English 307

Wow! I had never realized before what an amazing compilation of voices and words was here all along on this Internet archive. Perhaps I should have read and done this response to everyone’s blogs before I wrote my response to blogging in general. I may likely have come up with a different story to tell. However I may feel about keeping a blog myself (and everyone now sees how little attention I have dedicated to it) it has been a wonderful experience to read the work of everyone else! I really now wish that we had been asked to keep up with reading each post as we posted them. Some of the insights that I read of classmates’ reading responses where things that we never really got around to in class discussion and things that I would have loved to have read while we were wrestling with those issues. Antonia’s post on the race assignment jumps to mind. At one point she makes the comment that her lack of racial awareness when writing allows her to focus on other themes. I read that and, remembering have struggled to articulate exactly why I don’t see it as important to my own writing to be focused on such issues, thought to myself, “Yes! That’s it!” Many of the responses to the Narcissism essay were deep reflections and exciting glimpses into the minds of their authors. Much of the rich understanding that I gained from reading all of the blogs was simply an understanding of the unique way in each the mind of each of my fellow writers works.

One of the most rewarding part of reading these posts has come as a direct result of waiting until the last minute (my brothers birthday was this weekend and, despite all of my most noble intentions of getting this finished sooner, my weekend filled up and placed me here, writing this now just before it is due). Because of this, though, I have had the opportunity to read most everyone else’s reflections on all of the other blogs. This, I have to say, was my favorite part of most of the blogs! Many, such as Ashley M. and Brandon, wrote with a sense of ending, accomplishment, and closure. These were beautiful reflections on our class for this past semester and demonstrate a special unity that we found in our group of students and Dr. A. This we may have missed altogether if we had not all had this last assignment to sit down and reflect upon all that has transpired both in the individual and in our group as a whole. Though I do not intend to become a blogger, or to put any more effort into this online venture than is required of me, it is a special thing that we now have of all of the deep, revealing thoughts and words of each our classmates; this I can now see, and I am wonderfully blessed to have it!

I despise the computer… period. So, I am afraid that my reponse to “how did you like the blog?” will reflect just that sentiment: computer=bad! But to talk about it in a practical sense, because of my aversion to technology, I did not find the blogging experience helpful or appealing. I do not get on to check my blog often, and I really had no desire to spend any amount of time adding or editing or tweaking it; in other words, I really did not want to make it mine. This, unfortunately led to me missing some Reading Responses (I don’t get onto Blackboard much either) and using the blog only when I absolutely had to (when it was required).

While I usually type my assignments anyway, reading things off of the computer is difficult for me. I need to have that page in my hands, to feel it, to see the black ink. This reading off of a lighted screen is an unpleasant experience. Thus, another reason I dislike online postings. And, finally, the first hand communication, which is not present with submissions over the internet, is an element of English class that I miss when replaced by blogging discussion (rr). So, I understand that the world is going digitial, and that the internet and computer are both “wonderful” resources that save time and add accessibility. However, I still cling to the old, hard copies, the in-class writings, and the first-hand discussions. And I would be ever so delighted not to have to use the computer to add to any of those!

Necessary Trust

            To write, to read, two integrally dependent concepts. Without writers there would be nothing to read, thus no readers. But without readers, there would be no purpose to writing, no audience to write for, and thus no writers. And yet, especially in the English department, these two parties often come head-to-head, in direct opposition over whose interest is the most important, whose role should be favored above the other. Rather than looking at these two dependent groups as partners, parties that must work together in order for either to survive and flourish, academics tend to separate them into two different boxes, claiming that their interests are independent and diametrically opposed, and, in the end that this is well and natural and should remain so. However, if the reader cannot exist without the writer, and the writer’s work would be made irrelevant without the presence of a reader, then the natural conclusion would be that both are in some way invested in the other and have some sort of a responsibility to the other in order that each may survive in their own rite.

            I am a writer; I give you my bias at the outset. But, being a writer, I have spent my fair share of enthrallingly invested time reading. They say that writers are born of readers, that a writer produces through the influence of what she has read. Robert Brooke goes as far as to say that a writer is built through the influence of who she has read. “Writers learn to write by imitating other writers, by trying to act like writers they respect” (23). The only way we writers are able to observe other writers, however, is through their texts. Thus, any writer, if she is going to “learn to write,” must be an invested reader. Through investment in and studying of the work of other writers, we can understand what is, who is, behind the text; and from there, how we can grow to develop those skills in our own writing. Thus writers make readers who make writers.

