Blogging for the last time.

As I write this last blog entry, and this will be my last, I consider all that I have learned from this experience and this class. I feel that classes such as these are designed not only to introduce us to some theory and other points of view, but to get our creative juices flowing. I have been in other classes that have also done so, but never one solely designed to examine the act and art of creating. So it behooves me to list the ideas that I gleaned from this class—the good with the bad, the positive with the negative.

1. A writer needs time to write.
I noticed that I am often pressed for time and when asked to produce something “creative” that is not a good thing. It reminds me of a great short story by an author whose name escapes me about an undertaker who told great stories and jokes. Eventually his stories caught the eye of a newspaper which hired him to be a humorist of sorts. Once the man was out of his work situation, he didn’t have contact with humanity as he once did and his source of material dried up.
I always thought I wanted to write, but I now see why some writers go to the remote writer’s colonies and such. It takes time and solitude to reflect and my mind can’t seem to push the constant barrage of my own classroom material aside long enough to reflect.
I dream of taking a summer place that is quiet and remote and typing away all day until I come up with something grand. I so admire those novelists who are also in the work force while they write. Now I understand why Michael Crichton does not practice medicine today, nor Scott Turow or John Grisham practice law. Tom Clancy quit his job in the business industry to write, but only after he was published.

2. Not all classes are conducive to sharing thoughts and ideas.
I have been in some writer’s groups and classrooms that seemed to electric with the flow of creative energy. I found this class to have a few creative outlets—Dr. Cain’s expert writing—she is a published writer and I enjoy reading and learning from her expertise and stories. When the blogs became more personal, it was a way in which to get into the heads of some of my classmates, because we rarely bantered ideas back and forth in the classroom. The peer edits of classmates papers also provided an insight into other ideas.
I miss the forums where we could share our opinions—this forum seemed to me to be a place to reiterate our reading to our professor—good enough. But I wish we had more time to converse in a relaxed “third space.”

3. Going into the unknown.
I seem to be the slowest student when it comes to the uptake of the theory articles that we read in class. Again, time is an issue. If I could just take some time for coffee and discussion, I think I would understand better. I don’t really have enough time to talk with my co-worker, Erin, since the rare moments we can steal from the high school day is spent discussing how the Expository Writing classroom is going. I so enjoyed meeting with a few of my classmates at the coffee house to discuss an article I found particularly dumfounding. Not only did I come away with a new understanding of the material, but I also made a new friend.

4. Blogging can seem like ranting at times.
Enough said.

Blogging in the Eternal Abyss

Ok, I stole that title from some lines in Garden State, but it feels like that here. I sit in a Starbucks in New York City to complete my online blog to my fellow students back home in Indiana. The music is lively, as are the crowds. I offer the extra seats at my table to whomever comes by and stop once and awhile to chat with total strangers. I know that would appall a few of you. I love it when humanity just washes around me as I sit or stand quietly by and take it all in. The first night we were here a well-dressed man from Denmark offered us the unfinished portion of his dinner, as I am sure he could not fathom leaving so much untouched food on his plate. We talked a little about portion size here in America and I made note that he was fit and slim—something that I am not.

Yesterday we went to the half-price ticket booth to see what plays were available. They ALL were and we stood in a terribly-long, but fast-moving line and spoke to the strangers on either side. As we got within a glimpse of the ticket windows, the sight became a little like a feeding-frenzy. But since our hearts were not set on one particular play, and we were willing to see anything, the anxiety of the moment dissipated. It also helps to be 5 foot 11 inches so one can peer above the average-sized crowd. I ask the couple in front of me what they found out from the ticket salesmen, and they answered with a smile. Single seats for Jersey Boys and restricted seating for Chorus Line. No thanks. We asked about Grey Gardens, a musical about the crazy aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Onassis who became even crazier in their latter years. We got the tickets for half price and lollygagged around the streets until the 3:00 showtime.

This musical was quite an unusual one. It told the story of the these famous relatives of Jackie's in two acts--one in 1941 and the second act in 1973. These two women made the newspapters in the 70's when it was discovered that they lived in their 28-room house in the Hamptons with their 52 cats and mountains of empty tin cans as the house sunk even further into disrepair and squalor. The play starts with a beautiful glimpse into the lives of the rich in the 1940’s as young Edie is engaged to Joe Kennedy Jr. The second half is basically a harsh view of two aging spinsters—Edie and her mother as they fail to feed their cats and go to sleep in beds infested with insects. Did I mention that this was a MUSICAL? Yes, one can write anything and have it play on Broadway. But not to worry, remember I am attracted to the dark and depressing, I just didn’t realize you could set that stuff to music. I love New York.

