’t/don’t listen to myself. I listen to other’s writings and I all I hear is what I’m told and what I read and I ended up trying to imitate. I often think that it’s just too hard to find myself in my writing while in college because we’re in classes that impose a certain way of writing, which is usually a familiar way to both professors and students. “Maybe I’ll just write the way I want to when I’m out of school,” I like to think, but even then it will be hard to get out of the routine of writing like others or wanting to write like others. Sometimes I feel like I’ve lost interest in what I’ve wanted to do since I was younger. I’ve always wanted to be a writer but I lack passion for it. One day in class, we were asked to evaluate our passions, but it was on that day I realized I didn’t know exactly what mine was.
I do think that once my passion is found, the line Penna got from his mentor, “care=talent. Or, rather, talent is a way of caring,” will make a lot more sense to me. I wish I had the creative genius of the writers we are focusing on in class. I know wishing isn’t going to get me far, it is practice and persistence that’ll take me places. I won’t be like Hunter S. Thompson, H.L. Mencken, or Tom Wolfe but I could at least try to be good. Maybe writing is my passion?? … it’s just not the writing I’ve learned to do over the years.
I know that there is a significant difference between this class and other journalism courses, but because I’ve gotten so used to the writing of the other classes it’s hard for me to fall out of it and use the techniques of writing explored in this class. I think this class helps get my mind in the right place for thinking about MY OWN writing but I feel stuck at the same time. This course has opened my mind to more creative writing styles and writers I never knew about. I’m sure that by the end I will be a little more confident about where I want to take my writing, if any place at all.
I’m rambling and probably confusing the crap out of all of you (I’m confusing the shit out of myself) so I’m going to stop now.
it's ok to use your writing to find out what you're thinking. you don't always have to know what you're thinking before you start writing. i surely don't.
aramis, not even tom wolfe became tom wolfe overnight. we're reading the best of the best in class, but remember they weren't always so. thompson retyped "the great gatsby" to learn something about style (remember that from the movie?). he had to learn what it is and how to achieve it just like everyone else.
I actually read this post on one of your other blogs and have been thinking about it while I sit at my internship waiting until enough time has passed to ask for more tasks...
Like Aramis said, the phrase that stood out the most for me when I initially read this post and that has stuck with me most as I re-read it is "...writing and the teaching of writing are opportunities to listen to oneself talk."
I've been looking back at some of my older writing from earlier semesters as I look for clips and writing samples, and I have noticed that my style of writing--well the tone of my writing--has evolved so much. The earlier pieces had that feel of "here's how a story should look with all the basic components here, in this order, stated this way, etc." I was basically regurgitating what a professor said to do or how a certain writer I was studying wrote and tried to emulate that in my own way. The writing is fine but it doesn't stand out to me. What I've been striving for lately has been to discover a voice, tone, style that is distinctly my own--so that if someone were to read a piece of mine and not see a byline (haha, I didn't even mean to rhyme) they will know I'm the author. Even if this reader is myself, I think that's the place to start. If I can recognize what type of writer or author I am then I'm well on my way to finding out who I am as a writer, and this is done by listening to myself, understanding myself, recognizing myself.
I've always been pretty confident in my writing but recently I've felt like I have a real handle on it and have been exploring and experimenting a bit more. And I think I've discovered how I want to sound when I write and how to go about achieving this. I've done this by consciously paying closer attention to what I'm saying or writing as I do it. I have never been one to write a few sentences, then re-read them and re-work them, then write some more, and so on. I usually write everything as it comes, get away from it, and then read it again a bit later to make corrections and revisions. I haven't changed this writing routine but I've been listening to myself as I write. It's hard to explain exactly what this means but I think I'm more conscious of how I string my thoughts together and why. I've tried to gather all the tips professors have given me about writing and applied them in various ways. Like Penna suggests, paying attention eliminates mechanical irregularities. Comparing my most recent writings to earlier ones I've seen how much cleaner they are. I also think that listening to oneself talk and paying attention to what we say can be applied beyond writing. I can relate to this in the way I interact with people, how I view/handle situations and how I relate to myself. It's just a great quote that I've been applying to more areas of my life than just class.
