Ashley McNabb: Blogger (evidently) and Writer

This begins the last post I will ever write on my Writing Process blog - or on any UMW blog. Ever. Forgive me; I’m beginning to show the symptoms of college nostalgia and all of the “yikes-I’m-graduating-forever” feelings. However, unless I’m mistaken, I will have this blog…indefinitely? I guess it’s possible it will be deleted when my UMW email account is deleted or something like that, but if not, this is mine. I would never consider myself a blogger - I rarely even make any type of post on facebook - but I kind of like this blog. It bleeds/shouts/envelopes/encompasses me, and the cool thing is that I didn’t have to kill myself with work to have this semester worth of reflection. Just a post here, a reading response there, all my papers - it was totally do-able. And I mean, I’m not going to lie, initially it didn’t mean much to me. But as I’ve been forced to do some housekeeping on it and been given the opportunity to look at everyone else’s, I value this thing more and more. 

I’ve never been much of a journaler or anything like that, so I’m really glad we didn’t have to write on here routinely; for some reason I would have automatically dreaded it. However, I’m glad I have been forced to contribute. In retrospect, I think I would be even more tickled right now if we’d been given some kind of casual, fun freewriting prompts or assignments weekly or biweekly where we muse on a topic of our choice or respond to something playful - just so that each of us would have more of our own writing preserved. I also think the whole eportfolio is a great idea - to have some sort of central database to post all papers that a student writes (for all classes) and organize them online. An eternally accessible and growing portfolio where all you need is a URL. Now I kind of want to make a separate blog for all my writing. Maybe I will.

 It doesn’t bother me that other people can or may or will read my blog. In fact, I never even considered this until Dr. Allen mentioned it. (Maybe this is what she means by not considering one’s audience?) In fact, it would only tickle me more to have others read my blog and comment on what I’ve said because then it would perhaps prompt discussion - further the ongoing conversation about various topics, which of course is very important (I’ve definitely learned that from being an English major).

I mentioned that I’ve never been much for keeping a journal, but it just occurred to me that maybe my experience in this class (and others) and with blogs in general will change that a little. For example, last night at Borders I found this adorable journal - plain, simple, brown, flimsy - for like three bucks, and I thought to myself, “This summer when I’m at training or this fall when I start teaching, I’m sure I will want to chronicle my experiences, both shocking and rewarding, or at least write down things that I learn and want to remember.” (Or something like that…) Anyway, I bought it with hopes that I will be somewhat faithful with a journal that will serve a specific purpose: chart the growth of teacher Ashley. So maybe this time next year I will be able to boast a plain, simple, brown, flimsy journal filled to the brim with my writing! I’ll let you know.

One thing that I wished I could see on everyone’s blog was a final reflection, and I know that is kind of what I’m doing right now (and everyone will do), but I wanted to see a self-reflection or a reflection on everyone’s writing/blog as I read the blogs. I guess it would have been great if we had posted a final reflection on the progression/improvement of our own writing throughout the course of the semester, perhaps as exhibited on the blog, so that everyone else could know if we were happy with where we were or if we were still working or if we needed more advice, etc. I think I feel this way because for some people, I noticed huge improvements or significant alterations, and I wanted to read them saying, “Yes! I’ve got it!” or something triumphant to conclude their semester. Maybe if I read the blogs in a week, I’ll see that.

 Goodbye forever! I’ll never forget this class.

A Class of Our Own

Ah, the daunting and consuming task of viewing and reading each of my classmates’ blogs. It consumes my time and energy, but it gives me something as well - finality. A sense of completion. This course - the course where we all learned just how valuable and debatable writing can be - has come to a close, but our blogs prove that we’ve learned something, anything. Seeing everyone’s blog evolve from musings on various authors to three polished and cherished essays prompts a sense of professionalism to me; I sense that we are published. No longer do I read my peers’ work searching for gaps or considering their concerns and hoping to contribute a piece of advice that will help them revise once more. In fact, I can’t even imagining positing suggestions at this point; I am reading published work.

This sense of permanence and finality toward the blogs comes from several sources, I believe. Firstly, that we will never again meet as a class. Secondly, that many of us will never alter our posts - they will exist in this form for… as long as our blogs exist. Thirdly, they are that good. I mean, we were always writers, but now, I feel that even more so, we are writers. Each of us has grown and improved this semester so that we are writers whose work can be read and appreciated, whose selves can be studied for our writing processes, and whose musings as well as finalized pieces can be confidently and beautifully displayed in a personalized blog form of our choice.