Today we will buy tickets to a comedy or maybe not. Inherit the Wind is playing on Monday, and most of the theaters are dark that day, so one’s choice of plays are limited. I hope to see the Guggenheim Museum of Art today, and if I have time I will write.

If I wrote something and nobody read it, did I really write it?

I sit before my computer once again trying to push out some great thoughts and fascinating syntax. I don’t really have a rhyme or reason to what I am writing, and wouldn’t my students laugh as they saw me stressing over a “free write,” something I assign to them without the slightest hesitation.

So what is my goal in writing a blog? Do I need to write ideas in black and white? What if I am the only one who sees them—does that count for anything? Is my goal to talk to myself? I do find it a humorous and a little significant that the spell-check thinks that when I type the word ‘blog’ I perhaps would like to use the words ‘bloc,’ ‘blot,’ or my favorite ‘blob’ instead.

I have been listening to Me Talk Pretty Some Day by David Sedaris in my car because a.) I am not a big fan of radio music which is mostly loudly-shouted advertisements and b.) I am addicted to listening to other people’s stories of their dysfunctional families. Even Tolstoy started one of his great Russian novels, Anna Karenina, with a quote about discontented families: Since Mr. Sedaris and a bevy of others seem to be publishing books and essays about their own crooked childhoods, why not I? My next goal will be to tell a story about my own family, but here’s a short anecdote for now.

I come from a very competitive family. I was always the oddball, the creative one, the sister who was a little different. To show you how desperate I was to come out first, just once, witness the following: I am the oldest of three sisters. My youngest sister was always the outgoing one. Jan was the class vice-president, the one with the boyfriends. The sister closest to me in age—Helen—was the talented one. She was ranked third from the top in her class for her GPA and she would dominate any and all games that she attempted. Tennis—she made varsity after picking up a racket one summer. Swimming—she was the fastest back-stroker on the team. Cards—I couldn’t even beat her at Go Fish, let alone Canasta.

One night, in our younger years, we had gotten into our pajamas and were getting ready to watch a little TV before our 9:00 bedtime. We all had a chocolate candy bar that we had gotten from our grandmother earlier that day. Candy was a rare treat in a family where the mom is a health food nut and the dad is a diabetic. But this night we were given a dispensation from my grandmother—a woman with a real sweet tooth. I knew the drill, I would usually gobble my chocolate down and be done with it. Jan usually finished hers next with no comments. But Helen was known for eating like a bird, for picking apart the delectable rectangles of the flat brown bar and finishing last as Jan and I looked longingly on. Helen loved to prance around while finishing her treat to tease us. This night was going to be different. I unwrapped the chocolate bar and surreptitiously stuck it into the elastic waistband of my pajamas. I quickly covered it with my pj top and turned to signal that I was finished with the candy treat—mine was all gone.

It seemed like an eternity before Jan and Helen finally finished their snack. Now I could pouch on them, retrieve my candy bar before their envious eyes and finish it off in front of them for once. As I mockingly asked, “Are you guys done already?” I was prepared to lift up my pajama top and reveal my prize and to finally enjoy eating the chocolate. I whipped my top up and to my dismay, the chocolate had melted all over my midsection. Instead of getting the last laugh, I gave them a laugh. Business as usual.

New York in the Spring

Spring break for us Fort Wayne teachers comes in nine more days. I can’t believe it is almost here. This year I am going to visit NYC with a friend of mine, Lora, from school and she is taking me to a Yankees game. I am not a big sports aficionado, but I do know what goes where and why. I learned to appreciate the drama and finesse of an American baseball game while watching the Cubs at Wrigley Field (in Chicago—not the bar) about 15 years ago. A baseball savvy friend sat with me and explained the Zen of it all and I finally got it. So, it’s off to Yankee stadium before they tear the thing down in a year or two. I will finally get to see Lora’s favorite player in person—Derek Jeeter (spelling).

Hopefully we can see some plays, but it doesn’t seem that there is anything new that we haven’t seen already. Wicked, Spamalot, and 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee—done. I noticed that most of the musicals on Broadway are all remakes of something else lately. There is Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, The Color Purple, and even a musical based on Legally Blonde. Looks like someone else is having trouble in the creativity department. I guess we will just head up to the half-price ticket booth and take our chances. I am rarely disappointed when the lights go down and the curtain comes up in a Broadway theater.

