that's just Hollywood...

I will never forget the moment I finally told members of my extended family that I was writing a book. I received mixed reactions. My parents were supportive from the start, almost too supportive. I remember my mother working on a short story when I was younger, and how she sent it off to some magazine seeking publication. A few months later, she received her first and only rejection letter. She gave up. So when I told her my news, she jumped immediately saying things like, “You’re going to be rejected but don’t let that stop you.” Now going on five years later, my mother is worried I will give up on my dream because she has this preconceived belief about the publishing industry. The process from writer to publisher to print is as fast as the movie industry depicts.

I also received the typical reaction, “How are you going to make money at that?” and “Shouldn’t you be working towards a degree with more opportunity?” My brother’s only question was, “So when you going to start drinking, smoking pot, and divorce your husband? There are many state parks and cabins you could hole up in while your life disappears.” Now my brother was joking. Jamie has always supported me just as I have supported him, but when he said these things, other family members were quick to back his comments.

Reading this week’s assignment, Box Office Poison by Wendy Bishop and Stephen Armstrong, forced me to examine not only all the movies I have watched based on writers but these comments as well, and I saw for the first time how they influenced my own life as a writer. We all know that Hollywood romanticizes certain occupations. When I see a writer portrayed in a movie now, I find some of them laughable. Hollywood’s betrayal of how easy it is for a writer to reach publication and the speed in which their book hits the market, is one reason people, who are not writers, think that taking several years to write a book is plan lazy.

The article asks how we can change these Hollywood depicted images of our craft. I agree that it needs to start in writing programs. The learned writer must pass to the novice the images they have discovered about writers, but the novice must be willing to accept these new ideas. However, will this erase the Hollywood images of the public, the outsiders to our profession? That will take much longer to change. In a way, those writers who are household names in our society feed into these images.

The public only see these writers after the books are written, after the countless hours of revisions, after all the hoops they had to jump through to satisfy the publishing house, and at the book signings and television interviews. In a way, the same Hollywood images that blind the public and potentially hurt novice writers are fed into by the writing community. We helped birth the monster and need to help in its taming. We have to be the first in our society to change our self-image. Only then can we reasonably expect Hollywood to change.

evaluations: better ideas...

Chapter 8 in Released into Language, was interesting not only in that the ideas presented were practical, but I now see why all the professors I have taken in this program require the portfolio. Before reading this, I thought the reason behind the portfolios were to take the place of the traditional final tests other classes have at the end of the semester. I now know the portfolio not only serves the professors in evaluating our development as writers, but in teaching the students how to critique their own work and the work of their peers.

As for the evaluation process itself, I have set in class with peers who can tell horror stories about teachers they had growing up, who bled red ink onto their papers. In the Writing Center, we see how these teachers have ultimately affected those students by causing them to self-diagnose themselves as poor or bad writers. I work with students in the Elementary School Writing Center who are on their way to thinking the same.

I like the suggestions in this chapter, which discuss what an evaluation should be. On page 160, there is a list, which shows what the conventional form of evaluation includes, but on page 161, there is also a list, which shows how different a good evaluation should look.

I also liked how the recommendations made to teachers, are giving with the idea that the individual educator should choose what fits their particular classroom’s needs. Something that I found interesting was the idea that teachers should remove themselves from the center of attention, becoming the mentor rather than taking on a more traditional role as teacher. This was a point discussed in last week’s readings, and to have it stressed again, shows how important this decision can be for the writing classroom.

~swing batter batter...

The reading our class did for this week’s blog discussion came from Released Into Language: Options for Teaching Creative Writing by Wendy Bishop in which we read the first three chapters. I have to say there was so much material that my brain is now saturated, and I am dripping knowledge, about teaching creative writing workshops and classes, all over my desk.

Chapter one talks about the expectations of creative writing classes, the teachers, and the students and how these expectations have developed through the years. One of the students discussed, John, talks about his experience in a high school creative writing class. In this class he had a teacher who focused not only on the text, but also on allowing the students the freedom to write responses using creative writing techniques (4). For example, John and his friend were allowed to create a mock newspaper to show what they had learned from the text (4).

I thought back on my own experience, in my tenth grade high school creative writing class, in which we were not allowed such freedom. My classmates and I were not given the option to explore techniques that interested us. Instead, we were told what and how to write. I can see a huge difference in my abilities as a writer now verses then. I tend to agree with Bishop’s research that the writing classroom should be a place where writers of all levels should be guided to discover their strengths and weaknesses, a place were the teacher is just as much a student as the students (1-14).

Chapter two was a bit harder to summarize, but the one point that grabbed my attention, above all the other information, was the idea of asking your students to define or explain what their writing process is like. The four that Bishop brings up is actually from Barbara Tomlinson: ‘writing is cooking’, ‘writing is mining’, ‘writing is gardening’, and ‘writing is hunting or fishing’ (24).

This list got me to thinking about my own method of writing, and I decided that right now mine would be ‘writing is playing softball/baseball’. Every fundamental element that I practice on a daily basis, such as plot, characterizations, world building, scene development, and the mechanics like grammar, sentence structure, and point of view, come into play when I put pen to paper. The elements that I practice, study about, and practice some more, help me to hit the ball, run the bases, and eventually score. Just like my husband and I tell our kids. If you want to get better at something, you have to put in the work, time, and practice to reach your goal.

Chapter three talks about the different types of class modes on page 44. What I found interesting as I read about these, was that every creative writing class I have taken in college has had some variation of these built into their structure. A creative writing teacher does not only have to use one type. They can mix it up based on how their classes responded to each mode. I like this because it allows freedom of choice. Without the freedom to customize the class structure, you run the risk of losing some of your students.

I am probably a bit bias, about the last point I would like to make, but I feel it is important. I noticed throughout the reading that references were made about students going to their college Writing Centers. I feel that this is an important step in the writing process that seems to be overlooked by writers of all levels. We not only need to workshop our pieces with our peers in class, but we have peers in the Writing Center, fellow Creative Writing/Writing Majors and Minors, who can help us develop our material before it ever gets to the classroom workshop.