"The Importance of Writing Badly" Ballenger
Strong personal voice and good prose hooked me from the beginning of Ballenger's "The Importance of Writing Badly." The line that best encapsulates the piece in its entirety is, "It is more important to allow students to first experience how language can be a vehicle for discovering how they see the world." Ballenger makes an excellent point, how are we supposed to know what we want to say if we are too concerned with how to say it? I am guilty of this, the perfect example. I don't allow myself to write badly and therefore I am driven to silence. I particularly liked the anecdote about Mrs. O'Neill because it helped me understand the author. Even a writer of eloquent prose was there once, too. The piece encourages me it doesn't have to be that way.
"Writing as a Practice" GoldbergThe early comparison of sports to writing is compelling, the line "You don't wait around for inspiration and a deep desire to run" is a brilliantly subtle way analogize because in my mind "run" can be replaced with "writing" and the meaning of the sentence remains the same. Goldberg as a similar message to Ballenger, that we need to give ourselves freedom to venture past the normal limits of writing for school or work. A line that I resonate with is writing practice is learning to "trust your own mind and body; to grow patient and non-aggressive" because I can relate to it (Goldberg, 12). My best writing comes when I am not expecting a masterpiece or obsessing over eloquent language, but rather when I give myself the space to write outside the margins.
"Writing the Australian Crawl" Stafford
I find it interesting Stafford opens with the utterances of his six year old daughter and uses that to make his point about writing being like speaking, just as the talker "responds eagerly with his whole self...writing, like talk, can be easy, fast, and direct." (21). I agree, as writers we often forget writing is very much like speaking, it is an effective way to communicate ideas. Imagine thinking about what you want to say and then re-thinking how you could say it to make it sound eloquent every time you had a conversation with someone. Nothing would ever get done! My favorite line is "I do not have any commitments, just opportunities" because it makes the point that good writing comes from a good mindset (22).
"Write Before Writing" Murray
I appreciate how Murray describes the freedom in writing practice as prewriting because it puts a name to the writing process all the pieces touch on, and that is "between the moment a writer receives an idea or an assignment and the moment the first completed draft is done." (28). This is the time where we, as writers, can allow for mistakes, be patient with ourselves and allow creativity to flow. I never thought about how high school English classes teach writing in an almost militaristic way. We produced essays in a single class period, turned them in, and never workshopped.
Questions for my classmates are, have you ever had a teacher who was too eager to mark your paper in red? Do you feel like writing is a skill that needs daily practice? Have you ever felt silenced or intimidated by the need to write perfectly?
Hi Addie,
ReplyDeleteGreat questions, and of course you already have my answer to some of them. You quote Goldberg about how writing practice involves that we trust "both mind and body," and I would love to hear you (and others) weigh in on the ways that writing involves the body. This is clearly a theme in Goldberg's work, and I certainly like the idea that we bring our whole selves to writing when it's going well, but I'm not sure I understand the ways in which that implicates the body. How do you understand that?
I think a lot about the practice of writing every day. Last year someone added me to a Facebook group dedicated to writing micropoetry and uploading it once a day, and to me this seemed like a huge & impossible task. I guess it's up to the individual, because while some people find writing every day to be helpful or productive, I tend to just stew/overthink every day and write every once in a while. Now that I'm putting words to my process, though, it seems less effective than just writing every day. Maybe if I could get myself to do that, I could skip the stewing part, haha.
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ReplyDeleteElise, that group sounds really fun in theory but if I was in it I would feel the same way. I totally get the stewing part and that's why I like the idea of not creating too high expectations for oneself at first. Dr. Ballenger, to answer your question about the physical aspect of involving our whole being in the writing process, Goldberg's idea of giving oneself permission and "psychological freedom" inspires me to allow myself the mistakes necessary for creativity (p 12). I can't expect to write a master piece before I feel something, until I write until I know what I want to say. I also conceptualize writing involved in the body as findings ones voice in writing, with matching what they want to say with how they say it. I also think to pathos in Aristotle's theory of persuasion, the emotions that can guide an audience to Longinus' notion of the sublime, when they are so moved they feel physical sensations. Perhaps I think of it this way because I am especially interested in rhetorical theory and how ideas can be passionately expressed through writing and speaking and how they can be used together to ignite the passions, logic, and credibility necessary to create any kind of change.
ReplyDeleteAddie,
ReplyDeleteI think we've all had that teacher who was pen heavy and eager to show us our faults. Sometimes I'm not sure that's bad. I happen to do better under criticism, I had a teacher in high school who once handed me a paper back and told me it was "Utter and complete shit and I should be ashamed of myself since I could do better." After the initial shock, and teenage anger, I realized he was right. The paper wasn't my best work, and his harsh judgment and criticism made me want to work harder to live up to the expectations he had of me. I don't like feeling like I have to DO anything daily, especially something like writing because it kills the enjoyment factor for me and I'm the kind of person that if I'm not enjoying what I'm writing, my motivation factor and energy and investment time drops significantly. I think we all feel a little intimidated by the need to write perfectly, for me it's finding the perfect ending. I don't have that intimidation until I reach the point where I'm trying to tie things together neatly.