One other thing I hope to accomplish is to go back to the Guggenheim Museum of Art. There is always something creative to see there. I remember standing and smiling, maybe even chuckling, at a half-wall sized painting of a mother standing naked in the doorway of her kitchen as she threw to the ground the casserole she had just baked. Her family was seated calmlyand distracted at the dinner table and they seemed not to notice her. A young man of around 25 asked me aloud what I thought was funny. He wasn’t angry, just curious. I said, “You’ve never been a mother, have you?” and we chatted for awhile. (I know, there I go—talking to strangers.) The other "art" (I almost said peice--but you will see why I changed it later) that made quite an impression on me was a Rpbert Maplethorpe black and white photograph of the torso of a man. This black man was dressed in a bright white suit. You could only see him from below his collar to the mid-thigh area. His pants were unzipped and his penis was hanging out (if that is the correct verb.) I was a little worried about my teenage children who were along on this trip. As I made my way down the spiral hallways to the lobby I noticed my husband having a conversation with a couple of the kids and their friends. He was asking what was art anyway? What is creativity? Who decides and who can censor? I thought in my head—I love this guy--and New York.

Telling, not showing

There is fiction in the space between
The lines on your page of memories
Write it down but it doesnt meanYou’re not just telling stories
There is fiction in the space between
You and me

There is fiction in the space between
You and reality
You will do and say anything
To make your everyday life
Seem less mundane
There is fiction in the space between
You and me ---Tracy Chapman


I thought I had finished the revisions on my Paper #1, yet as I drove to work this morning I heard this old Tracy Chapman song. Is this perfect for a discussion about dialectics or what? I always thought the space between my life and reality a little differently. I will do and say anything to make my everyday like seem more mundane. Spoken from a true spaz. My life runs away with the wind and I often yearn for those quiet, dull, mundane nights. No children. No dogs. No house. No worries.

As far as telling these stories…I always feel that my writing does not do my life justice. I have such vivid memories of events and people in my life—but the lines on my page of memories—doesn’t feel complete. It is always too much tell and not enough show. The best thing I found out about the Blog is that there is a delete button, something I plan to hit when this class is over. But for now, some brief insights into stories I could tell.

My father was an pilot in the United States Air Force. The first time I was a passenger in an airplane, my father was doing the driving. That may sound like fun for some, but my dad was also a prankster. He liked to look back over his shoulder and fake an attempt to roll the landing gear down manually while exclaiming, “ I can’t make the wheels come down, what will we do?” Very funny. I am afraid to fly to this day.

There’s more to this story. The summer of my junior year in high school my day bought an RV home and took a month off work. He told us we would be touring the western United States that summer. I threw a horrendous teenaged girl fit and cried about missing all the fun with my friends at the community pool. We toured every state west of the Mississipi that summer and I often think of that trip and the memories that we all shared. I especially think back on that summer when I start missing my father. He died of diabetes at the age of 55. He never knew his grandaughter.

Blocked, or not.

Does everyone have the ability to be creative? That is what I have been thinking about lately. I noticed that I haven't written anything that was made-up or imaginative in some years now. I do write essays, papers, letters, notes, e-mails, and occasionally a poem or two, but not really a story or the beginnings of a novel. And the ideas I do have are really just a thinly-veiled unveiling of my actual life. I don't think I could even create a alternative persona on that new internet "game" Second Life. I have too much to do maintaining my first life. Life is truly stranger than fiction, so why create?

I also am not interested in talking about my distant past. Not because I have some deep, dark moments to hide or avoid---I had a fairly happy childhood. Oldest daughter of a special-education teacher and a salesman/Air Force pilot, I went on a bevy of vacations with my parents and my two sisters because we loved to travel. I have been on a one-month trip that included most of the states west of the Mississippi in a motor home. I have camped on the beaches of Cape Cod and Savannah, Georgia. I have been flown in a 4-seater Cessna to Lake Wawasee by my own father. I know there are funny anecdotes in my past, but who writes happy and gets away with it?

College life was a growth experience. I was traumatized by the fact that it changed me from a shy teenager to the extrovert I am today. I cried as I left my parent’s home, but I never looked back. I transferred schools in the middle of my freshman year, with little or no scars. I even learned that being the only white girl on a black floor was something I could learn to embrace and not fear. I even joined a sorority myself for a year—something basically unheard of from a science major. I spent the last year interning in a medical center laboratory, living back with my parents. Is there a magazine article here?