The coolest thing about seeing everyone’s blog is the sense of improvement that I bursts from a chronological reading of a blog (starting at the bottom and reading up to the top). I really get the sense that many of us have matured as writers and as people able to reflect critically on ourselves and on other writers. For example, Ashley G’s blog emits constantly increasing confidence as she progresses through the semester. Her early posts as well as her first paper sound somewhat worried and shy, as if she didn’t know what to write or if what she was writing was correct. However, by her latest posts (including her third paper), I wouldn’t even know the same person was writing. She communicates more confidently, more directly, and more firmly, and I loved seeing that progression.

The greatest type of improvement I was able to read was evident in the final revisions of papers that I had read during the semester as part of our workshops. I found myself going straight to the essays that I remembered reading to see what changes the author had made, how s/he received our comments, and what magic s/he was able to work in their final revision. In particular, revisions of Kelley’s and Jennifer’s memoirs stood out to me as incredible revisions. Thanks to the opportunity for a second (or third, fourth, and fifth) opinion or viewpoint on the piece, Jennifer was able to clarify her explanation of experiences in South Africa so that her stories were even more profound, and the reader appreciated the role of her journal to the essence of her experience. The stakes of Kelley’s memoir and the intensity of her passion were both amplified in her inclusion of a second, alternate Salutatorian speech. When someone suggested that to her, I was not sure how it would read because I liked the ultimate silencing of Kelley’s voice in her paper, symbolic of how she was silenced as Salutatorian. However, the alternate speech made Kelley’s experience and investment clearer and more relatable in a way that I had not imagined. I think they would both agree with me that the workshops presented invaluable insight on our papers that we might have never considered without that opportunity.

Finally, since our blogs represent our evolution as writers over a four-month period, the blog as a whole invites the reader to view the whole writer and gives a more intimate glimpse into each writer’s process. We read their final works, including reflections on their own writing pasts and presents as well as their beliefs relative to other writers. We read their musings. We read their frustrations, their aspirations, their passion. We get this whole picture of him or her, as a writer, in a way that you just can’t by reading one piece or even having a discussion with someone. It’s invaluable, this blog thing.

 It’s been real, everybody. Keep writing.

Paper Three

Writing with a Teacher, a.k.a. Me

One thing that I have concluded from all of the ideas we’ve explored and all of the writers that I have been exposed to this semester is this: writing should have value. What I write should mean something to me and help me grow as a writer and as a thinker. As a second semester senior, this paper constitutes one of the last academic papers, or paper in general, that I will write for awhile. I am not bound for graduate school, not immediately anyway; I have secured a position teaching secondary English in low-income, under-resourced classrooms through Teach for America, and I couldn’t be more excited. Because of this writing will soon mean more and less to me. Less because I won’t focus my time directly on discovering the nuances of what constitutes “good” writing or the role academic discourse should play in an undergraduate’s study. More because I will be charged with the responsibility of teaching young people to write, and I will have to figure out what that means. Therefore, as I sit here counting the days until my college graduation and knowing that a classroom of potentially eager yet possibly unmotivated and arguably inexperienced writers and readers awaits me in the fall, I choose to write about just that: what conclusions from this semester will have value in the high-school English classroom, especially one where, according to Teach for America’s research, the majority of my students will be three grade levels behind where they should be. My ninth graders would read like eleven-year-olds, or my seniors would read like fifteen-year-olds. I will want to teach them everything. Everything. But what will they be able to learn?

I learned a lot about writing when I was in high school myself. I learned how to address document-based questions; I learned a sentence-by-sentence formula on how to construct a style analysis essay; I even tried some poetry and drama. I thought I had writing down. However, all of that seems insignificant compared to what I’ve learned in college. Now, I’m convinced I actually know what I’m doing and that back then, I didn’t. Now, I can write pieces that have value to me and of which I am proud. I can do things like construct an argument worthy of a sixteen-page seminar paper and write with voice. But it has taken me three years of college, four years of high-school, and countless professionals in both environments to get me here. And now I want to enter the teaching arena and equip my students with the same zeal and confidence in writing that I possess, but I’m pretty sure that’s more easily said than done. The bottom line is that I’m excited about teaching literature to these under-privileged yet no-less-capable students, but I’m crawling out of my skin to teach them the skill of writing and how valuable it can be for them. I want to teach them how to write pieces that make them proud, to want to improve their writing and write for themselves, not just to complete an assignment.

Some of the authors we have read this semester address the art of teaching writing. Some do not. Our focus this semester has not necessarily been on teaching writing, and when we have dappled with this, it has been in the context of the undergraduate classroom. However, some concepts or theories from authors such as Bartholomae and Corbett are applicable to the less-experienced population of writers, and they have caused me to understand my role as an aspiring teacher more clearly. I can’t say that I have a playbook yet of things that I want to do in my classroom and exercises I want to utilize. However, thanks to my writing professors over the years and the scholars we’ve studied this semester, I have a firmer understanding of my upcoming duties and opportunities.

