By Steffanie Triller Fry
At the School for New Learning, Academic Writing for Adults
and Writing Workshop students are encouraged to think about their writing
process: Where and how do they write best? What setting or mood works for them?
Do they write better with or without music? Can they compose on a computer or
do they prefer to begin with pen?
I had one
student who only wrote in purple pen; another wrote on the bus; still another
wrote all of her papers between one and three A.M. In each case, the student
found what worked for them, and it proved successful: it resulted in the
written word.
Anne Lamott
calls it “sitting,” and Laurie Foos calls it “keeping your [rear] in the chair”
(expletive avoided). As part of my current Master of Fine Arts in writing
study, I attended a seminar with novelist Laurie Foos at Lesley University this
past January. Her focus was on techniques and inspiration to keep our “rears”
in our chairs, and I was struck by how many of these ideas and techniques would
work for SNL students, not just in their writing courses, but in all of their
courses. Because students write for nearly all courses in this
writing-intensive program, their process is something that the student will
carry with them from their initial Foundations course through the Advanced
Project. The student’s process should enable them to craft papers for all of
their college courses.
Instructors
in all subject areas can use writing to access both students prior and current
knowledge on a topic, but as Ray Bradbury writes in his chapter “How to Keep
and Feed a Muse” in Zen and the Art of
Writing, “It isn’t easy” (31). In this chapter, Bradbury writes about
finding a muse, or finding the energy to write. At one point, he compares the
search to “those little specks of light, those airy bubbles which float across
everyone’s vision, minute flaws in the lens or the outer, transparent skin of
the eye. Unnoticed for years, when you first focus your attention on them, they
can become unbearable nuisances, ruptures in one’s attention at all hours of
the day. They spoil what you are looking at, by getting in the way” (32). Bradbury’s
description of these specks of light sounds remarkably like the process of an
adult student attempting to surface prior knowledge.
Utilizing
the student’s writing process can help. Just as Bradbury believes that finding
the muse allows us to find our “Most Original Self,” becoming better readers,
observers, and writers is the journey of the adult student at the School for
New Learning. We encourage surfacing of prior knowledge and dialogue with new
knowledge – and much of this dialogue happens through writing.
In order to encourage our students to surface
their “Most Original Selves” across the curriculum, perhaps we can all
encourage them to strive for Kent Haruf’s “holy trinity in the art of writing”:
freshness, simplicity, and clarity. If we ask them to strive for these simple
goals in all of their writing, perhaps students will return the focus to the learning,
and worry less about the prose. Perhaps the process will carry from the writing
class to the humanities, natural science, and media arts class. Perhaps we will
all read the fresh, simple, clear writing that we so desire from our students’
work.
To that end, here are a few tools from Foos’ January seminar
on “Courting the Muse” that I have already added to my students’ toolboxes.
They seem to be using them regularly, and with much success. Note that I have
offered a version of Foos’ exercises for writing courses as well as for WAC
courses (in other words, any SNL course that is not specifically designated as a
writing course):
Headlines
·
For writing courses: Choose particularly
sensational headlines from journalistic newspapers, magazines, or even
tabloids. Give students five to choose from and have them create the story.
·
For WAC courses: Choose headlines from scholarly
journals or popular magazines in the field. Give students five to choose from,
and have them write on what they already know about the topic. This is a good
way to surface prior learning.
The Word Game
·
For writing courses: Have students write down
five things: a) a job, b) a common item (noun), c) another common item (noun),
d) a verb ending in –ing, e) an adjective. Then have them pass this piece of
paper to a neighbor. Each student should take the words they are given and
connect them in a story.
·
For WAC courses: Complete the same exercise
above, but make the categories more specific to the focus of the course. This
exercise can help students make connections or discover topics for final
papers.
First lines
·
For writing courses: Give students three first
lines from novels, short stories, or nonfiction articles. Have them choose one
and write.
·
For WAC courses: Give students three first lines
from scholarly or popular or trade journals in your field. Have them continue
the “story” using what they know of the topic.
Works Cited
Bradbury, Ray. “How to Keep and Feed a Muse.” Zen in the Art of Writing. New York:
Bantam, 1992. 31-46. Print.
Foos, Laurie. “Courting the Muse.” Lesley University. 6 Jan
2013. Lecture.
Haruf, Kent. “To See Your Story Clearly, Start by Puling the
Wool over Your Own
Eyes.” Writers on Writing. New York: Times Books, 2002. 84-89. Print.