I married a medical student—the smartest man I have ever met-- and learned to adapt and grow with another person. I didn’t let him outgrow me and I kept up with him intellectually. We lived in an a few apartments and a few houses and reared three children to young adulthood. We have seen dogs and cars come and go. We have backpacked to Europe in our youth, and have ventured out to many other places as the years went by—Costa Rica, Mexico, England, San Francisco, New York. Twenty-seven years later I look across a dinner table at a man that still interests me. Some great fights, but no divorce. I won’t get on Oprah at this pace.

If I am to created something, it must be in the future. Somewhere in the “undiscovered country.” I find myself not wanted to revise my past, but to explore what’s in front of me yet.

It's late, so I'll let my hair down

Nobody ever does anything the easy way in my family. From the outside, you might think we lead a pretty semi-charmed kind of life, and in a way we do. We have a house, some cars and enough to eat. But what you see isn't always what you get. I always wanted to have extraordinary children. A mother should be careful what she wishes for, or at least look up the meaning of the word extraordinary. Strange, odd, bizarre, and unexpected are lurking in the definition of extraordinary along with amazing and astonishing. I forgot to read the small print in the dictionary is all, but by then it was too late. I have three extraordinary children.

The youngest, a girl, attends college in Chicago where she studies Nursing and goes to a Second City workshop on the weekends. It seems that the one Humanities class she took was Acting and she was noticed by her acting professor as having "talent and honesty." I knew all that teenage girl-drama would not go to waste. She and I get along most of the time--at least I get along with one of her personalities. She can be the most intellectual, compassionate companion one minute and an insufferable ball of emotion the next. My favorite quote from my daughter: "You don't know what it is to be a girl, Mom, you are cold like a man." (Hey guys, I feel your pain.)

My middle son is nicknamed The Closer. He is a no-bullshit guys' guy, Homecoming king, fraternity president. All his life he has taken on more and more responsibility in his never-ceasing quest to "clear the family name." (Wait for it.) He is a senior at Miami of Ohio University in the quaint little town of Oxford, Ohio. He has an beautiful girlfriend who wants to be an English teacher. (Oedipus, anyone?) He is currently searching for a job that will allow him to settle in a different town than his parents. My favorite quote, spoken after he enrolled at IPFW for a summer class: "My communications class is like the United Nations--let's face facts Mom, at Miami, everyone pretty much looks like me."

My oldest. His life will make a great play someday. Once a student in all of the "gifted" classes, his best friend destined to be the school valedictorian, he gave that path up in his pursuit of alternative methods of consciousness. He is "taking a break" from college as he tries to "figure things out" in that infamous institution--the School of Hard Knocks. Rehab in Minnesota led him to his current occupation as the sous chef at the Palomino Restaurant in Minneapolis. He sleeps on a futon in a house he shares with two ex-bicycle messengers and a very well-behaved pit bull named Teenie. My favorite quote (although picking a favorite is very elusive): "Mom, you were a nerd in high school, you don't know what it means to be popular."

The house is empty now except for my spouse of 27 years and two 1-year old Puggles. The kids are in three different states, but their spirits can be heard occasionally yelling down the hallways or laughing in the basement. People ask if my life is too quiet now, and I say quiet? "What is that--I see 125 teenagers every day." I know this isn't really delving into the "cracks" of my own life, but it might help to understand how I feel spread out--pulled into geographical areas that I don't occupy. I am haunted by words.

Our Third Place

I'm sure someone has already mentioned it, but this blog makes for a fine "third place" except for the fact that it is a little bit home and a little bit work (school). Hi Autumn, Jase, Houston, Cindy, Erin and all you other guys not sitting in the front row. How was your day. I got ANOTHER snow day Wednesday and besides snuggling in bed with my two puggles and doing a few errands, it was pretty non-descript. I did to out to eat with another teacher, as is our custom on all snow days (it helps to have a behemoth of a gas hog SUV that sits in the garage until such occasions.) As we entered Cosmo’s two things happened. The owner, a handsome Greek man, came over and greeted us with, “Hey you two, snow day again? How’ve you been?” Was this the neighborhood meeting place I forgot to mention? We always see friends and acquaintances here, and the wait staff and owner knows us…so? And then the usual scenario for me. No joke. At least once a month. Someone (a perfect stranger usually) comes over with, “You look familiar to me. Don’t I know you?” Now, I am WAY beyond the old bar pick-up stage, and these people seem to be truly querying about our “past” relationship. But we can never figure it out. I go through my name, occupation and as much personal history has I feel comfortable with but to no avail. I usually end with, “I have that kind of face. The Everyman face. Don’t worry, it happens all the time.” In fact, it is a family joke. People think they know me. I postulate that it is because I talk to anyone. I make eye contact and they assume I a friend. And maybe I am.