            There is a certain kind of investment, though, in these kinds of readers. They are readers who are reading to write. They love the words, the phrases, the weight or the force or the lightness of what they read. These are the readers that Elbow celebrates, those who are “actually interested in what was on their [the writer's] mind, what they intended to say, reading for intention” (57). They read for meaning; they read to be swayed, moved, affected by the writer. They know the searching, the blank staring, the editing, the tweaking and reshaping that the writer has gone through, all in an effort to communicate this one image to her reader. They know this, and they read for it.

             I pick up a book to read because I want to hear what the author wants to tell me. I know the style of Jane Austen; I know the voice of C.S. Lewis; I know the investment of J.R.R. Tolkien; and I want to read what they have put down on paper. They each have a story to tell; I want to hear it. When I like what I hear I come back again and again, drawn by the lure, the magic that they are somehow able to breathe into their words. I most often come away with the inspired bug to get writing. I want to write like that! And so, Brooke’s position is affirmed, that we admire a writer and strive to attain in our own writing that which he or she has attained in the works that we hold in such high esteem.

            There are other kinds of readers, though. And this is where I come to the schism between readers and writers. You have just met the “writer-as-reader.” The other reader is not so sympathetic to the writer’s effort. I will call him “reader critic.” The reader critic reads with an agenda. Far from picking up a book with the invested, ready-to-be-pleased attitude that the writer-as-reader sympathetically adopts when approaching a text, the reader critic brings his own agenda, an aim to the work. It is more than the writer-as-reader’s investment, more than her desire to know what the author thought so important to share that she took the pains to translate it from its perfect meaning in her head into words transcribed on the page. It is other. The reader critic does not care for what these words once were, where they came from or to what they refer. For the reader critic, the text is there for the purpose of his aim. There is no meaning to be found, no direction or guidance from the author that the writer-as-reader allows herself to be carried by. There is simply text, words, words without meaning, words for which the reader critic takes it upon himself to construct a meaning. Writer’s intention? Written for a purpose? No, of course not! The only reason this text is here is so that I can exercise my authority, my assumptions, my experiences.

             He then reads the text to suit, twisting, contorting, and “reading against the grain,” if that is what it takes. “It’s in the interest of the readers to say that the writer’s intention doesn’t matter or is undefinable, to say that meaning is never determinate, always fluid and sliding, to say that there is no presence or voice behind a text; and finally to kill off the author! This leaves the reader in complete control of the text” (Elbow, 75). In “complete control of the text,” he is constantly searching for an ulterior motive, underlying meaning, more than what it seems within the text itself, other than what the writer wrote to be read. Far from approaching a written work with a sense of responsibility to the writer, to be open to discover what the writer has written to be discovered, the reader critic often deliberately disregards the writer and posits his own interpretation as the “truth” (or at least a truth) of the text.

            Now, do not misunderstand me: I do not hold that the true meaning, that image that the writer struggles to transcribe, can ever be fully experienced by the reader…any reader. The writer tries, she puts her all into the words that she is sculpting; she does her best and gets as close as she possibly can. The rest she entrusts into the hands of the reader, that if he would only give her his trust she would guide him to the closest knowledge possible of her meaning. Even then there will be a difference between the original image, the meaning that the writer seeks to make known, and words that the writer writes, and then also between those words and the meaning that the reader finds. The writer knows this; but, with the trust and sympathy of her reader, she feels that she can come close enough to the heart of her meaning to make it worth writing.

             It takes this kind of investment on the writer’s part in her work to get her meaning to the page. It takes a measure of investment on the reader’s part for any of that meaning to reach anyone outside of the writer herself. Each party has a job, a responsibility to the other. A writer cannot write without the reader in mind. But a reader, being entrusted with the work of a writer, has the responsibility to the writer to make the concerted effort to read her words and not whatever he feels like inserting. The writer is there! And, as Elbow put it, “we have a better chance of being found if the searchers [readers] think we exist” (75).

            Authorial intent has been a popularly discussed topic in literature classes. Most agree, as I have already posited, that it is impossible to ever perfectly understand the author’s intent. There is too much “outside” of the text and too much between the author and the reader for this to be possible. Where the reader critic and writer-as-reader knock heads is on the question, “Should we even try?” “Absolutely!” exclaims the writer-as-reader. What other reason do we have for reading a text if not to enjoy and glean from what the author has written? But the reader critic argues that, since we cannot truly understand what the author meant, then the best way to approach a text is to assume that there is no meaning except what he chooses to impose.