This is the perfect time for me to read this observation because I just started (beginning of this semester) teaching a class. My biggest struggle has been to get the students to actually see the work that they make. There are so many possibilities to creating work, and people choose certain elements for reasons that, most of the time, they are unaware of. I am trying (very hard) to make the students aware of the things that they do, which will allow them to consciously develop their own style. But this takes a lot of hard work, which is what (I think) Penna meant by his metaphor care=time and time=money. It is incredibly difficult to look at your own work critically and it takes a lot of time and dedication. It is not always fun, if at all, to stare at an incomplete body of work. It is frustrating, depressing, but incredibly essential to progress. We have to start somewhere. I really appreciated Penna’s idea of redefining terms. Again, it proves my point that we have to spend the time to look at our work (hopefully with a different eye that we created it; someone who is not the creator). That is the reason for workshops/critiques: to get other’s opinions on what the piece means and how it can improve. The main goal at the end of all this education is to be able to do this by ourselves, which again is not easy. Thanks for sharing his observation.
I feel like over the years my writing has improved and my methods have become the methods I will use in the future. Penna says "Once they begin paying attention inevitably many of the mechanical irregularities improve." I completely agree with him. When I was younger I never really paid attention to what I was writing, I usually never even read through it twice. I'd write it, print it out, and turn it in and hope for the best. In my personal writings I would do the same thing and months later I would re-read what I had written and say, "what the hell was I doing?" Now that I've gotten older, I do re-examine my work, more times that I can count usually. Sometimes I spend 20 minutes trying to word a sentence the right way. I've also never been one to revise, I've never liked to chang my work, but I realize that it has to be done to make it better. As Penna also says, "Essay = to try; revision = to re-see; research = to look again." All of these steps are necessary to improve one's writing and to make a piece as effective as it should be.
Penna’s observation about writing and teaching writing are important opportunities for myself and others to understand and listen to “self,” personal style and voice in detail. This to me is so important because not only do I need to listen and understand myself when I’m writing, but I need to figure out what my own personal voice is, and come up with a style of writing. Often times in this class as well as other journalism classes I’m interpret the message from my professors’ to imitate other writers so that I may develop my own style. But for some reason, I still haven’t grasped it yet. I also realize that I have other classes interfering with my writing and it takes away from me being able to focus solely on writing and developing a style. Also, another point I would like to make is that because journalism has these two different distinct styles of writing, (literary and traditional) I often find myself stuck in the middle. With traditional, I find this way of writing very bland, unemotional, detached, and in most instances too easy. But with literary writing, I have this strong passion for it, I love it, and it’s something that I can see myself doing for the remainder of my life, but; this type of writing is most challenging and very hard for me to grasp. I often get frustrated because I feel so strongly about this type of writing, but I just can’t put my finger on why I can’t seem to master it. I’m also not the type of person that likes to feel defeated, especially when I feel so strongly about something.
I feel one of the most important sections of the observation made by Adam Penna is when he writes, “Essay = to try; revision = to re-see; research = to look again.” When it comes to writing efficiently it is necessary that you revise, and ultimately improve your writing as you begin to review what you have written. For me, Penna uses an essay to symbolize the final product that you have written and then revised. When he says essay=to try, I feel he is stating that a lot of effort has to be put into your writing if you want it to be successful, and in turn you need to try to learn from your mistakes and continue to make your writing better. While revision = re-see may be self-explanatory, research = to look again may play a huge role in anyone’s writing process. I feel that in order to fully develop a story you have to cover all angles of any issue. By saying look again, it states that there may be something you missed initially, and be reviewing your work you may be able to develop something you hadn’t seen before.
During the course of developing my own story I feel that there has been a lot of what Penna sees as revision and research. Constantly, when I have stopped and took a closer look at what I have written, I have felt that it either hasn’t been developed enough or didn’t flow as fluently as I have wanted. Ultimately I have been able to change things around, and improve any drafts I had previously had been working on.
I think that Penna's observation is talking exactly about what my problem is. I'm not paying attention to what I write at all. Once I finished my essays or stories I am so pleased, that I managed to put the words together, that I could not care less if those are the right words.
I realized that while it my own language I love to play with my pieces of writing (re-writing sentences, finding better ways to express what I want to say) and always take my time with it, when I write in English I just want to kind of have it done and over with...
My problem is also not only that I am not careful with what I write, but I don't care how I speak either. For both of those I use the same rule: if you speak fast enough maybe they would not catch your mistakes on time.
I decided that my goal for Advanced Literature of Journalism will be revising, researching and slowing down.
I think this little blurb is inspiring. Like persevere! You can do it! Keep writing, even if it sounds like shit! Work to improve!
Well actually, that's what I hear when I write, and these little mind mantras, while annoying, do help. Writing is re-writing, and writing is listening to yourself, which I think is Pena's main point.
In terms of class, as young, ambitious writers, we are looking to improve, to believe in our voices, to write something for someone to give a damn. We can't do this overnight, its a long haul until that last sentence. But if we care enough and endlessly, we will work on this slow process to improve ourselves and educate and inspire others. I think that relates directly to this poem.