While not one of his main points, Bartholomae, in his “Writing with Teachers : A Conversation with Peter Elbow,” proposes an idea that I really believe in and mean to enforce in the classroom. As he works toward a conclusion in the end of the article, he states that  “Students should master the figures and forms, learn to produce an elegant, convincing, even professional quality narrative before learning its critique and imagining its undoing” (70). Within the context of his prioritizing academic discourse with self-motivated writing, he makes the claim that students should be well-informed of, even able to practice, something before they criticize it or try to alter it. When I read this and I consider its role in the high-school classroom, I come to the conclusion that students should learn how to write by the widely-accepted standards of “good writing” before they break the rules. In essence, students should go through the processes of learning how to write, even though they will one day evolve their own writing style. To me, Bartholomae’s statement says that in order to construct your own writing, you must first learn the basics of how to do it in general. Play by the rules, then figure out how you can skillfully break them.

I think this is extremely important because young writers need guidance, and in an under-resourced environment where students are unmotivated and lagging behind in their achievements, I can’t say, “Write! Use your voice, and just write you!” I would get under-developed, simplistic, and unoriginal pieces from the majority of my students because I would not have guided them. To a group of students first being exposed to the world of mature writing, I need to teach them how. To me, this means several things. It means how to construct an argument; so many students, even my college peers, do not realize that a paper, an essay, or a piece of writing with merit must have a developed, defendable thesis - it must make an argument. Corbett himself explains in his “The Rites of Writing” how transformative a moment it was when he realized the goal of writing this way.

“I cannot adequately convey how excited I was when I made the rather commonplace discovery that the act of communication involved someone saying something to someone else for some purpose. … I came to realize that writing was more than just the sequence of sentences that I scribbled on a blank sheet of paper. It was a complex of elements that had to be brought into some kind of harmony.” (92)

Such an epiphany for Corbett led to a better understanding of his job as both writer and teacher, but I think it has great value to those who will be student writers. As soon as I assign the first writing assignment to my class, whether it is a journal entry, a personal essay, or an essay on Macbeth, I will make it clear to them how to develop a thesis and proceed with an argument.

This, I realize, opens the door for speculation on teaching, nay forcing, a student to write in a specific format or utilize a certain form of organization. However, as Corbett also specifies, “There are no absolute do’s and don’ts about the writing process. What works well for one writer may not work at all for the next writer” (94). Therefore, I would be wary about requiring the “five-paragraph essay” or teaching a group of students the exact way to formulate an essay. I can’t see myself forcing a certain structure or “taking points” off for not adhering to a certain style. However, I do think that there is something to be said for providing clear suggestions and models for students when beginning their experiences with writing. When I was in high school, my teachers would guide us through theses, introductions, and conclusions, constructing them as a class before letting us attempt it by ourselves. We could read an example, say what we like or didn’t like, and list ways to make it stronger. Many times, we didn’t know how to make it stronger, and our teacher was there to give us much appreciated advice. It is this type of guidance that provides a “here is a piece of good writing” model while not saying, “Write like this.” It is so important that the students learn their own ways to write by receiving guidance like this so that they can recognize strong writing from weak writing and know how to add strength to their own weak writing. Then, when they want to break out of the confines of conventional writing, they know how to do so effectively.

More on a theoretical note, I have taken another of Bartholomae’s explications to heart and want to make sure that my students feel like authors. To be an author is to feel investment and pride in one’s work, and each student has the right to feel this way.

“I think it is possible to say that many students will not feel the pleasure or power of authorship unless we make that role available. Without our classes, students will probably not have the pleasure or the power of believing they are the figure that they have seen in pieces they have read: the figure who is seeing the world for the first time, naming it, making their thoughts the center of the world, feeling the power of their own sensibilities. This has been true for teachers in the Writing Projects, it will be true in our classes. Unless we produce this effect in our classroom, students will not be Authors.” (69)

Again, Bartholomae is referencing the undergraduate classroom and the value of authorship therein, but the more I think about it, the more I believe this is just as important in lower-level writing and learning environments. I want to ensure that my students become personally invested in their writing; they have a right to love their writing, and I want to get them to the place where that is the case. This will involve the provision of the proper tools and information so that each of them can learn how he or she writes best and communicates most effectively, but the ultimate authorial decisions and responsibilities will always lay with the writer. I want them to feel the weight of that responsibility and in turn feel the glow of success and triumph upon reaching a satisfactory draft. I want them to want to share their work. I want them to want to create.

