Writers' Wrodeo: Workshop Whoas and Wonders

 

I know what it’s like to be the bronco.  I was four years old. The child of Hungarian immigrants.  Poor. My parents were separated. I was unable to speak or understand English.  Lonely. Unbelonging.  Helpless.  Defended.

            The kindergarten nun—I didn’t have a way of remembering an English name—had handed out flash cards for us to identify pictures with a word.  Of course, I didn’t, at the time, follow what this game was.  I had just come from being wrestled out of the protection of my coat.  I was hungry.  Why was I being subjected to this?

            All the other children were happily calling out words.  When it came my turn, I crossed my arms over my chest.  Pouted.  And shoved the flashcard away with the back of my hand.  I burst into tears.

            What happened next, I don’t know.  But I learned to speak, write, and read in English.  I have been teaching English, now, for over 40 years. My Hungarian father often bragged that a Hungarian girl was teaching the English English. But I feel helplessness and frustration in some students when I introduce new writing strategies in workshops.  The first round is always the toughest: “It’s my writing!” a student will often say, implying that I am violating her privacy.  “That’s the way I like it,” another will say (implying “hands-off!”).  Or, “You just want me to write the way you want me to write.”  The worst part of that is the implication that I’m being just as arbitrary as teachers who insist on the five-paragraph essay, or simply regurgitations of teacher’s opinions.

            In other blog posts, among them, “Reasons for Writing” and “Damning with Praise,” I offer ways in which to understand workshop dynamics. But the most difficult experience is the defensiveness and ego-attachment we are considering here.  And it often comes from experiences that have little to do with writing, per se, and everything to do with the vulnerabilities that come from the kinds of childhood trauma I described above.  If you are peripheralized in any way, especially because of things that you cannot help—nationality, gender, race, age, sexual-orientation, family, ability, or class—any suggestion that you can grow as a writer might feel like just another personal rejection—“Don’t be you. Be like me.”  If, in addition, you have only had single opportunities to hand in papers for a grade—which would make anyone feel anxious and helpless—then any recommendation for redrafting will raise a feeling of despair.

            I regularly meet now with my own colleagues to workshop my own writing—this post, too, has been vetted by my husband, for example. I’ve made many changes from my first draft, calling on the voices of my fellow writers in my head. My editors offer me suggestions, which  almost always help me to make significant breakthroughs in my work. But in the past, in the hands of workshop leaders that were writers but not teachers, I have walked away in tears.  Especially corrosive are those men who use workshops to court women.  (But that’s for another post.)  Then there are workshops where the leader assumes and maintains power by how she metes out attention and praise.  Cliques form. And we’re right back to feeling like the child who doesn’t belong.

So, if you feel, as I did, like pushing away from the desk and sulking, ask yourself these questions.  Is my teacher a writer? Is my teacher a teacher (as opposed to a writer who needs a job)?  Does this teacher have experience and writers’ skills to offer me? Do I want to learn them? Do I feel like I can grow as a writer?  Do I want to reach more readers?  Or is this about my feeling bad about myself, for other reasons?

If I didn’t watch others around me walk, I might have crawled all my life.  If I didn’t have those tall people holding my hands as I stood for the first time, I wouldn’t have walked.  If I didn’t have other dancers show me the steps and model for me how to make the moves—I wouldn’t be the dancer I am.  So, too, with writing.

And if you can’t learn from what is said directly about your work, learn from what is said about others’ writing.  Learn from the insights that arise in you and that you share.  Trust the process. Always express gratitude for others' care and attention. 

Your ego and fears and anger will be like that bronco bucking, kicking, struggling.  But stay with it.  In time, you will tame your fears and recover from the real insults to your integrity that come from xenophobia (fear of strangers) and prejudice.  And then, oh the places your writing will ride you!

How’s your bronco-bustin’ going?

Works cited:

Cover art: http://www.distinctlymontana.com/rodeo-women

End art: http://worldartsme.com/happy-trails-clipart.html#gal_post_64416_happy-trails-clipart-1.jpg

The Bliss of Marking Papers

        

        So the way I like to tell the story, the disciples approach Jesus and say, "Hey. We want to get this enlightenment thing.  Do we tear our clothes? Do we eat gluten-free? Do we confess that we cheated on our taxes?"  And Jesus says, (and what follows is for real): "Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate." This is from the Gospel of Thomas in The Nag Hammadi Library, a series of scriptures found buried in urns that didn't make the cut for the Bible as we know it.  No wonder: Don't tell lies? Don't do what you hate? Institutions~whether family, school, church, government, business, or the local book club~would not exist unless we lied and did what we hated. Truly, think about it.  We all specialize in sailing down The River Denial. We lie to ourselves. We lie to each other.  And we drudge through things we hate. So the founders of the early church were not about to give these truth-telling gospels air time.