Other details for my first unfettered blog entry….details about me. I love movies. I love movie quotes and often find myself saying them when the occasion demands it. It is just too sad that most people don’t understand what I mean, or they think I am terribly clever as I quote some of the most famous lines written by professional screenwriters. This is a great time of the year for me. Besides all the extra time off, there are a couple of movie channels that show nothing but Academy Award nominees for the month and what more does a film lover need, but a cup of tea and a blanket on a snowy morning?

Not to say that I don’t read. I do. I read all the same stuff as you guys do. But about 16 years ago, some friends and I thought we weren’t reading enough, so we formed a book club. We read and discuss one book a month. The meetings are in each other’s homes and includes food and wine—but we still discuss the book. It is kind a faux paus to show up without finishing that month’s selection, and pretty embarrassing. These women are smart—a librarian, a school principal, a computer programmer, a few others and me. This month we are reading The Book Thief, a young adult book proposed by the librarian. It is pretty thick, and the big buzz book in the YA world. Narrated by Death. Try that on for size.

Until next week, have a good one.

A Rough Paper

Cindy Renshaw
Creativity and Community
Paper #1 Rough draft
February 14, 2007

Feeling Restless

If anyone has lived a life full dialectics it is I. I was once the eager young ninth-grader whose essay on Why We Celebrate Memorial Day was read over the public address system at Eastwood Junior High. That same year I started dissecting worms in Biology class and when portly Mrs. Winters came down the aisle and beamed, “Here’s my future microbiologist”, I never looked back. I became a person with one leg on dry land (science) and one leg in the water (writing) from that day forward. My love of writing was put in the closet as I pursued a career in Medical Technology, one that seemed to always have the safety of job availability. Writing couldn’t guarantee the rent money. I thank Nancy Welch for the amphibious metaphor, but I have been trying to cut off that scientific tail for years now—and it always seems to grow back (like all good amphibians) and my efforts at creativity often take a back seat to research of any kind.
Welch talks about getting into the “right position” when it comes to writing and again, I have been seeking that position for years. It seems that whenever that creative leg or side of me starts to regain life, I seem to take the “safe” road again. Not the “I want to be like the teacher” road that Welch talks about in her book, Getting Restless, but the safe road of academic writing. Even as I enter a second career in teaching English (don’t ask—that is an entirely too lengthy of a story) and I find myself feeling that old creative restlessness, it still is easier for me to write the structured research or argumentative paper. Although I have managed to inject some creativity into my academic papers, the thought of baring my soul, using the other side of my brain, of “revising my writing to better fit my life” is a still a frightening thought.
This seemingly schizophrenic division in my brain was tempered with Temple Grandin’s view that some sort of chaos or genetic propensity for madness is quite normal in creative individuals. I can see now that the slight manic-depressive characteristics that exist in my personality many be a way of my creative side trying to make itself heard. I have always called myself a “visual learner”. Perhaps I don’t see in pictures, as Grandin does, but I often find myself running the movie of my life as an “author of renown” inside my own head. Still the writing that I most likely will put on paper is the conventional, safe, research-driven essay.
The Summersfield chapter helped me to see that all is not lost. They note that “artificial limits create a crisis which rouses the brains resources and throw everything into top gear.” The constraints that I put on my writing can indeed be seen as “enabling.” For instance, I love to do research. I love learning. I can take this constraint of academia and make it work for my creativity. I found the Summersfields gave great examples of exercises to encourage constraints that would affect writing positively in my students and myself. Without my search for knowledge, I would never have found these exercises and perhaps not this Creativity class. I have tried some of these exercises in my own classes and doing so, I found that I was approaching the “right position” for myself as a writer.
This fall I went to a workshop at a recent English teacher’s meeting, I was taught some exercises to help writing students find their own voice. We were all asked to write a stereotype of ourselves and then encouraged to break it. Therein we would find our own voice—the place where our writing should emanate from. I never dreamed that this little exercise would make me think about writing again. My stereotype was, I am a middle-aged Midwestern woman and…. This is where I stumbled. I have a great stereotype breaker that would push me to write my own story in my own voice—it is a real contradiction, but I chose the safer example. I am a middle-aged Midwestern woman and I curse like a sailor. It gets a laugh from the group and I am safe from revising my story for now.
Reading Peter Elbow, I realize that I should not always try to maintain the safe and reconciling voice in my writing. He maintains that a person who can “live with contradictions and exploit it—who can use conflicting models—can simply think more.” I know I would like to be a person that thinks more. I want to be a writer who finds a “way to break out of the limitations in the system.” Elbow says that we should search for contradiction work to affirm both sides. When reading my writing “scene”, my audience will see that I don’t have to search far for a contradiction. I have attracted contradictions like a magnet attracts iron filings (forgive the science metaphor.)
Finally, I reread the chapters in Nancy Welch’s book and found them to be just the push that I might need to enter into a revision of my own. I do commiserate with many of the students she profiles in her book, as I have often felt a version of what they felt about their writing. When writing a research paper, it is easy to NOT TALK ABOUT YOURSELF. Maybe that’s the point—to avoid my “self”, my revisions. I have been like Lee, afraid to lay my story on the line for fear that it might reveal too much about myself. As an English Literature teacher, it has always been easier to talk about the literature and leave out my personal story. But Welch encourages me to use revision, or begin writing by seeking to “question, challenge, and transform, not flee a particular reality.” I will embrace her postulations now that revision, and writing, is not “predictable and begins with a sense of dissonance—and this dissonance may be the start of a productive struggle.”
So with the encouragement of Welch and Summersfield I will write my “correct position” scene. And Peter Elbow gives me a push by backing up those ideas of constraints and revisions with his notion of writing by embracing the dialectic in my mind. Even Lewis Thomas shines as an example of a biologist who is also a writer. I can be the next biologist who is a writer, like Barbara Kingsolver or Beverly Hume. I can embrace the contradiction of having one foot on land and the other in the sea.