Obviously, I don’t know what exercises and what exact plans it will take for me to stimulate such learning in my students in the upcoming years. Teach for America provides an intensive summer training program and a network of support from current teachers, and I hope to learn teaching techniques from these sources as well as use ideas of my own that I imagine along the way. However, I know my goals, and despite the ongoing debate about what should be taught about writing, I feel that I have a solid understanding of what can benefit students at the beginner level of writing. Truth is, I don’t think I’ll know what to expect of these kids until I meet them. But I will always set the bar high for them, especially now after this class.

Miller response

Miller presents a perspective on the self in relation to the self’s own production of text that we (or I, at least) have not considered yet. She suggests that our writing creates us, not exclusively the other way around. By this token, writing not only becomes very separate from the self, it almost takes a higher position as creator. Obviously, we create our writing, but I guess Miller has discovered that what we’ve written begins to define us, and as others read it, it becomes an addition of us. Therefore, the more you write, the more YOU there is - the more you have to be accountable for, and the more people can see of you. I think this makes sense, but I’m not sure if I agree with (or perhaps I’m not sure if I follow) her entire argument; for me, the writer/author is still in control, and although s/he is not always there to clarify or interpret his/her work, it all goes back to him/her. For me, the text becomes separate from the self, but there is always that belly button where the essential connection used to be.

Miller’s “two principles about writing” are key to mindset: one, “It is only writing; it can be changed or I can write something else,” and two, “I only wrote it. Let other people decide if it is any good.” Her reductive approach to writing seems to contradict much of what we have discussed this semester - that writing is this elevated act, a meaningful and valuable addition to one’s life and potentially to one’s environment. However, perhaps what she says, albeit pretty unconfident, can be refreshing. It certainly removes responsibility from the author. If the writing is bad, trash it: this is a truth, but it is the right approach? The best way to think about your writing? And the second - “I only wrote it.” That begs sarcasm. To me, that says “I only poured myself onto the page and bared my soul/opinion/voice to you,” not “Meh, I only wrote it.” Miller seems to want to relieve the author of the fear of rejection and the pain of feeling inferior, and to me, that is not a writer. A writer is bold and wants to share. At the end of this piece, I imagine Miller a petite, unintimidating woman (per her own description of herself) cowered in a dark room, writing, then printing a few pages, handing it to an editor, and running. I hate an undue sense of entitlement, but this is taking the opposite too far. I think she needs to grow a pair and stand for something - ideally, writing.

Hashimoto response

If you’ve read the article at all, you see that it’s clear Hashimoto enters into a bit of a confrontation with Elbow concerning the all-importance and necessity of voice in a student’s writing. While Elbow has this ever-evolving relationship with voice wherein he knows it is important yet cannot seem to give it a universal definition or relevance, we get the impression that he is the number one fan and advocate of voice and that he would preach its value for eternity. Hashimoto is skeptical. He appreciates voice, but he doesn’t think it’s necessary in every piece of writing or for every writer. In this article, he explores where it is or isn’t appropriate or valuable, and he comes to some rough conclusions. One thing that particularly caught my attention was his speculation about voice and the writer’s goal; he seems to say that voice finds its place in a work depending on what the goal of the piece is. If the goal of the piece is to reflect self or to entertain, then yes, voice would be extremely helpful and necessary. If the goal of the piece is to inform, analyze, or even argue, that’s where it gets fuzzy and highly debatable. Where Elbow would probably say that even these pieces could profit from the depth of voice, Hashimoto argues that students don’t want to voice themselves; they want to inform, analyze, or argue and be done. He doesn’t necessarily think there is a place for voice in these pieces because its unconventional, and things are fine the way they are - academic and straightforward. I wonder how Hashimoto would classify his argument here in this essay? I’d say there are definite signs of voice here… did he mean for that to happen? Or this proof that an academic argument can be saturated in the author’s voice?

Memoir

The College Tragedy

I would like to share with you a very enlightening, eye-opening, and extremely transformative moment in my writing career. Ideally, such a “pivotal moment” in one’s writing life would have a positive impact; it would improve one’s writing for the better. This is not one of those moments. This moment did not make me smile. This moment did not induce a surge of adrenaline as I grew as a writer. This moment furrowed my brow and disgusted me until finally I nodded my head in defeat and accepted the conclusion that it brought. Probably like most, this moment wasn’t a smack you in the face, run-over by a truck, BOOM, revelation moment. Well, it kind of was - there was a build-up that led to such a moment, and then a period of reflection followed that increased the impact of the moment.

