Good Morning. It’s me again, re-establishing my ritual of waking and writing which went to the wayside in a year of grief. The get up and go to research and write just came and went and thusly my writing has gotten downright rusty. (Please pass the oil!)
I mean it. I have attempted to put together a cohesive blog many times since my last one and what I have put out is not pretty, but there is a certain freedom in churning out crap or what Anne Lamont, in Bird by Bird, refers to as “shitty first drafts”. It is also what Peter Elbow refers to as low stakes writing in this article. (Thank you Vicki Vinton for this gem!)
It is just writing for the sake of writing, thinking and learning. I have lived with this knowing I will get through it and start to find my way back into my writer’s space. It is, after all, part of the process and I honor that over product. Right?
I preach the holy heck out of getting kids to write everyday, but now I have seen the frazzled fruits of my lazy labor as I struggle to find words and ideas that will come together into a piece that interests me. And yet we have no problem asking kids to write on demand without daily practice. We want them to perform and score perfectly on high stakes test, but we don’t take the time to let them practice. We don’t allow them the time to write without that pressure and those high stakes.
And it is in the time I take to practice that time becomes timeless. When caught in the zone of imagining what might be next, in putting words to paper time just simply disappears as we are in the “zone” and don’t bother us when we are there!!.
Ding! A text from my son, Zachary, “ I may have just written the best two paragraphs of my life.” What? (Is this REALLY from Zachary? Texting home from college about writing?)
Second text “We were told that we could write a short story about anything.” End text.
Ding, Third Text, “I am having so much fun with it.”
Let me see this fun! Yes, in these texts are expressions of sheer joy. (Who has been trampled by the big bad scary lion named rigor in education) So I asked him to send it to me and it was honestly one of the darkest things I have ever read of his. In it I could sense the intense sadness he experienced with his recent break up with his first girlfriend. It was riddled with long, drawn out sentences that were so effective in creating the suspense he was after. And after only 2 paragraphs I wanted to read more. Check it out!
Now mind you this is one of those RARE moments as parents and I was just so happy and excited for him. Even in High School, when given the reigns of choice this kid can just write. And he writes well. (In my humble opinion of course) And he does so without being an avid reader.
Zachary blows that myth of “writers have to be readers” right out of the water. Sometimes we make those sweeping general assumptions that just don’t hold true for every kid. Zach is one of those kids. I was one of those kids. I was not a reader when I was younger. You could find me out in the woods somewhere creating imaginary houses of sticks and stones or frolicking among the beaver dams or even in my room playing school. It was my sister who always had a book with her, preferably a Nancy Drew. In fact my only form of “reading” was my cherished collection of Ranger Ricks, a nature magazine with brilliant photographs that I could fawn over for hours and stop in between to play a hide and seek game. I read short paragraphs, but did not have what we refer to as “reading stamina” today.
I believe there are other kinds of “reading”. Perhaps we are readers of the world. Could it be that my time spent in my imaginary worlds, pretending to be someone else and creating characters that I would “act out” in my homes made of stick and stone were fodder for future writing? Or are those acts of imagination a form of writing in their own right? If writing is about playing with words in worlds then perhaps it can also be done outside the pages of books. But do we even stop to consider or ask how our kids are thinking anymore?
Fast-forward to now and I am always reading several books at a time; one or two for work, a novel and even a dose of daily poetry. You see we hold all of these beliefs to be true, but never stop to honor what each person IS doing!! And in the midst of all of this it takes so much NOT to get caught up in it. Walk away from the madness. Walk away!
Photo Credit:pelicanbookstore.com
And of course there is response. Zachary texted because he wanted some kind of feedback. I blog to ignite feedback and start conversations. We write with purpose if we know there is an audience or even a potential audience.
Photo Credit: www.cindyhayen.com
And in all of this there is a sense of honoring the individual; honoring the process or even more deeply, trusting and enjoying the process. Believing that it will take us where we want or need to go. One word at a time we discover things we never knew we were thinking or feelings who show up in disguise. Writing, for me, is a joyful and heady experience that is somewhat different every time.. On my shelves are books “on writing” and while I love reading those, ultimately I enjoy being an observer of my own process and seeing how totally me it really is. There is no one way to BE a writer. It just is. It just means you write. If you write therefore you are a writer. High Stakes, myths and expectations be damned! Let them write!
Conversation Education 