You gotta have faith...

"Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar," observed 
E.B. White...
 It was May, 1992. My husband had just graduated from a Massachusetts' law school, and we decided it would be cheaper to be unemployed with student-loan debt in our home state of Pennsylvania, than in New England.  I, privately, had made another decision, a promise to myself to find some way to pay the bills by writing. Writing what? I had no clue. But what I did know was that writing was the only enjoyable aspect of the public relations jobs I had held for the past six years. And I did it.

For years I pieced together jobs where the sole responsibility was writing - coupled with freelance assignments, and one tortuous year of saying - after my 3 kids were in bed - "thank you for calling Pottery Barn, can I have the customer id number on the back of your catalog?" If I identified myself as a writer, people would naturally say, "what do you write?" I would always respond "whatever anyone pays me to write." And it was true. I wrote to pay bills. The health column for a small weekly paper - I saw it as the PP& L bill. The fence in our backyard. Paid for by an edit of a horribly written state publication for senior citizens. I wrote about dentistry, about finance (you don't want to see my math SATs), about cow manure runoff, you name it....and the point is...

You gotta have faith to do this...faith in yourself to say "yes" to any request from any editor, and ultimately faith in the writing PROCESS.  But this isn't magical, mystical stuff. Writing is work.
It takes practice. And, again, you have to have faith that what you are pouring out onto that paper will EVENTUALLY be molded into something worthwhile.
I laughed out loud when I read Lynn's comment "Most great writers are insecure..." No. Duh. It's the nature of the beast. BUT they push through, and the question is HOW? and How can we pass on this motivation to our students? How can we convince them to have faith in their own abilities? Because if we don't, we end up with the problems addressed by both Tobin and Lynn: Tobin's claim that bad, boring, uninspired writing is due to bad, boring, uninspired teaching (this is too simplistic), and Lynn's valid point that plagiarism is an issue.


I'm sure we'll discuss the plagiarism issue in class, but my "solution" is threefold:
1) Demystify writing.This is something people can learn how to do, much like most everyone can learn how to ride a bike. All will not be Lance Armstrong, but nearly everyone can learn to make it down the block.
2) When used appropriately, I've seen the anti-plagiarism software, such as Turnitin.com work as both a deterrent and an instructional tool (to avoid the "I didn't know" defense.)
3) A renewed emphasis on the "good readers become good writers" approach. When I consider when, where, and how I've improved my writing (and every writer is ALWAYS looking for ways to continue this process), I return to the same thought - reading good writing coupled with practice, practice, practice.

Blog #1

Regarding Lynn’s Rhetoric & Composition, in his early chapters you can envision Lynn’s uphill struggle to convince his readers to think of the term rhetoric in a positive manner. Clearly this background was meant to add legitimacy and thwart the modern-day negative connotation of the word, but he has a daunting battle. The very night I read this, I had the news on and heard two different commentators in two different stories admonish politicians to “tone down the rhetoric” and “turn the tide of partisan rhetoric.”

Much of this early chapter seemed like deja vu for me, having completed a rhetorical theory course in my undergrad days – back in the stone ages, ala 1982 – the bucolic days of Reagan-speak, when people dubbed him our “great communicator” president. I personally blame the advent of the 3-word sound bite on him. He certainly knew how to craft and deliver the phrases that were big on flash, but in hindsight, perhaps short on substance. But rhetorically speaking, they worked. I vividly recall the professor I had, the type of teacher who literally jumps on chairs and desks and seems as if he’s had one too many visits to Starbucks. I distinctively recall how he noted Reagan could usually meet at least 3 out of 4 of the goals of rhetoric (which Lynn lists on page 11).

In one sense, while the people in our world given the task to persuade haven’t strayed far from rhetoric’s negative stereotype (though I do recall CBS news putting their foot down and saying every sound-bite from a politician must be 30 seconds in length to produce substance along with the flash), Lynn’s early chapters are a wonderful connect-the-dots sort of piece. They clearly show how classical/traditional rhetoric spilled over into composition (the Harvard link was fascinating), and how the two are irrevocably tied. I had never thought about the scientific influence – the ease in manufacturing paper, or the advent of the lead pencil! If you force yourself to think beyond what you think you know about these subjects, then there is an undisputable link between “rhetoric’s orality” and “composition’s textuality.” I’m always, always, always telling my students to read their work aloud, asking them to evaluate “how it sounds” to their ear, looking beyond its appearance on paper. The two must go hand in hand. Good writing is good writing, whether we hear it or see it.

There’s too much to cover in one blog re: Lynn, but bells went off for me in two areas: one, how we as teachers say we want to focus on invention or material, but if you look at many of our rubrics, they focus on final product only. FOCUS meaning F= focus, O= organization, C= content (a rather vague description), U= usage, and S= the equally vague “style.” The other area I found amusing is his take on Peter Elbow’s, Donald Graves’ and others’ approaches to process writing. Lynn seems uncomfortable at best with their warm, fuzzy way of thinking about writing, and I think wisely so. Creating a new paradigm for teaching writing does not have to be a “throw the baby out with the bath water” approach. There’s some good in past approaches, and most certainly room for new concepts. The individual pieces we read – Noth’s and specifically Hairston’s addressed this idea well. Page 86 – Hairston’s twelve step list – was an ideal summary.