Breaking Stereotypes

I used to love to meet my writer friends for coffee and discuss our latest bits and pieces of brilliance. It was a relief to leave the Petri dishes and the incubators behind for awhile. Now I go to English teacher conventions. Not that I mind, I am adept at learning and research. I like to spend the day searching in the library and come up for air to synthesize my latest research paper. Lately, I have found that I seem to be putting more of my voice into these essays with some creative additions of diction and humor. It is perfectly fine to start a paper on the human eye with a quote from Melville. But a small workshop on Helping Students to find their Voice was a wake-up call for me.
The room was filled with other English teachers—my own tribe. We were asked to write down a stereotype of ourselves. One that was or was not true---just a stereotype. I wrote, I am a middle-aged Midwestern teacher who loves to read. Then we were instructed to break that stereotype with three true statements. Statements that would contradict the stereotype and show our true voice as a writer. I wrote my three, but hastened to cover up my paper from prying eyes. The first two statements would get a laugh (my usual goal in a class) so when asked for volunteers, I raised my hand. I am a middle-aged Midwestern teacher who curses like a sailor. Some giggles. I am a middle-aged Midwestener who hates Christmas. Guffaws and nods of agreement. I was even stopped in the hall by a nice professor from England who remembered my confession and who concurred with “Why are you Yanks so obsessed with all the Christmas decorations and such?” We conversed awhile and then I walked on. What I held concealed in my briefcase was the true revision. The correct positon as a writer. I am a middle-aged Midwesterner and I am the mother of a heroin addict. Just where do I go from here?

Works Cited
Elbow, Peter. Embracing Contraries. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Grandin, Temple. Thinking in Pictures. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.

Lewis, Thomas. The Lives of a Cell. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1974.

Summerfield, Geoffrey and Judith. Texts and Contexts. New York: Random
House, 1986.

Welch, Nancy. Getting Restless. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers,
1997.

Tuesdays are here again --Revisions and Welch

Nancy Welch must have minored in Psychology or Philosophy. I didn’t expect to see Freud quoted in a chapter about writing revision—but who knew? At first I found the entire chapter to be a mass of confusion, except for the charming anecdotes about Lee the marine/student. Then I started to let myself fall into it—you know—be the ball, Billy. I came to the conclusion that revision is not simply seen as “death-work” because students simply abhor revising their papers and would rather gouge out their eyes than do it. Revision is “death-work” because in doing extensive and deep work on one’s papers one is often trying to revise the moi or the sense of one’s self. I get it.

Now, I don’t think that we can delve deep into our own psyches while hammering out a research paper. That kind of paper usually calls for some kind of synthesis of an idea from the variety of arguments that one finds in the research. But I can see how revising something more personal—a memoir, a poem, or a short story does indeed often involve questioning the reality of my own life—to wonder if I am becoming “what I write” as Donald Murray says. Revising one’s work is indeed a revision of one’s life.