Penna seems to be saying that, to be a good writer, one has to "listen to oneself talk"--to do a sort of writing feedback, to view one's work through objective eyes. If you do this, Penna suggests, you come to the "realization that [you] haven't been paying very close attention to what [you] say." Revisions--or "re-seeing" your work--is a prime way of doing this, seeing the work again as though it were someone else's.
On another level, listening to your work means actually reading your work out loud to yourself. This improves many of the 'mechanical errors' that I find in my work, because I actually hear how my piece will sound in other's ears. The errors and irregularities that I would normally read over become apparent and my writing improves as a whole.
This semester, I've begun to learn to both slow down my writing process and revise out loud. Since care=time, time also = care. The more time I spend on the diction in a sentence, or even of a single word, the more care I have put into it, and the better it will be. Reading out loud has also helped greatly. I've noticed that many of the "mechanical irregularities" are smoothed out when this is done. If something you're writing doesn't sound good when its read out loud, then it won't sound good when its read in the quite of someone else's skull.
What I found most interesting about Penna's advice is that "caring=talent." I know we're supposed to stop having fear and be confident in our writing. However, I continue to question my "talent". It is interesting to think that the more I care about a piece and nurture it, that I will have talent. I have always assumed talent is inherent, and for some it might be, but it is interesting to think that caring about my writing and working to make it the best it can be is talent in and of itself.
Also, I like the part about writing being a way to "listen to oneself talk." It seems as though I have gotten something different out of this than the others, but here goes. When I write, I often write about things that are of interest to me. I later learn after sharing with other people that sometimes the things I like to talk about aren't necessarily things other people want to read about. I think it's important to have a voice and that a writer should listen to themselves and incorporate that into their writing. However, I think it's also important to speak to the audience and not only one's own interests. It's nice to write for yourself, but it's also nice to have readers who enjoy your writing.
I agree that people don't often pay attention. It is much easier to turn a blind eye or even daze off rather than thinking about our surroundings and what we can do to improve them. It is hard when there are so many things going on, as well as so many things that require our attention. I feel that Penna wants us to be able to focus on one thing at a time in order to give it our full attention. Only then it seems we will be able to truly produce a great piece of writing.
His equation at the end, care=talent, threw me off a bit. Penna didn't make any comment about talent previously and it didn't seem to apply at first. He made it seem as if you didn't need any to succeed. All in all, I am not surprised because talent is crucial although it can be developed over time.
As a response to what Tiffany said, I don't think that talent is something that's entirely inherent. I think that people have a certain amount of talent or perhaps potential. It takes years of refinement and work to make that into something. Part of having talent in writing may be a disposition that you're born with but it's at least equal parts determination and refinement.
I find the notion of looking close at something to be very close to my own approach to writing. Very early on I realized I had basic writing skills that people around me didn't. Someone asked me why this was and I was forced to give it some thought. After a while I realized that it came from my time spent reading. I read a lot. And, more importantly, when I was reading I was paying attention to the way others wrote. I realized that the most important skill for a writer is the ability to break down what other writers do. If you can figure that out then you can start building the tools for yourself to use in your writing. There were a lot of times where I would sit down to write and realize that I was using the voice of whoever the most recent author I was reading was. It took a very long time to start speaking in a voice that sounded like my own. I think it's normal and healthy to do that in writing though. You see what others do, you keep what you can use and discard the rest.
I have read Penna’s passage over several times now. The one thing I feel we all are doing in this class is listening to ourselves talk. Have we all been paying attention to what we are saying? I like this line from Penna: “Usually, the consequence, for those who are willing to listen, is the realization that they haven't been paying close attention to what they say.” I think people often forget to listen to what they are saying. It is a challenge I think every writer has to face. Soon I realized, while at New Paltz, that I don’t revise my writing enough. This is something I have been working to improve. Still, I often will only write the first draft of a poem — only doing minor tweaks as I re-read it. There just seems to be some part of me that feels the initial writing is the most pure. In reality it might be the most diluted, because there are imperfections that build up as it gets rushed through the pipes of my mind. After the creative juice is produced I think it needs to be purified to reach its true form. As Penna cited learning from his mentor, “care = talent,” which is an important equation to remember. Without care, there is nothing but the sludge of the mind.
I never checked my writing when I was in high school, and even in my first couple of years of college. I, like most everyone when they’re young, thought I knew it all. Shock of all shocks, I didn’t, I don’t and I never will. But I thought that myyy writing could never be something bad, it could never be reworked into something more beautiful, more intelligent and all around better than it was when first it came from my brain.
