Hi everyone! And welcome back to my fourth blog post. In this post we’re doing something a little differently. We are setting a scene for a writers’ roundtable discussion and are told to read three pieces of writing, all from different authors. The first story is called “Teach Writing as a Process Not a Product”, by Don Murray. The second story is called “Against Vanity: In Praise of Revision, by Mary Karr. The final story we had to read is called “Bird by Bird: Some instructions on Writing and Life”, by Anne Lamott. We then played out a discussion that they might’ve had at a roundtable with quotes used from their writing. It was officially the weekend and I heard about my three favorite writers Don Murray, Mary Karr, and Anne Lamott, being in town to have discussions about their writings and to give advice to avid readers and writers. Without hesitation I decided to go and it was only ten minutes away so I figured it was the perfect opportunity. When I first got there I noticed somebody was finishing up talking to Don Murray, so I jumped up there next. I first asked him about this idea of language in writing and how it’s used and what it’s used for. He responded to me “It is the process of discovery through language. It is the process of exploration of what we should know and what we feel about what we know through language. It is the process of using language to learn about our world, to evaluate what we learn about our world, to communicate what we learn about our world. I found this really eye catching and it made me understand language much more after he explained it. I then went on to ask him how I can come up with a topic to write about and he said “The writer, as he writes, is making ethical decisions. He doesn’t test his words by a rule book, but by life.” This made a lot more sense because it is true that you are making different decisions while in the process of writing. Since I am in this English Composition I class I went on to ask him if this writing course will truly help me and what it is that I can get out of it in the end. He said “The suspense in the beginning of a writing course is agonizing for the teacher, but if we break first, if we do the prewriting for our students they will not learn the largest part of the writing process.” Which I understand because it is us that have to do the work and be the ones trying to learn, if we wanna succeed then it starts with us. I wanted to get some ideas on how to properly right about something that might not have been from this time so I moved on to talk to Mary Karr. After asking her about the time periods with my writing she responded “Getting a sense of the person’s time in history often helped me to understand their styles in that context—what literary pressures and fashions and values of the day were forging their pages.” This makes sense because if you act like you’re present in the time period, it helps you to live in the moment and be more precise with your writing. I then wanted to ask her what I can do to better my writing and she responded “Reading through history cultivates in a writer a standard of quality higher than the marketplace.” I like her saying this because all it takes is a little bit of reading and curiosity and you can find success with writing. I finally asked her what is so important about writing and what it means to be a writer and she said to me “Just picking up a pen makes you part of a tradition of writers that dates thousands of years back and includes Homer and Toni Morrison and cave artists sketching buffalo.” Which makes a lot of sense because writing and reading goes back so long ago and we aren’t new to any of it. After I talked to Mary I went on to talk with Anne Lamott, who was very intelligent. I started talking to her and asking her a few questions and the first thing I asked was how to get yourself to sit down and start working on your writing and she said “Say to yourself in the kindest possible way, Look, honey, all we’re going to do for now is to write a description of the river at sunrise, or the young child swimming in the pool at the club, or the first time the man sees the woman he will marry.” Which made it seem so much easier for me to grasp. I told her I was nervous about exploring different topics and paths in writing and she said “Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it.” So, I really won’t know if I’m good at something until I try it out. I wanted to get into talking about how I find it difficult finding a starting spot in my writing and she had a very good response for me that helped a lot, “For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.” Which I can say makes perfect sense. It makes most sense to me to just start writing and to clean everything up later. Having these conversations with these great authors was truly amazing and inspiring. I learned so much information and I feel like I’m already a better writer as soon as I left there. I have a few takeaways and quotes that I like for myself and that’s “You never know how it will go unless you try it out”, “Take big risks and wait to clean anything up at the end”, and my last quote is “Don’t be afraid to explore and search different paths in your writing because that’s the only way you can grow.
4 Comments
Sabatino
2/10/2020 07:45:40 am
CIF
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Daniel
2/11/2020 09:50:36 am
I love the quotes that you used in your piece. They really fit with what you we're doing in the piece. I think that these things just flow together so well.
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Tamika
2/11/2020 09:52:33 am
I'm understanding where you coming from in this blog. Nice JOB
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Kellie
2/11/2020 10:04:58 am
I enjoyed reading this! Great story telling.
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Brandon Foy
I will use this blog to explore the messy processes of writing and to make meaning. ArchivesCategories
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