It began the second semester of my sophomore year in college - not that long ago - when I was taking a literature class with a very stubborn and aggressively-minded professor; we’ll call him Dr. Hamilton. About halfway through the semester, Dr. Hamilton assigned a final paper and asked if we had any questions about the assignment. One brave girl raised her hand and asked the usual question that of course we were all on the edge of our seats wondering: “Can we use ‘I?’”  He resounded with an emphatic, “No, of course you cannot use ‘I’ because this is not your opinion; it’s an academically researched argument! In fact,” he continued, “let me just take a minute to tell you what I better not see in your papers.” And with that, he was off.

He explained that he would not accept papers that included certain explanatory words (unfortunately I cannot remember any of them; I think blocked some of this atrocious experience out of my memory), that the definition of a paragraph was not a puny four-sentence structure - it required at least eight sentences, and that he did read drafts prior to the due date, but for us to beware because if he didn’t like what we’d written he would just throw it away. In fact, he fondly recalled an occasion where he had the opportunity to wad one student’s paper into a ball and play basketball in this student’s presence and another occasion where he physically made the student turn her paper into a paper airplane and successfully land it in the trash bin. My reaction to all of this information was horror and disgust, naturally, but I quickly concluded that at least he warned us about his demands, however restricting they may be. I guess I also didn’t think that Hamilton’s ridiculous rules and practices would affect me; as a nineteen-year-old college student, I possessed the typical “I’m invincible; that will never happen to me,” mindset, and I felt that clearly my writing was solid enough that he couldn’t possibly find the need to trash it. I was quite wrong.

By the end of the semester when this paper was due, I was up to my eyeballs in papers, projects, and presentations. Although I’d been researching the topic some, I didn’t have the chance to begin writing this paper until two days before its due date, and as soon as I had a draft, I scheduled to meet with Hamilton to get his feedback. Uncomfortable and inevitably a little nervous, I sat down in his office, handed him my seven-page draft, and looked at him. He cleared his throat, grabbed a red pen, and began. Dr. Hamilton looked at my first page for maybe three seconds, drew hasty, slashed lines under a few of my sentences, and turned the page. The second page received a two-second glance and a few red lines. The third page got another two seconds and a huge “X” through one of its paragraphs, and then he closed my paper and looked at me. “Here’s your problem,” he said.

Now comes “the moment.” “Whoa, slow down, buddy!” I thought. He didn’t even read my paper! He hadn’t given a single page more than a few seconds; he clearly didn’t finish reading it; how on EARTH could he know what my problem was?! Out of courtesy and respect for his inherent if not regrettable authority as my professor and the ultimate determiner of my grade, I picked my jaw up off of the ground and shook the mist of anger and disbelief out of my head so that I could attempt to listen to his diagnosis. He explained to me that my thesis was fuzzy and my supporting evidence was not organized properly. In order to “fix” this paper, I needed to write a clear introduction of about eight sentences so that each sentence of said introduction correlated almost identically to the first sentences of each of my body paragraphs. Then these paragraphs should simply, concisely discuss and provide quotations supporting each first sentence, and each paragraph needed at least eight, preferably ten sentences. If I followed this method, I should have a solid paper in no time.

Dr. Hamilton must have noted my growing frustration and feeling of helplessness at his advice. He extended the deadline for me by a few hours and agreed to meet with me at eight the next morning to look over my second draft, and he attempted to comfort me by saying that with students who came to him two, three, or even four times to present drafts, he rarely even read their final papers. He automatically gave them A’s because he knew the effort they’d put in, and he had read the paper so many times at that point that he didn’t need to read it a final time.

I left that room not knowing what to think. Should I be outraged that he should make such a harsh assessment of my work without completely reading it? Should I be insulted that he didn’t appreciate my research and effort so far - that he only wanted what he deemed the acceptable formula for writing a paper? Or should I just be thankful that I now had the step-by-step method by which I would receive an A on this paper? Although I was disturbed - extremely disturbed - I didn’t have much time to host an inner debate on this moral dilemma. I did what I had to do; I revised and rewrote that paper until five o’clock in the morning, slept for a little less than three hours, and then rolled out of bed to meet him at his office at eight. He gave me more comments; I revised again and turned in the paper later that afternoon, and I ended up getting an A on it. I’ll never know if he actually ever read the thing. I guess I could ask him, but at this point, I avoid any interaction with him, if possible.

Since this class, I have been forced to reflect upon this experience. Although I hoped to forget it and never encounter anything like it again, subsequent classes with subsequent professors have confirmed to me that the following is true: in college, you are not always free to write with your pure, unadulterated voice or style - you must figure out what your professor wants and you must cater to it. That’s how you get an A. It hasn’t been until this semester that I’ve fully realized this fact and witnessed the magnitude of its truth. Of course, we’ve been studying Elbow and all of these writers who champion both the prerogative and the responsibility of the writer to discover and exercise his or her voice in his or her writing, and we’ve been encouraged to write with our voices in all of our academic writing for every class. The truth is that this isn’t always appreciated. Some professors might find it entertaining, refreshing, and even unique. But others find it inappropriate and irrelevant. They know what kind of writing they want to read, and if you want to succeed in their class, that’s something you better figure out too.

