Barf!

“I love writing—the process, the creativity, the ability to vomit my thoughts onto paper and rearrange the chunks, the phlegm, and all the other goopy nastiness (I don’t remember eating carrots?) that shows up.

“The ability to manipulate words and create images and stir feelings is power. Writing becomes a forum for thought, a format in which ideas are scooped up, molded, and solidified, and then thrown into the kiln only to explode, forcing you to rise from the ashes and create again. It forces you to learn.”

These are two metaphors that I mixed during a quickwrite a few weeks ago for my EdD seminar. The professor asked us to quickly jot down about our feelings toward writing. Most wrote about fear or bad memories of writing endless papers. I, junior high teacher geek that I am, had to write about tossing cookies. I’ve actually used that metaphor with my students on several occasions. It was refreshing to hear it used by author Kristen Chandler at the UCTE/LA Fall Conference in her keynote address. She said (more or less) that there are two ways to write draft: vomit it up or bleed it out. Blowing chunks is more my style. Sometimes the feeling, the idea just eats at you from the inside. Then you have to spew, or you’ll explode. If you don’t find the right receptacle, it’s just a big mess that nobody else wants to clean up. And even if it keeps you up all night, you always feel better after you’ve hurled.

So, in a way, I’m thankful for barfing (and Febreeze).

P.S. I shared my scramble with the class and received a round of applause, but the instructor liked the kiln metaphor better. Oh, well.