             Bartholomae argues in favor of this critical reading, that students “can learn to feel and see their position inside a text they did not invent and can never, at least completely, control” (65). It is this critical, searching for a meaning, their meaning in a text, rather than finding a meaning, the meaning of a text. Bartholomae extends this idea to an even greater stretch by asserting that this is how one should write as well as read, that the meaning must be sought and constructed through outside sources, through the meanings gleaned from others, rather than creating a meaning in the text that you produce. It cannot be yours; it must be other. Writing cannot belong to you; it must belong to other. I say “other” because, the way it is taught, the writing does not belong to the reader either. When reading is comprised of this “searching” for meaning, and “reading into” and “reading against the grain,” it is always in pursuit of some larger political statement. There is an intent; there is a design behind such an undertaking.      Consider, if a reader does not pick up a book and read to understand the message, the meaning, that the author of said book intends for him to receive, then what does he read for? There must have been some aim that caused him to select the work in the first place. A reader has nothing to gain for himself from forcing a meaning onto a text unless it is to support or reinforce some other agenda. That agenda generally belongs to the larger political statement. He can and will read the feminist’s agenda of Rip Van Winkle, and the Marxist criticism in The Great Gatsby.

             But why does he pursue these agendas? Where does he get them from, and what is he reading them for? It is academia that empowered and encouraged the reader to read for such a purpose. Rather than encouraging a reader to read and glean, academic teaching is encouraging him to read and twist, however necessary to come up with an interpretation that will support the aims that they are striving to indoctrinate into their students; thus academia, the academics are the ones who have created the reader critic. They teach him and direct him to construct a meaning that is not there. This reading, this meaning, does not belong to the reader, then; it belongs to the institution. Thus, no longer does the writer own her text, but neither does the reader own the text. No, the institution that drives the twisting owns the interpretation.

            This is a very dangerous direction to pursue. By teaching that “the writer’s intention does not matter or is unfindable,” that “meaning is never determinate, always fluid and sliding,” academia strips the writer of any ownership of work. However, rather than giving this ownership to the reader, academics hold it for themselves first through creating the reader critic, and then through puppetering the reader critic’s interpretations by retaining the right to pronounce good and bad, right and wrong interpretations. This has far-reaching and powerful effects on the writing and reading world.

            First, by stripping the writer of ownership of her text, you are making her of no consequence, basically telling her that she is not important. “Thank you for producing this work. Stunning job! Now you can go away and we will take it from here. No, we don’t need to know what you see as the important aspects of what you have written; it is ours now, and we will take it, cut it up, rearrange it, and make out of it what we see fit. You are no longer needed. Thank you very much.” If such an attitude continues, then writers will eventually take it to heart and disappear. No one can keep face in light of such use; if writers are to continue to be so miserably treated, they will eventually remove themselves from the reach of such treatment and stop writing altogether, at least, stop allowing their work to be used so.

            The other result of this push to read the academic’s interpretation, to be the reader critic, is the disablement of the reader. Having been trained to scrutinize, to manipulate, the reader will be made unable to find the writer’s meaning in the text, for, he can only discover such a meaning through a measure of openness and trust. Training that trust out of him, in effect, trains out of him the ability to read and replaces it with the skill to distort. This leads, if you follow it through, ultimately to enforced ignorance of any intended interpretation.

             Academics may see no problem with that when it comes to reading and interpreting novels and creative writing and personal writing, all that which Elbow posits as integral to the developing of a strong and sure writer (I have already made known the problem that we writers see in this type of reading), but what about when it comes to “academic” writing? What about “scholarly” writing? What about research papers? When a reader is taught that there is no original meaning and no intended interpretation of a text (that is, of a creative text, of course), then what is to stop him from applying this to those instructional and authoritative texts that he is assigned with the intention of imparting a certain knowledge to him? There can no longer be a correct reading, a correct understanding of any written work if once the meaning of the author is disregarded.

            This issue, hotly debated among academics, college professors, and readers and writers in general, is, when it comes down to it, the heart of the issue, one that determines the survival or death of written work. A writer writes because she holds something in her mind that is important enough to force its way onto the page. I, a writer, am invested in what I write, I esteem it enough to take and submit it to the scrutiny of others. I know that it is an imperfect representation of what I was trying to communicate, but I feel that it is close enough that someone who picks it up and reads it will find something of what I am trying to impart. I counts on a certain amount of trust from you, my reader. I need that trust, that little bit of faith that the reader gives me, to allow my story to find a hold. Without this trust my work ceases to be my work. Without this trust the relationship between me, the writer, and you, the reader, connected by these words ceases to be. Without this trust, a writer simply cannot continue writing. If the reader ceases to read my words, then I am not writing for anyone at all.