The trick is trial and error - presenting your work to a professor and receiving their reactions, learning what they like and dislike, and then, if necessary, reworking your writing to fit this. Sometimes I present a piece of work, a piece constructed through my voice, to a professor and learn that they tolerate if not appreciate my originality. Others do not, and they aren’t afraid to express it. Besides Hamilton, I can think of several other examples in my three years of college where professors have required modification of my work. I know that one professor does not appreciate subtle humor or casual contemporary references when writing about eras in the past; she doesn’t like parenthesis either. I know that another professor doesn’t like rhetorical questions. One professor, a creative writing professor, would make suggestions regarding my poetry - suggestions that I appreciated but didn’t really agree with - and then stunt my grade, limiting me to a B or B+ at best, if I did not comply with his suggested changes. After each of these experiences, I have felt anger at the injustice of a professor not accepting or appreciating my style of work for what it is and requiring their own from me. But at this point, in my last semester of college, I’ve come to realize that many professors, like the rest of us, are selfish; in my papers, they want to see what they want to see, and if they don’t see it, I don’t get an A. So I better give it to them.

So I ponder this quandary. Perhaps this is the inevitable nature of grading papers: of course it’s going to be somewhat subjective. In fact, I found myself fighting the same urges to require certain styles or correct students if I thought of a better way to express a point when I was commenting on the freshman drafts earlier this semester. Whenever I felt that a sentence or an idea didn’t flow well, I would be tempted to tell the student how to fix it - how I would fix it. I fought that urge because I realize it’s not my place, but as learned and experienced writers and readers, many professors feel that it is their place and therefore demand all that they can or want from us as students.

Perhaps it’s all just an essential part of argument: knowing your audience. Is knowing how to reach and impact your audience the same thing as knowing what you have to do or how you have to write in order to get a good grade from a certain professor? If so, then this is just part of being an effective communicator and being smart. I’m not going to make jokes or speak jovially if I’m talking to someone who notoriously has no sense of humor. Likewise, maybe it would intrinsically be wise for me to cater my writing to the characteristics of each professor. Or maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe it’s fundamentally heinous for me to modify my writing, to sacrifice my freedom and ability to express myself in my writing, in order to receive a positive evaluation of my work. To do so, I would have to say to myself, “I know that this writing is not me, and it is not necessarily how or what I want to write, but this is the only way that I can guarantee myself a good grade.” I would have to bite the bullet and give my professors what they want.

My opinion on this debate is inconclusive; I’m still formulating how I feel about it, and I think I still will be for awhile yet. However for right now, I have decided to bite that bullet, albeit feeling defeated yet unmotivated to do otherwise. Yes, it does infuriate me that this is the way things are, and, in general, I can be known to stand up for a right just on principle. But with this, it’s different. I recognize that I am in college firstly to learn and secondly to succeed. I will learn regardless. Despite everything that these professors have put me through and the frustrations I experienced on their account, I have learned a lot about their subjects, about myself, about people, and about how I can personally embrace myself and my own writing while others do not. I separate this from succeeding. The way that the majority of Universities evaluate their students is through grade assessment, and in order to succeed, I have to get that good grade. In basketball, you succeed by putting the ball through the hoop more times than your opponent does. In college, you succeed by getting good grades from your professors, and if I know how to legally do that, I will.

The papers my professors assign to me serve only one purpose: for them to assess my writing. Their job requires that they evaluate my work, and the only way they know how may be by their own educated standards. However, once I’ve got that diploma that qualifies me to be an educated writer, I will have the right to produce writing with its own voice, not subject to shaping and reshaping by others who hold my academic success in their hands. Even now, I refuse to temper writing that I do for myself based on anyone else’s preferences, but when it comes to assigned work for a class, rebellion isn’t going to get me anywhere. Compliance is what they ask for, and compliance is what they’ll get. I’m not happy about it, but I don’t think the situation is going to change anytime soon.