As a teacher, I am also conflicted when trying to “steer” a student to the correct form and organization of a written assignment. Often I can feel the hopefulness behind the words that they have written down and notice that they are counting on me to see what they wanted to say. Welch’s chapter three isn’t the first time I have heard that teaching writing might involve being trained to help with “writing problems” not “personal problems.” But, I have learned to adapt to the messy emotions of high school writers. I will never forget the time when a student asked if she could include some interview research in her paper on Adoption. Of course, I say, there is a way to cite an interview in our MLA handbook. Good, she replied, I’m meeting with my birth mother for the first time tonight and I wanted to use some of the meeting in my paper. I can’t control the emotions that come out of all the writing that I see, but I do try to help them say what they mean to say. I try to show them how to get to where they want to go.

I really did used to write myself once....

Before I was constantly grading papers and posting required forums and blogs....I really wrote once. Here is an old poem I found from years ago. I had just re-entered college at the age of 40 and was required to take the second semester of a Physics class. (Don't ask--it had been 20 years since I last had Calculus.) Just remember--I could write once.

Black Hole
His slightly messy head looks up from his cluttered desk,
he has a hopeful, helpful look around his eyes.
He move the pieces of bent wire, student exams, and lab pitures
to find a scrap piece of paper. I bend
over the equations he is scribbling,
his hand seems to be going the speed of light.
I race down the libraries of my brain,
searching for these formulas in the abandoned file cabinets.
Where have they all gone?
Into the Black Hole of 20 years.
I want to shout--
"I'm really not this stupid"
"Ive touched Michelangelo's David"
"I've laid under a sky of shooting stars on the banks of the Colorado"
"I've been on a first-name basis with micro-oganisms you will never know"
But instead I steady myself as I peer down at the mass of numbers and letters.
I am launching myself into that dark space.
Can he translate the ever-expanding universe
and make this explorer agin see home?

--CGR

Reading in the Dark--a proposal to teach a film class

Cindy Renshaw
Creativity and Community
Final Project Proposal
January 2007

Thinking in the Dark: How to Bring the Reluctant Learners
into the Creative Community


Ahhhhh. A snow day. A blessing for procrastinators all over the world. As I lounged around today in my old sweats and slippers, I thought about what my final project would look like for my Creativity and Community class. Erin Brady, my co-worker at Bishop Dwenger, is hoping to get a Writing Center up and running for our high-schoolers. As a member of the same English Department I am sure I will be required to help out with that venture, but I thought I might submit a more personal proposal for my own project.

The State of Indiana has a strict policy when it comes to English credits necessary for graduation. Every student MUST complete 8 semesters of some sort of English credits in order to be granted a diploma—including the basic, the Core 40, and the academic honors diplomas. This requirement is usually easily met with a variety of grammar, American and British Literature, speech, and writing classes. But for a small percentage of lower achieving students this requirement is a difficulty. Often these students will fail a required semester of American or British Lit.—leaving them with the only option but to “double-up” and take 2 English credits in one semester to fulfill the State’s regulations. Teaching a new kind of English class might attract this type of student and show them that writing can be fun!

Another goal that has been adopted by my high school is that of improving critical thinking skills in our students. The dictionary defines critical thinking as “the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion.” I tried to come up with a plan that I could actually USE in the classroom to teach critical reading skills and to fulfill a required English credit for a diploma.


My project would entail a proposal made to the curriculum committee in my high school. I would like to offer a new class to all students—one that could even be taught in summer school sessions to help alleviate the stress of the “doubled-up” English semester that is a hard task for low achieving students. I would like to teach a Film Analysis class. This class would entail viewing of modern movies and writing a variety of papers about the camera work, acting choices, themes, and viewpoints of the films themselves. I would have to design an actual class syllabus – showing a proposed calendar of actual films viewed and the papers assigned and their due dates. I think an actual lesson plan would also be helpful to convince the curriculum committee of the validity of the Film Analysis class. These artifacts would be what I would complete and present in my Creativity and Community classroom also. I could even show a film clip and we could work on a bit of a lesson plan that I would actually teach in the class.

One of my main goals would be to convince my audience that many of life’s questions can be answered by viewing movies! The world is a very different place from the world in which many teachers themselves were educated. Today’s students are very visual. They would benefit from a class in which they could hone their critical thinking skills using the visuals art form of film. I thought I could even assign a final project to the students in which they would read a book, see the film adaptation of that book, and write a comparative paper on the two. That should appease the folks that think reading is the only way to deliver a lesson. The other assignment options are limitless—persuasive papers, argumentative research papers, compare and contrast, reviews and analysis papers to name a few.

This project would be something I could actually use—first to convince my curriculum committee audience, and then to teach my classroom audience—my students.