The self, the writer, as Miller sees it, is always being constructed. There is never an end to the changing, the growing of the writer… as long as she writes. For, it is through writing that she constructs herself. Every time she writes, whatever it may be, she puts down on paper a different part of herself, a different self. I don’t see Miller as being concerned about a “spot.” Wherever the writer is, whatever circumstance the writer is in, she is always constructing a self… as long as she is writing. She seems to write without a great goal in mind, without a strong desire to convince her readers of anything, without a solid perception even, of what brought her to write in the first place. She simply writes to create, and realizes that, at the same time she is creating through writing, her writing is creating her.

Corbett advocates reading ALOT! He says that this will equip you with useful and effective language, vocabulary, and devices that will add to the color of your own writing. I appreciate this advice. It is something that Elbow never touched on and something that I would assume Elbow would reject as detrimental to finding your own voice. I think that one’s voice comes not simple from you but from all of the experiences and things that you have been exposed to which make up you. However, I also appreciated Corbett’s warning to not stick with one author for too long so as to avoid inhabiting his voice instead of developing your own. Voice should be unique. It comes from you, but it comes from a you that is made up of all that you enjoy experiencing. While voice is natural, in that it is your own, it is also something that you can develop and mold, sort of like you signature, into something that is pleasing as well as fitting to you.

Kristen Eno

Captured

            I stare at the photograph. Only four inches by six, the colored picture depicts a young girl, thirteen to be exact, my cousin. Her long, gorgeous blond hair woven into two braids, rests on her shoulders; spring wild flowers woven carefully between the locks stud her golden tresses. A bright July sun beams across her face as she sits in a field, green and rolling, the grassy yard of our great Aunt Dorothy. She smiles her stunning smile, one that I have long treasured, since we were young children, almost before I can remember-even then the best of friends. But it’s not right. This picture is not what I saw on that July afternoon. It is different, imperfect.

            That sunny, summer afternoon was the day of our biyearly family reunion, the first one that I had ever been able to attend. All manner of relations on my Dad’s side gathered at Aunt Dorothy’s house in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, cousins and distant cousins and relatives who I don’t think I could claim any real relation to at all, but who were still relatives nonetheless. And, of course, my favorite: all of my great aunts and uncles whom I had never met before, barely even heard of, but each of whom I immediately developed an attachment to and grew to love most dearly. Aunt Nancy had taught me how to catch fireflies in a jar (a California girl has never had any experience with fireflies before). Uncle Alf bought me necklace with a carousel horse on it (he heard that I like horses). And Aunt Dorothy, all the time we spent at her house, indulged my hungry curiosity to know what the country life of past years was (through eager attention to her stories and reminiscing I gained hours of enjoyment as well as a friend).

            Alyson, my cousin featured in the photograph, and I wandered around the sloping yard with our cameras, looking for striking backdrops for our portrait photographs that we were taking turns snapping of each other. We had just finished studding our hair with the wild daisies and little cobalt flowers that were growing at the edges of the lawn, next to the reeds. Just like the two of us! Whenever we are together we are inseparable. Though she lives in Colorado and I, at the time, in California, we share a stronger bond of deep friendship than I share with any of my friends at home that I see on a daily basis. Every time Aunt Debbie and Uncle Greg could get away and bring their family to meet us in Arizona at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, I would jump for joy and begin to plan all of the blissful days that I would spend with Alyson. We would spend hours going through Grandma’s dress-up stash, planning and rehearsing our “productions,” tending to our curtain-hung tree house, and playing all manner of imaginative stories that we had come up with. We ate together, slept together, and were never in two different cars when we all went anywhere.

            But you cannot see that in this picture. Nor can you see the dazzlingly vivid color of the grass, or the delicate flutter of the daisy petals when the gentle breeze touches them. The sun has washed out the brilliant contrast of blue sky against the green floor that I remember observing with a thrill of awe. It is imperfect. I am not yet proficient in the manual settings of my camera to be able to produce the best, most true result. But, it is imperfect in other ways too.