Like Liz, I would write down whatever came to mind, usually under pressure of it being due the next morning. I would print it out, put my Hancock on it and hand it in. I did well, everyone seemed to enjoy my writing, but in looking back on many of those pieces, I don’t know why a lot of them flew. Maybe they didn’t expect much from students and perhaps it speaks to the level of educators I had, who knows! Either way, this slap-dash way of writing worked for awhile, until I began really listening to what I was saying. It was, as Penna writes, a realization that I hadn’t been paying close enough attention. Thoughts were sometimes jumbled, repetitive and all around craptastic. I wasn’t saying what I really wanted to be saying, and I wasn’t thinking far enough outside of the box. I had worked out the kinks of grammar, was a spelling champ, but the stories weren’t all that they could be. I was doing what was asked, nothing more.
In short, I didn’t care then as much as I do now. And it shows. My talent has changed more in the past year than in the 21 before it, and it is because I have taken the time to care, the time to try, re-see and research. Perhaps I’ll never be at a Tom Robbins level, pouring over every word, sometimes one for days until it fits the sentence perfectly. But at least I can say now, at this stage in my ever-changing talent, that I take more time to craft than I did last year, and perhaps less than I will in another year.
Oh my, this describes me in a nutshell. I know that my biggest problem is making things clear, and that this often stems from not paying close attention to my work. I particularly liked when Penna stated "Once they begin paying attention inevitably many of the mechanical irregularities improve." It also seems he has an interesting technique as far as "redefining" writing for students. I know that I still have many old habits,routines, and ideas in my writing left over from high school where I would write with my eyes closed and use a formula. A need to see writing in a different, more important way is essential to bringing making your writing more clear and profound.
I remember I read an essay by George Orwell called "Politics and the English Language" (http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm) which dealt with this similar subject. Essentially Orwell talked about cliches, over-writing, pretentiousness, as well as a host of other examples which made the writing unclear. He's is really talking about the precursor to how governments would use words interchangeably and loosely to help redefine something to their own advantage (i.e. Bush Administration.) This is why paying attention to the details and caring about what you write are integral to being good at it.
The thought of Adam Penna to re-teach students the basics of writings is an extremely bright one. Back in my days of working the Writing Center at Dutchess Community College as a tutor, I noticed a lot of students hanging on to the writing methods they were force-fed in high school. In the college years, writing, in my opinion, takes on a much bigger role that can not be fulfilled within simple plot summary and generic "one reason, another reason" structure.
Within the confines of this Advanced Literature of Journalism class, the observations of Penna make a great deal of sense. After the getting-to-know-you phase of the initial Lit class, the time has come to really dig deep into our writing. Whereas Literature of Journalism was about creating the pinch-pot, this class is about crafting the Ottoman Vase. It's one thing to have the story and the path it's going to take; now, the focus should be about establishing a clean and uncluttered route for the path.
It's a good quote. I just Post-It'd it to my monitor. Thanks.
I'm going to jump on the bandwagon here and say that a quote that did stick out to me was "writing and the teaching of writing are opportunities to listen to oneself talk." I think that writing can help you find yourself, you learn what style you have and you develop your own process and can even discover things about yourself simply by writing about different subjects. I also liked what he said about talent, that it is essentially time, effort and attention to your writing and detail in order to create it. Yes some people are given a gift from the gods and can write miraculously well from the time they pop out of their mother's womb, but for most people "talent" takes work. It takes time and practice and a willingness to work. You don't become Hunter S. Thompson over night. I thought that was just inspiring and truthful, that if you really put the work and effort in, you can have "talent."
This excerpt really made me think about how we define the things that we do and what follows as implications of that. At times we fail to see what lies behind a word, and we fail to see its true meaning. In doing that, I think we tend to see a word as part of a process, action or thing - and nothing more. For example: "essay" is never thought of as "trying." I went ahead and looked up the etymology of the word, and found that it is derived from the Middle French "essai," which means to "trial or attempt." This shows how discovering what lies behind a word can really bring new meaning to it. Penna has surely thought about words and what lies behind them.
I think that doing what Penna does will be very helpful with writing. Writing, needless to say, is all about words, and furthermore, what lies behind the words. If we can understand that words that we apply to writing processes, and allow ourselves to see them on a different and deeper level, it will only be beneficial to writing in general.
I think my favorite parts of this is "care=talent."
It is obvious that anything you care about more turns out better. I see this all the time with the Oracle. Anytime I ask someone to go over their work and edit things, the end product ends up better. I've also found that subjects I care about more and that I write about more carefully enable me to produce my best work.
Writing has not always been something I wanted to do. I still don't know if I am entirely good at it. I feel like I lack the ability to write about anything with the same care and attention to detail as things that I consider important to me.
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