        So if what Jesus is purported to have said is the key to enlightenment, this means that teachers marking papers are destined for hell~or, at the very least, wrecked weekends and no time to watch "Lost" or "The Voice."  Because traditional ways of marking papers~copy-editing and co-writing student papers; assigning  numerical grades to everything; tabulating for report cards~are boring and onerous. The only way to keep doing it is to lie and do what you hate.

       In the beginning of my career, I truly hated marking papers, and I assumed the position that I just LOVED it~bled all over my students submissions (yes, that's the word for it) first in red ink, then in green (as if that was more "with it"), then in carbon pencil. I pored over every word as if it were the proverbial gospel truth.  I would end up putting more effort into responding, and often lay down more footage, than they did.

       Then I enrolled in a post-doc MFA program for poetry, and my over-zealous mentor bled all over one of my essays. I was a published author by then, had blissfully written a dissertation (no lie), was truly engaged in learning, and for a month I couldn't even read all the comments.  I couldn't revise.  I felt as though she had co-opted my work.  I was disenfranchised~literally, had lost my freedom of thought. If I was so affected, what about students who are insecure and discouraged~and therefore rebellious?

        WOW!  All those months and months of moiling over student papers~an agonizing, futile, backfiring waste. Then I read The Nag Hammadi Library.  Ever since, I have lived by that quote: "Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate."  OK.  I approximate that as best I can, so I can still have students to teach and draw a salary that allows for massages. I also teach students to not tell lies and not do what they hate. Yes. Read on.

       Surely, it is worthwhile to review how students are thinking, learning, "progressing."  As I have grown as a teacher~and learn how to support their creative and critical thinking~the papers have become much more engaging.  But still.  So I ask myself these questions:  What exactly do I hate about marking papers?  How am I telling myself and my students lies?  I ask the students corollary questions: "Do you hate writing papers?  If so, why? How are you living a lie with them?" Then I ask, "How can we do this so that we can tell the truth and love what we do?"

       From my point of view: I hate stacks of papers~they overwhelm me.  I hate marking every error.  I hate reading unreadable work. Students hate being isolated from each other. They hate writing papers that don't reflect who they are. That's a whole other topic, but focusing on marking papers, here are some strategies that helped me transform our experience.  And the guy was right~the teaching and the learning got much, much better.

      (1) For all assignments, we focus on audience and reader engagement.  I draw a line where I become disengaged in a paper. This is far more helpful and awakening than the lie of plodding on. I will ask, "Did you write this in a rush? Resent it? Not care? Why?"  The ensuing discussion is where the learning happens.  Then I send the student back to write a real paper.

      (2) This is important~we learn what we do.  I don't need practice in revising their papers for students.  THEY do.  Either for themselves or for each other. (And fragments can be more effective than "complete sentences.")  See (3). I will identify an error pattern, but not do the work of finding all of the instances of it.  I find ways to encourage them to teach each other.

      (3) We respond to assignments in person. This truly solves the problem of leaning towers of spilled papers. I will put the paper on an overhead projector, either on a tray or digitally.  Looking at the same screen is a powerful communal act.

      (4) We do workshop the first pages of first drafts. "Yes but the good stuff is on page 3!"  "Well then, bring it to the front.  It's your job to get and keep us engaged."  

      (5) On submission days, students gather in groups of four to read and respond to each other's papers, while I one-on-one privately for grades.  KNOW THIS: we can all tell by a quick look where a paper is going.  Study the literature, not their papers. I ask students to tell me what their peers said.  They report back to the groups what I said.  It might take more than one day.  But we're done.  

      (6) Students come to me with a proposed grade, referring to criteria that I sometimes give them, sometimes have them develop together.  It's rare that a student is off by more than a plus or minus.

       The Benefits: No stacks.  Students get immediate responses and ideas for revisions.  They practice writing and reading for audience. They teach each other (which is the best way to learn).  We tell each other the truth, and we do what we love~exercise the power of language and community.

       "Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate."  How can you be more authentic in the classroom?  How can you find bliss in your life?

                                

  

© 2014 Susanna Rich

Damning with Praise

 

      "Look," I said, "all the balls are together in the corner, and not one at the net."  So, in The Inner Game of Tennis, Timothy Gallwey remarks to a group of students who had just finished successfully hitting  back thirty balls. Gallwey adds,

                          Although semantically this remark was simply an observation of fact, 

                          my tone of voice revealed that I was pleased with what I saw.  I was 

                          complimenting them, and indirectly I was complimenting myself as their 

                          instructor.