            They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but I am only at 628 and have told you more about that day, about what the picture represents, than the actual photograph is able to reveal. Not only could it not show you the true color of the grass, of the sky, of the bright yellow center of the daisies in Alyson’s hair, but it could not show you the growing crowd of smiling faces gathering around the house and the outdoor food tent; it could not let you smell the roasting chicken in the bar-b-que pit in the front yard, or let you hear the cheerful conversations floating from every table and corner across the yard.

            It could not let you experience the old, 1900’s farmhouse that breathed the bygone days from every wooden floorboard, every braided rug, and every picture-paned window. I loved that house from the moment I set foot inside. It was as if I was stepping into the past, into a time removed from the one with which I am familiar, to which I belong, and into one which I have always yearned to know. The dusky, close kitchen faces a large and imposing wooden table. A wall of window brightens an otherwise shrouded living room, carpeted with the variegating colors of an old, woolen braided rug. Darkened into a deep, worn brown, the heavy wooded staircase leads to the upstairs bedrooms, suddenly bright and cheery, flooded with sunlight from many white-trimmed windows. Here bright, hand-stitched quilts top the beds of wood paneled rooms. The floor squeaks, and you have to be careful that you don’t get splinters in your socks.

            This photograph cannot tell you of the enchantment that this California girl is experiencing in the small town of a dazzlingly green Eastern state. She has never visited the East Coast before. And the charms of a home in the countryside just on the outskirts of a small town are something that she has only ever imagined for herself. Yes, she has imagined them many times, yearning for that quaint experience, wishing that she could join that life seemingly so much closer to the past. I learned that Aunt Dorothy had made some of the braided rugs herself. I admired the brilliant colors of her garden which had, no doubt, been faithfully blooming every spring for countless years. Alyson and I went picking raspberries from the bushes on the side of the property; we ate them all. A simple life, one in which things are closer to home, where you raise gardens, make quilts for you beds, use your own raspberries to make jam, that is what I was experiencing for the first time. But the picture does not tell you that. And yet, all of that is what this picture is representing. Like a rushing flood, it is what comes cascading back to me when I look at the picture. But as I study it, I realize that anyone else who sees this photograph has no access to any of that. The picture does not tell the whole story. It is imperfect.

            I find another photograph, taken on the same day, still in the same enchanting setting. This one features myself. You can see the daisy, now slightly wilted, tucked behind my ear into my short, spunky hair. I hold my camera up and just ready to take a picture, or having just taken one, probably both. I turn just in time to notice the camera pointed at me and allow it to capture the delighted smile that never left my face all that day. It, like my camera, stayed near me the whole while.

            I have always loved photography, to capture something, a scene, a vision, with my camera. It is something that I still pursue most persistently. Never without my 35mm Canon Rebel hanging around my neck on any given trip, I am automatically identified as a tourist. But I don’t think that is quite fair as you would find me just the same, wandering around my own backyard. I will take rolls and rolls of film, capturing fun, family moments, carefully framing a scenic shot, setting up a portrait just so. And so you see me when someone else captured me on their camera.

            But my experience as a photographer has taught me that that which I see when I rest my eye to the viewfinder, that perfect shot, is not always what I pick up from the developers. Mostly it is my limited knowledge and experience with photography, but I have also come to realize that it is more than just the right color and lighting that doesn’t make the translation to film. All of the memories, the sensations, the emotions that come flooding back to me when I see a picture that I have taken, none of those, those things which make up the essence of what, of why I was capturing, none of those things are anywhere in the photograph. Only I, who was there, who experienced them, can see them when I look at the photograph.

            So where are those things? I also, as you know, love to write. I imagine that this passion comes from the same drive that compels me to take pictures: I am capturing something. But what am I capturing? The imperfections I find in the photo of Alyson, I have attempted to remedy through words, yet the vision is still imperfect. I cannot make you to see through my eyes, to transcend the words and images and to see, to know what I know of the depicted scenes. If all those things that I see, what might be called the “perfect” image, are not in the photographs that I use to capture them, nor in the words that I compile to attain the same goal, are they only present in my memory? Locked there, never able to be reflected, captured by any other means? Only accessible to myself?