Paper One

And I Owe It All to Humor 

I have been writing for more than fifteen years. That’s something I would like to brag about, but I guess I can’t - what twenty-year-old college student hasn’t? I’ve been writing sentences for fifteen years, book reports and summaries for about twelve years, and serious papers for, say, seven. Out of these most recently mentioned seven years - I’m not going to lie - I’ve been a paper-writing machine; my college prepatory high-school demanded high-quality writing and lots of it. I hated it, of course, and I didn’t do it by choice, but I’ve got to tell you, it did me a lot of good. Maybe this is something that I can brag about: I had to write so much in high-school, producing an essay a week as early as my tenth grade AP World History class, so that now I am very comfortable with the concept of necessary academic writing. I can attribute my current ease with writing simply to the fact that I’ve had to do an ungodly amount of it in the years since I turned fourteen.

That being said, I have some good news, and I have some bad news. The bad news is that, beyond the anxiety it spares me when assigned a paper, this ease means nothing to me. What kind of skill is that - that I can crank out an essay when I need to? I can crank it out, turn it in, my professor reads it, and I get a grade on it. That’s where it stops. No one else will ever read that essay unless perchance I particularly like it, revise it, and submit it as part of a writing portfolio in future situations. But besides that small improbability, my writing is worth nothing but a grade in a class. What a disgustingly anti-climactic conclusion to all my years of hard work.

The good news is that I have been consistently producing writing that I like for about six months - ever since I studied non-fiction creative writing with Dr. Rochelle last semester. Something happened to me in that class; up until very recently, I probably could not have pinpointed that something for you, but after having discussed Peter Elbow’s concept of “real voice,” I can confidently say that I have found my real voice, and the vehicle that helped me find it was humor and how I use it in my writing.

I had taken one class with Dr. Rochelle before last semester - an introductory course to creative writing - and I could tell that he was unimpressed with my writing endeavors in that class. I produced lifeless attempts at profound and serious fiction that remained buoyant just long enough to be read before sinking into failure. He pushed me to have a stronger voice, but I didn’t know how, and the course ended, leaving me without a single piece of writing of which I was proud. One year later, I entered his classroom again, this time a bit socially wiser and more academically experienced. I began to write a memoir wherein I naturally projected humor, only because the topic - my curse of notoriously attracting undesirable, socially awkward guys, a.k.a. creepers - pulled it out of me. Embittered and frustrated about my romantic misfortunes, I described these boys with an resentful, cynical tone, and the result was a very conversational voice sprinkled with humor. The humor thing was not new to my personality but new to my writing, and right away, Dr. Rochelle jumped on it and encouraged me to continue in that direction. “You write funny well,” he told me, and I couldn’t deny that I enjoyed doing so. It felt good to me, it sounded good to him, and my classmates all smiled, giggled, and playfully gasped upon hearing me describe one of my suitors named Steven.

“Physically, Steven stands at a medium height with greasy, mousy hair clumped in scalpy locks that hang in front of his crooked, clouded glasses. He is deathly pale, and although when he entered college he was of a somewhat normal weight, at the climax of our story he is a mere bag of bones, skin hanging from his skeleton as, to my horror, he brags that he can live by only eating one meal a day. Daily, he sports the same long khakis and a blue polo shirt, and when you see him scurrying across campus, he has strapped his blue backpack for dear life across his chest as a hiker would tighten his pack on an uphill climb. If you take pity on this bumbling disaster of a human and decide to greet him, you will be met first with an uneasy smile revealing mangled, spacey teeth and second with a squeaky and weak salutation. Steven’s voice never changed. As a result, he sounds like a constipated old woman in constant paranoia. If the grease of his hair did not tip you off, a few seconds more will reveal that Steven rarely bathes, as you inhale the air around him that reeks like stale saliva.”

Without intending it, Steven provided ample opportunity for me to have fun describing him, and in doing so, I was able to experience the casualness of a tone I hadn’t yet discovered how to properly utilize. Who knew I’d ever thank this unfortunate specimen of a human for something? In part, he helped me find my real voice.

Now I don’t want you get the wrong idea: I am not a comedian. Humor is not bursting from my mouth or seeping through my skin, but it is through humor that I have realized how to write with my real voice. Writing with humor relaxed my writing. It allowed me to write as if speaking and thereby engage a reader in the same way a charming public speaker captivates an audience. Humor allowed me to find and access a part of me that expresses things very frankly and comfortably with a very light, slightly sarcastic, cleverly descriptive, and subtly humorous tone. It helped me realize that I could tap into that part of me and write from it, initially producing a very funny piece of writing, “The Tragedies of my Career as a Heartbreaker,” but since then producing conversational, engaging, and comfortable pieces - writing with my real voice, regardless of the presence or absence of humor.

My voice continues to produce humor sometimes, but it doesn’t define my writing as a presence. It only defines a step in the progression of my writing evolution that has brought me to where I am now - comfortable with and proud of my writing on a regular basis. I write to the audience, not at them. I like to think of it as a journal, speaking to some non-existent yet always present listener. I sometimes imagine myself as Carrie in Sex and the City, sitting at my computer and marveling at some injustice, perhaps not of the romantic world like she frequently does, but writing to that patient listener, often speaking aloud the words that I write and becoming that listener myself.