                                  To my surprise, the girl who was due to hit next said, "Oh, you 

                          would have to say that just before my turn!" (38-39)

       In the following series of balls, the students reported that they were less aware of their feet and hand positions--concerned as they had become with hitting the ball over the net. And they kept missing. In response to Gallwey's implicit compliment, they had become distracted, self-conscious, and absent-minded. Educator Claire Weinstein would say that they had become focused on performance instead of mastery--the score (grade, approval, ranking) instead of the what and how of a skill.

       Gallwey's book radically transformed my sense of writing workshop. Students understand how corrosive negative judgments are--vague, undeveloped, derivative, boring. But they are initially shocked when I stop them from praising each other's work. No Wow, Great, Powerful, Amazing allowed. Compliments are comparisons--they polarize. I know that in workshops of my own work, something withers in me when someone else is complimented--and, I find myself become dependent on/victim of those who will be reviewing my work. I start writing to manage their responses, instead of writing to create something genuine. In one disastrous workshop, a poet savaged my work, claiming he wanted to take me to the next level--then, feeling guilty for his harsh treatment of my work, spent the rest of the afternoon over-complimenting everyone else. Ouch!

       I've seen this happen in the classes I coach when a compliment is delivered--across the room, someone slightly rounds her shoulders, someone else masks envy with a fake smile.  The more forthright will spurt an epithet followed by "Just slit my wrists, now." When the next person's poem is in review, a writer will preface the workshop with apologies, explanations, a lot of don't hurt me chatter.  All this creates an adversarial atmosphere.

      

      So, how are we to develop our various crafts--writing, giving and receiving responses, teaching. How are we to be godparents to each other's work? How do we move from the politics of praise to appreciation? Throughout his book, Gallwey emphasizes two things:

                           (1) Keep your eyes on the ball.

                           (2) Increase your awareness of "what actually is" (34).  

Focusing on what should/might garner compliments isn't focusing on what is. As his student put it, "

                            Compliments are criticisms in disguise! Both are used to manipulate

                            behavior, and compliments are just more socially acceptable! (40)

     The language of what is is what we develop, not only in writing workshop, but in literature courses.  Let's take a stanza from Dickinson:

                             Wild nights -- Wild nights!

                             Were I with thee

                             Wild nights should be

                             Our luxury.

We could yadaya about how spare, risk-taking, sensual, breath-taking, OMG she is (notice the focus on she and not the poem). This is fawning, not appreciation. Here's how we notice what is:

(1) REMEMBER. We look away from the poem and report back what we remember. Simply, and without judgment or comparison.  We look back on what tended to stick.

(2) DISCERN PATTERNS. What is on the page?

                             four lines

                             four syllables per line

                             visually, the first line is longer than the others

                             Wild, Were, and Our are capitalized

                             the sound w appears in wild, were

                             wild is repeated three times

                             three punctuation marks, in this sequence: -- ! .

                             high frequency vowel sounds of ai in wild, nights, I, luxury

                             exclamation point after the second Wild nights

                             when reading the poem aloud, the mouth puckers and unpuckers on w's

                                 and widens on ai's

(3)  ASK WHERE DOES THE STANZA BEGIN FOR YOU? Working on our poems in process, this question helps the writer consider alternative beginnings.

(4) ASK WHERE DOES THE STANZA END FOR YOU?  See (3) beginnings=endings.

(5)  ASK WHAT DID I LEARN FOR MY OWN WRITING? 

There's more. With a student's permission, I will post a blog on how we responded to a particular poem and what we learned by KEEPING OUR EYES ON WHAT IS.      

        Alexander Pope coined the expression "Damning with faint praise." There is a lively discussion on the internet, arguing that "faint" should be "feigned." I agree. Too often, well-meaning teachers and responders will feign--pretend--a compliment--the old sandwich method--say something nice, say something critical, say something nice. That's condescension.  It's insulting.  We know it's pro forma. We walk away feeling damned with praise.

    

        Appreciating each other's words takes patience, time, and effort. It's so much easier to dismiss someone with a compliment of Great! But oh, the difference saying what is makes! I'm posting this blog on Valentine's Day, 2014.  Instead of saying, "You look great,"  my hubby said, "the gold snake on your earring picks up on the highlights in your hair."  Did he ever (in novelist Vladimir Nabokov's words) Caress the details?!

       Gallwey keeps his eyes on the ball and racket. We are writers: let's keep our eyes on the word and Penn. 

      

© 2014 Susanna Rich