            Suppose for a moment that the answer to each of these questions is “yes.” This leads to another, possibly more important question: why? Why do I capture those things if no one is ever going to be able to see what I am capturing? The easiest answer to this is that at least I will have them for myself. But I cannot believe my reasons end there. Something else works in this passion of mine. It is too strong to stop at such a shallow conclusion. Some desire inside of me compels me to write, to take pictures, to capture, that is stronger and more than “I want it for myself.” A flock of geese lands in a rain soaked field and I kick myself that I don’t have my camera with me. A stranger, or a friend, directs an interesting comment at me and my mind cannot rest until I have a pen set securely in my hand and some undisturbed time to work out the thoughts that have been bubbling inside of me into words, and place them safely on the page. Why is that? Where is it? Who is it for?

            Writing is a defining aspect of what is “me,” something I cannot imagine living without, that I cannot imagine being without. I have often come to the conclusion that, whether or not anyone ever cares to read it, I must write it, whatever it might be. But I think there must be something deeper than that. Yes, I am driven to write, I must write, but I do not see it as a selfish thing, not something that I did for myself and myself alone.

            As I take pen in hand, a familiar contentment comes over me. I write; I am at home. Sometimes I experience an overpowering need to write… anything, just to write, to once again feel a pen between my fingers, the scratching, the gliding, a book or page beneath my hand. It is almost addictively luring. That is sometimes. That is, I do not deny, for myself. But other times, other times something captures my mind and builds. It arrests my thoughts; it plants itself somewhere within me and grows and builds, and it must find a way out. This also drives me to my writer’s desk. Such a role I take on far before I can get access to a physical page and pen. The author inside of me long ago took over the duty of working out my thoughts and penning them as they should appear. She hands them to me, and I make sure that they find their way to paper. But an urgency, an acute feeling of necessity often accompanies this drive to write as well. I “write” at all times, the “writer” within always attending to an unending flow of words, phrases, themes; but me, the writer yearns to transcribe all of it onto the visible page. Can all of this be just for myself? The weighty importance that it takes on as it rises in me attests otherwise.

            I am capturing something. Whether it is through the imprint of light upon film or the stain of ink upon paper, I am creating a representation of that which, for some reason or another, I feel driven to represent, to save, to keep, to have for much longer than the fleeting moment in which it occurs. Carefully, focusedly I turn the lens of my camera. Gently, caressingly I trace the letters of precious words onto a white background. I love the image that I see through my viewfinder. My heart skips a beat at the breathtaking beauty of the field, vividly green grass, strikingly blue sky. I can’t not at least attempt to capture it. And then I experience the additional thrill of making the attempt. I set up the shot, move to just the right perspective, adjust the angle just so; click. There, maybe that one will come out to something close.

            Writing is slightly different. I love the image, I love the essence that is there already, but oftentimes I cannot truly see it for what it really is until I make the attempt to capture it. That is not to say that I ever fully succeed in the representation that I create, but I do find the true original through creating. Creating and capturing. Yes, it is both. I am driven to the act of creating by an esteem for the original; but then, once I have striven at the attempt of capturing I find that I treasure what I have created, even more so than through my photography. I suppose that it has something to do with the nearness of writing. A photograph, I take of a scene outside of me, over there. The resulting picture is attained through the means of a small mechanical box. Staring at the glossy sheet, I can say, “Yes, I remember that scene; the sky is more hazy than it really was, but I did a decent job of setting up the composition.” My writing, on the other hand, is a reflection of what is inside of me, right here. And the result often becomes to me a treasure all its own; I wrote that; those words, that phrase, they are mine, and I proudly claim them. I cannot describe it to you better than that. They are mine; and the whole process, from a persistent thought, to the desperation to capture, to the comfort and thrill of writing, to the awe that comes when I realize I can claim ownership, every step adds, each time I experience it, to the enchantment that writing, that this capturing, is for me.

            And so I take pictures. You will see me, the “tourist,” with my unwieldy 35mm film camera strapped round my neck and poised in my hands, always at ready to capture another scene. And I write. My writing will remain and, I foresee, continue to grow strongly as a part of me for the rest of my life. Do I capture these scenes, these things, for me or for you? I still have not been able to come to that conclusion. For you, my words have at least given you a taste of what is here, what it is that I so desperately want to share make tangible. I have given you snippets, which, if you allow them, can come together to form a hazy peek at the vision that is mine. For you, perhaps the picture, independent of my reflection, provides a pleasant sight, a lovely young girl, a picturesque background. That’s fine; it has served a good purpose. For me, my photograph, my words, provide a key to the “perfect” scene, a means of viewing and experiencing it again in some small way. And so I continue my writing and my photography. I know not what use it serves you, but for me it satisfies a passion, enriches a moment, and produces a treasure that I will have as my own regardless of whether anyone else sees it as I do.