Before my breakthrough, I lived with an awareness that I struggled with a long-time discomfort with the stuffiness and formality of my voice. I often wrote about this concern of mine, and hoped that somehow I would figure out how to break free of the monotony. Last semester, humor allowed me to do just that, and since then, I’ve been learning that I can apply my real voice to all kinds of writing. Now, even if I’m not writing about a potentially humorous topic, I can address it with the same creative, conservational tone. Every time I write, no matter if it’s a response to a piece of literary analysis or a reflection of my writing process, I’m learning what is the best way that I can effectively share information and thereby how to share more of my real voice.

Oh Muckelbauer…

Muckelbauer claims that the practices of imitation still have value, despite Romantic conceptions of the subject (i.e. the belief in a unique/autonomous/essential self). HOW does he support this claim?

Muckelbauer claims that even in repetition as the same, perfection or identicality is impossible. He compares (using Aristotle’s example) imitation to a carpenter’s reconstruction of a couch. Obviously, the carpenter would have the plan for ‘the ideal couch,’ and he would try to imitate it with even subsequent couch that he made, but he would never consistently produce ideally perfect couches; each would be unique to some extent in the execution of its construction. Similarly, to reproduce a writer’s work is to become so familiar with it that imitation without duplication is possible. He also puts an emphasis not on the object of imitation or the result of the imitation but rather the dynamic of the relation between the two.

My Three Favorite People: Me, Myself, and I

I don’t think I’ve necessarily made the same observations in the past that this article brings to the discussion, but I now that I read it and realize that it’s a verifable, studiable truth, this article confirms behaviors that I do notice in my generation. “Confident, assertive, and entitled” - I see that all the time among my peers, perhaps even myself - I’m not going to try to make that assessment. The media and a lot of our professional training in life is teaching us to embrace people for what they are and value the diverse quirks of life in everything. Be aware of things such as differences, awkwardness, prejudice, yet embrace them, and of course we should. But with this mentality, we embrace ourselves as who we are, and promote ourselves as persons whom other people should embrace and value. The more time that passes, the more we preach against conformity and grow in esteem for our own qualities and what we can bring to society. In a world that tells us that “I” can make a difference, “I” can change the world, but “I” have to put myself out there and be the one to stand out to make these changes, we get the side effects of narcissism and entitlement. I don’t think it’s an excuse, but rather I think that it’s something that needs to be remedied by emphasis on the necessity of humility to any position of power and influence, whether on a change-the-world scale or a more modest, realistic scale of merely embracing the day.

I do see how this affects the argument of voice, but it doesn’t strike me as particularly threatening. I suppose the problem is that voice students would take the concept of voice out of context and say that everything should be valued for the uniqueness of its voice - that to criticize someone’s voice is to criticize their being. However, I hope that a thorough understanding and appreciation of voice would prove that voice is not static or constant, but that it can change, improve, and evolve, thereby humbling the writer into constantly striving towards finding and working to strengthen his or her voice, not being content to defend a voice that others may not find effective. I also think it’s a mistake to confuse voice with anything content-related, like the student that defended his voice concerning the entertainment value of rape (I can only hope that he is behind bars).

Corbett response

Corbett is an advocate of imitation in writing, but he also warns that if you want to develop your own voice, you shouldn’t work with one author for too long. First why does Corbett advocate for imitation? What are the benefits, according to him? Then, what do *you* think of his warning about voice and imitation? Do you buy it? Why/not?

Corbett advocates for imitation because he is old-fashioned and very traditionalistic. Let me back up and be a little more considerate and objective. Corbett advocates for imitation because it helps a writer improve the syntactical structure of his/her writing, broaden his/her scope of diction, and discover/respect the writing styles of different authors in a way he/she would not by simply reading the author. In doing this, Corbett says that you can improve your own writing because you’re getting used to writing the way that academically acclaimed authors write. I have never tried this method; perhaps there is merit to it. However, my gut reaction was that this is suffocating and brain-washy. Yes, of course, I read published authors and observe their writing styles, and I discover their methods, and I appreciate how they write. But I don’t want to train myself to write in their styles. I don’t want my writing to sound like or even begin to sound like anyone but me. Routinely writing out the works of other authors seems very much like teaching yourself to write like another person, even if that author does change routinely. Like I said, I can’t officially diss this method because I’ve never tried it, so I don’t know if would truly be as disgusting as it sounds, but no, I don’t buy it. So far, I’m not a fan of this Corbett guy.