A Few Thoughts on Writing

I was looking back through some writing notebooks this morning and found this: a response to some questions posed by a grad instructor a few years back. I'd be interested to hear/see/read what you have to say about this. So if you want to free write in the comments section for a minute or two, feel free (no wrong answers).

--Must we experience writing ourselves in order to teach writing?
--What does it mean to be a writer?

My response (21 July 2008):

Everybody writes--well, almost everybody. But to be a writer involves deliberate thinking and rethinking about the words and ideas expressed on the page. It's a semi-permanent, muddle-though shakedown of thoughts. To refuse to write is to refuse the clarification of your own thoughts. So, in short, to be a writer is to be a thinker.

In order to teach writing you must know the ins and outs of the science and the art of writing. Honestly, how can you teach something you don;t know or have experienced? Even if you do not spout sonnets or soliloquies or even attempt essays unless threatened by pain of failing grade, if you are an avid reader, you can still tell what good writing is. Reading and writing go hand in hand and the improvement of one is ultimately entwined in the indulgence of both. (Did I really just write that?)

To improve anything you must practice. I've found that my students learn best as I teach by example--especially writing. They need to know that I know the pains and frustrations of producing meaningless drivel on a page as well as the joy of rescuing a single rescued from the smoldering ashes of freewriting hell. This has been tangential in nature, but it boils down to a resounding "yes." In order to teach writing one must become an active participant in the writing process.

Maybe I'll go back and revise this. Or not. (I didn't...yet.)

Please feel free to chime in and add your two cents--or two dollars...I'll take anything.

What's the Deal?

This was based on "Guy Things" by Gordon Korman (found in Guys Write for Guys Read), a writing prompt I gave to my 9th graders today.

Cartoons—unfortunately there don’t seem to be any good ones any more. True, the media is trying to bring some of them back, like Scooby Doo or Tom and Jerry, but they are ruined. I mean, who ever heard of a cat and mouse being friends? The funniest elements of the cartoons have been eliminated—the insane violence. Cats are supposed to have nine lives, right? But any intelligent kid knows that cartoon cats have about 9 million. And in each episode they should lose a dozen or so—in the most bizarre, humiliating, painful ways imaginable. Look at it now. Nothing. Maybe Tom catches a golf club in the mouth every once in a while, but it’s more of an actual plot now…a story where the characters cooperate. What’s that all about? Kids have to deal with appropriate behavior in real life. Cartoons are meant to be an escape from reality. It’s not a classroom, but a fantasy where anything can happen. We all know that the worlds are separate. Those quacks who truly believe that cartoon violence leads to actual violence have been watching too much Roger Rabbit and not enough Looney Toons. The more outlandish the slapstick, the more we kids enjoy these cartoons because they’re NOT real.