Hashimoto obviously has a bone to pick with Elbow. Most significantly he challenges Elbow’s investment in voice and more particularly, his assertion that voice makes for good reading and no voice makes for bad reading. Even Elbow is never able to come to the point of identifying how exactly we know whether or not a piece of writing has “voice” in it. Therefore we are left to “feel” our way through reading (and writing) in order to come to that conclusion. This is dangerous as it takes our attention off of “is this effective writing?” and places all of our focus on “how does it make me feel?” Hashimoto sees this (and rightly, too) as a very dangerous direction to take. Even if (and I think) voice is important to good writing and even more so to us as writers, it is not wise to start off on the “feeling” test to determine the value of writing.

Sorry this is late. The syllabus that I have in my notebook did not have this assignment on it (and I thought I had the revised one too), so I was not aware of it until class this morning.

Kristen

Trouble Writing? Me?!

            My fingers itch; my heart races. I need a pen; where is my pen? Words, phrases, sentences run through my mind… need a pen, need a pen, need a pen! A thrill runs through me as I watch these words form thoughts and ideas. They are unshuffled, scattered and still intangible, but I can see the shape, the form that they want to make, as a misty shadow just out of reach. I need my pen!

            Writing is a passion of mine. I sit down with pen and paper and feel at home, content and happy. I yearn for the spare time to just sit and write for myself. For myself. I love my journal, my letters, my stories. My fingers itch to work on them! Often I find myself composing material in my mind throughout the day…

            This isn’t working. Everything that I have just written should work. It looks like a typical Kristen beginning to a personal essay. It describes a typical Kristen beginning to a personal essay: my mind starts working on it the moment my teacher assigns the prompt; I usually jot ideas down before I have even left class; I can’t wait to get started on it! Why is this time different? I had those ideas in class; material was running through my mind; I wanted nothing more than to get started! And then, for whatever reason I did not make it to the computer right away. A few days later I find myself staring at this screen trying to eek out a few more sentences. It should not be like this!

            I love to write more than anything! Something inside of me drives me to it; I yearn for, hunger for a blank page and a pen to fill it. The desperate search for a pen alluded to in the first part of this essay is a real thing for me (I have always said that I have a phobia of being without one). Procrastination I leave aside for math and French; writing is something that I cannot live without and within which I find a joy, an excitement, a defining meaning that I cannot truly describe to you.

            I once claimed in another essay on my writing process, that I write without ceasing. I maintain that. Though I cannot give you that entire essay within the space of this one, it is an idea that I am extremely invested in and which pervades my approach to writing. The author who is penning this piece is me. Rather than merely me being her, our relationship is such that you cannot have me without having her. In an earlier draft of this piece I mentioned sliding into “my author role,” but I take that back now. It is an inaccurate image leading to a faulty understanding of this author of mine. Now that I think of it, even I cannot profess to truly know her, only that I am never without her. She is a part of me that never turns off; she is always writing; therefore, I am always writing. Time, fatigue, commitments, and need for sustenance and human interaction often prohibit her words from finding a visible place on the page, but that in no way suggests that she is not still writing.

            So where is this sense of abandonment coming from? This has long been a pervasive part of me, this relationship with my writing. Whether it be journaling or creative writing or academic essays, I have rested on a surety: that I am a writer. This surety has taken an even more solid form most recently. Since the end of last year I have suddenly burst forth with a greater profusion of writing on a regular basis than I had yet experienced. Two to three paragraph daily journal entries have become five or six pages. A short story I started in November is now a finished 16 double-spaced page document, the longest single manuscript I have ever written. An hour and twenty minutes produces a five page letter to a friend. And yet, here I sit, having come back to this piece on multiple occasions, trying to find words to write, words that should be there, that always are there.

            I can tell you my writing process, all of the physical manifestations of the author who is me. Since coming to college I have become closely familiar with the steps in which my writing makes its way from the pages of my mind to the pages on my desk: I start early; I come back to the piece as many times as necessary, each time writing until I can’t come up with anything else, setting it down and finding renewed ease and natural flow when I pick it up again; once the main piece is finished, I reread it and cut, past, add, drag, transition, and generally reconstruct until it all works. I was planning to explain all of that to you throughout the text of this piece, but I hit a wall. I’ll call it Elbow.