Constraints, Contexts, and Composing

Tick tock—it is 10:44 pm on Tuesday night and still no blog, forum post, or correct word count. When did writing become so constrained? Writing flowed much more freely when I was single, when I was a stay-at-home mom, when I was just a student. Now they expect me to TEACH also. Yuk. But now I do feel what it is like for my own students when I constrain them. I always thought they enjoyed it as much as me (okay—I enjoyed it a little more than they.) Students always complain about paper length—wait a minute—didn’t I just do the same? Anyway, to grant their wish I always give them a short assignment. Kids, remember that 2-3 page movie review that you just finished? Next, I want you to pretend you are writing for a newspaper entertainment section and I want you to distill ALL your movie opinions down to a single paragraph synopsis—that’s right—ONE paragraph. The class feels suddenly tricked.

I think that the Summerfields would call my above example an “enabling constraint.” I believe they would enjoy my creating an “artificial crisis” to “rouse the brain’s resources.” Condensing one’s writing into a short form is like writing poetry—you have to make every word count and learn to leave out the “extra” stuff. Erin already mentioned the six-word memoir we use to jump start our personal narrative assignment. (Note to self: In the future—Post before Erin.) She credited me, but I stole it from NPR (my husband’s a big fan.) The great example I use in class is Hemingway’s “For Sale, Baby shoes, never used.” Someone in my class wrote: “I found hypodermic needles and knew.” There’s always the “Too many books, too little time” example we all know and love. I enjoyed the article and the great ideas from the Summerfields. Constraints can be good. I just hope no one writes in my class about being devoured by a carnivorous teacher or dismembered and marked inefficient!

Oh, yeah. Dr. Welch and revision. Ahhhh. “Learning to teach means learning the uses of chaos.” AMEN.

"In order to be creative, it seems that you must be slightly crazy."

Thank goodness for that quote by Temple Grandin in her book about autism and thinking ability—Thinking in Pictures. I was more that happy to find out the creative people—writers, artists and such—often suffer from depression and other emotional maladies. That explains it. When asked how they perceive my personality strength, many of my co-workers exclaimed of my constant cheer and good-naturedness. They didn’t know of my predilection for depressing music, books, and movies. They never saw that I have feelings of sadness more often that those of cheerfulness.

So, this morose character trait may be good for my creative writing. I do love the quote that the musician Sting used when speaking of writing songs. He paraphrased Jung by saying, “If you don’t have pain in your life, you had better find some.” It has always been easier for me to write when I was upset or sad. Sometimes I put on gloomy instrumentals, just to get me in the mood.

I also enjoyed Grandin’s anecdote about Einstein. He was a bad speller and had a poor memory for things that did not interest him. The author and I share some characteristics with Einstein—we both spend the weekends to wind down and wind up our creativity and writing—ALONE. I too spend the entire week in front of an audience—my classroom. This is where a blog or a forum can connect us back to our creativity community. When we are composing alone, it is good to check in with our peers in cyberspace—on our own terms and time. If we find it distracting, we can always turn the computer off!

We are all in this together.

I find the whole idea of blogging a little familiar. Remember Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein. In those novels much of the exchange of ideas is done through letters. Captain Walton writes his sister after he rescues the waterlogged Victor Frankenstein in the Artic. Elizabeth Bennett writes her sisters and everyone else as she waits at home. Many great romances are based on epistolary relationships—writing letters back and forth. That is how I see blogging—just Victorian letters set in cyberspace. I jot a quick note to anyone who is listening and the reader responds. Is anyone listening?

As for our reading—especially that of Lewis Thomas as he explores the interconnectedness of cells and human beings. I have always felt connected to my fellow humans. In fact, that may be the only thing that I do well. Sometimes when I am meandering through the shopping mall (yuk) or the supermarket I get this overwhelming sense of warmth. I am on the verge of telepathy. I can “feel” my fellow shoppers and when I look into their faces I can almost make out what they are thinking. Certain people give out a “cheerless” vibe, and others make me feel uneasy. Most of the time I just feel kinship—that everyone is in the same boat. Lewis Thomas makes this same sort of point in his book Lives of a Cell.

We human beings are not separate entities. We are all functioning blocks of a bigger consciousness or community. Thomas makes this point by showing how our own bodies are made up of billions of tiny, microscopic bits and pieces that all do a routine job daily to keep us eating, drinking, breathing. To think of ourselves that way will help us to accept that we are all part of a bigger community of interconnected human beings.

The beginning

This is only the beginning. Due to an assignment in a graduate CREATIVITY class (that's correct), I am now a blogger. But not to worry--"Come what, come may, Time runs through the roughest day." --Macbeth