            Freewriting, rewriting, cooking, stewing, growing, start writing, keep writing, don’t stop, don’t think, press on, press on, press on… stop! That’s not what it is! From the start I loved reading Elbow. The way he writes as well as the things he is writing about quickly captivated my attention and held my sympathies. I can hear that same tone, that driving need to make the reader understand something that is very important to him. Much of my own writing reflects that same urgent and invested voice. I appreciate it; I am thrilled to mull over it in my mind. But then, I come to write, and it will not go away! Somehow, my mind got locked in the whirlwind of Elbow, the author within me stumbling over all of the advice, tools, try-this-and-you-will-be-able-to-write. I am able to write! And, as much as I have been fascinated and captivated by Elbow’s approach and fun sounding tools, his liberate-the-writer-within package is not a cure that I need.

            I count myself blessed to have never been held to the “correct” way of writing that so many have come up against. I know how, well, for the most part. And I can when I need to. Indeed I have had to pull out all of the formalities for a few of my classes since starting college. However, having been home schooled since the third grade I have been free and mostly on my own when it comes to my writing, at least until I entered college only one-and-a-half years ago. I had my grammar books, of course, from fourth grade all the way through high school; and Mom found some writing curriculum as well as several writing classes to help appease my avaricious desire to write. None of these were formal composition classes, though, nor did they teach the rigid, academically accepted essay. My most valuable teacher was my own work. What I did not like I threw away; what I liked, I framed and attempted to make more.

            By the time I hit college I was secure in my passion for writing. After completing English 101 I was secure in my abilities as well. After Creative Writing Non-Fiction I was secure and quite content in my writing process. Now, I struggle to retain any of that security. With Elbow in my head I feel locked down. Where has my author gone? This author who’s writing has always been so intuitive, so natural? Who has always had a firm awareness of when something is working and when it is not, and a firm grasp on how to fix it if it is not. Where has that surety gone? That solidity beneath my feet, that which I have always stood on.

             If this essay had taken the course that I had intended it to take, I would have described to you the amazing sensation of not knowing how I would get a piece written well, or even at all, but, as soon as I had pen in hand it would come: the direction, the words, the editing. I soon learned to depend upon it, that it would be there when I needed it, that I would always be able to pick up my pen and write Therein lies my writing. I do it because I love it. I do it, many times, because my fingers itch for a pen, and I would be useless if set to any other task. This author who is me does not know anything but writing and loves it with all that she is. She does not require formal steps and writing advice and rigid exercises to convince her that she loves to write, or that she can write. She can write, and she does write; she just needs to remember why she writes.

Muckelbauer provides a detailed description of three different types of immitation. The unifying theme is that through each of these types of immitation the product is always different from the original subject (although, for the first we would have to consider the final product to be the aquired tools from each immitation rather than the practice of copying verbatum). Thus, when one immitates one is not simply copying but creating. This is his main arguement for immitation, and thus how he supports his claim that immitation still has value. Whether we are immitating by copying verbatum and internalizing the “best” of a number of different writers, or immitating though trying to capture the “essence” of a subject, we are not merely copying, but creating something new and something individual. Thus we are sharpening, growing, creating our own writing and our own self.

Kristen

My writing serves me most significantly as a means of discovery. When I find that I cannot concentrate on any one of the many issues that are swirling around in my mind, or when I think and ponder an issue but cannot come to any sort of conclusion, I inevitably find myself with a pen in my hand, writing. By the end of the time that I spend writing on whatever it is that is occupying my thoughts I can see it so much more clearly.

Now, it is true that often the things I am writing about, trying to understand, are things that relate directly to myself: it is what I feel, what I think, what Iknow about a topic, and often what I know about myself. This, however is simply a necessity in the form of writing that I am engaged in, journalistic, pondering writing. I believe this type of writing to be extremely benificial and rewarding and, when not abused as a source in which to dwell on unedifying themes, a productive form of composition.

Voice plays into this as strongly, as voice shows through most easily in this style, a very personal one. The developement of voice and opinions and positions on any given issue will, I am confident, create a strong and powerful position from which to create any other form of writing. It is for the benefit of all writing that we focus on voice, not only for the benefit of dwelling on “self” and talking about “me.” A strong grip on one’s personal voice will add to the power of delivery of any other writing that one puts his/her mind to. This benefits not only “myself” but whatever cause (for writing is always for some cause, or reason; there is always a “why” I write) I choose to write for.

Yes, it is for me; but it is also for all those whom I am trying to reach, all of those whom I am trying to affect.