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I was having a conversation with Michael Weller on twitter the other day, about our different approaches to writing, and it occurred to me that differences between our approaches to writing are a bit similar to difference in some people’s approaches to teaching.
Don’t get me wrong: I am not suggesting writing is like teaching, though they have a lot in common, especially if you intend for your writing to be pedagogical in some way. But of course when you write you imagine your audience; when you teach, you interact with them, so it’s very different that way.
I am also not suggesting people who have emergent teaching styles also have emergent writing styles, though I am someone on that end of the spectrum.
What do I mean? I mean that some teachers thrive on planning the details of their classes, whereas others, like me, are more spontaneous and allow the interaction in class to modify the pace and for new things to emerge. For me, this happens in two ways:
1. I spend a lot of time thinking about my class, like constantly (it helps that I only teach one class a semester anyway, usually), which means that even what is not in the syllabus written early on, is a whole bunch of other ideas in my head or in my notes and I can draw upon the, spur of the moment; and
2. Comfort in totally changing plans spontaneously in response to something happening in class or in the world
I think writers are similar, though there are different contexts for writing, too. But let’s take blogging? Some people are very deliberate bloggers, and their blogs are almost academic and very very thoughtful. I enjoy reading those blogs because they feel like I’ve done some scholarly reading 🙂 But I am not that kind of blogger. For me, blogging is mostly spontaneous and of two three kinds:
1. The really spontaneous as in I just have 30 mins to write while cooking or commuting and I had a brainstorm of an idea that I just gotta write down; or
2. I have something on my mind while I am doing other stuff throughout the day, and I write the blogpost in my head (like this one is an example of that) until I get a chance to sit down and write it out properly.
3. Writing that is a response to other stuff I have read e.g. In blogs or other readings – and it often starts out as type 1 but i usually save the draft and think about it so that it evolves into a type 2
Anyways 🙂 out of all this, I wonder how writing teachers consider their own students’ preferences to these things. I know some writing teachers assign “free writing” which I love but now realize must make some students quite uncomfortable. It also happened recently that I realized that asking people to write to particular prompts can be uncomfortable for them. I’d been asking Simon Ensor (prolific blogger, aesthetic writer and deep thinker, in my view) to write something for edcontexts – and he wrote a beautiful post called “Writing to Order” which we both laughed about later because I apparently had similar (but not identical) thoughts when I was asked to write a guest post for #digiwrimo and I wrote “Writing on command” (difference is, I didn’t make it my ‘guest post’ hehe – so I am holding Simon down for another article soon!)
So this… This “prolific writer who is uncomfortable writing on command or to order” is an interesting phenomenon.
I was reflecting recently on something… I think I have written more in the year since I submitted my thesis than the entire length of my thesis which took 7 years to finish. I decided to pull a Jesse Stommel and do some calculations but I didn’t go so far as include my emails and tweets. Let’s just put it really simply. I’ve got more than 200 blogposts (my blog is not even a year old yet) of around 1,000 words each. That’s roughly 200,000 words. My entire thesis is a bit over 100,000 words. Calculations done, and that’s not even counting the number of other articles I have written outside of my blog altogether. Of course, the 100,000 words in the thesis were many more before they became the final draft (don’t remind me of all the stuff I removed from the text into appendices and then later deleted altogether, it’s painful, but I will one day go back and write articles with them… Some day).
So apparently finishing my thesis unleashed the writing beast in me. Or something. Or the process of writing every day got my writing muscle going and I could not stop. Only the informal writing that used to drive my supervisor nuts is now my style that people actually enjoy. How cool is that? While working on my thesis, I used to do some creative writing for myself. I am the kind of person who needs to read “extracurricular” i.e. outside my specific work. For the thesis, this meant I read about a lot of topics slightly outside my field and got to know a heck of a lot about things like language learning and cross-cultural learning such that my thesis had a lot of depth on those topics, not just critical thinking. But I also read a lot of fiction and that sort of drives some of my creative writing (which I don’t usually publish on my blog, except for occasional poetry, inspired by #tvsz in the summer and #clmooc both happening around the same time).
And speaking of poetry… Does anyone write poetry thoughtfully? To me it has always been a stream of emotion that becomes a poem, ever since I was a very young child writing poetry. I used to write poetry whenever I was hurt or upset. Still do, apparently. Glad I found it again 🙂
Oh, hey, I thought this was going to be a much shorter post than it ended up being 🙂
Thank u Maha. I really started blogging because I found academic writing too restrictive in form. I needed a space where I could play. I also needed a theatrical space as I was missing acting. I also needed a sketch book where I could scribble – something in between graphic and word expression. Looking at your different types of spontaneity – and your remarks about poetry – I am most often aware of a mood which colours choice of image or title, I sometimes jump with no preconceived idea – for the hell of it. Other times there has been a process of sketching, playing with words, images often on twitter as a result of something which has caught my attention. I virtually never have any idea what final form a post will take, I just play with pieces like in collage. The thought usually only comes after when I try to make sense of what has emerged, and that will be modulated by how others may respond.
I think this is also how I have developed my teaching, that is what probably drives others nuts because they can imagine that there is no ‘lesson plan’ – in a sense they are right I am more concerned by creating space, conditions, imbalance, conflict, through which unpredictable spontaneous learning can emerge.
I enjoy documenting after, trying to figure out how stuff has emerged, I hate mechanical drilling, pseudo-scientific framing. As a historian I love playing detective.
Writing to order may have been prompted but it was a sort of virulently improvised reaction to a moment, an environment. There was thought behind it – just enough to be free.
I wonder, too, how our comfort levels with more spontaneous writing change as we get older and more comfortable with who we are…..at least in my case, I am now more willing to put out “imperfect” writing than when I was younger and more worried about what other people thought, like I had something to prove. And with teaching, I also wonder how this comfort level with less overt planning changes….you and Simon both “plan” a lot for your classes, but not in the sense of outlining every detail, more like thinking through the possibilities. Great post as usual!
Just today i was consulting with a faculty member who was concerned that she kept having to change and tweak things in her courses all the time, wondering how other people were more “stable”. I told her that she’s just a responsive teacher and it makes absolute sense to keep doing that, that i was like that. I am not really sure how other teachers DON’T do that, but i guess they may either have a v stable student body, or truly feel things don’t need changing. I could never do that, though.
@Bali_Maha Read this & have some thoughts that I’ll post tomorrow (going to soccer match in about half-an-hour) 🙂
I want to reflect on the ideas in this post at greater length, so I’ll probably be back to write a third comment. 🙂 But my initial comment – part 2 of 3? – will be that you’ve posed some really interesting questions about how to differentiate for writers in my classroom.
I think that writing workshop can be a way of addressing some of these questions, but the deeper question, I think, is: how do we define success as a writer for our students?
Or perhaps put another way, invoking my particular context: why are we (in the U.S., “we” would be policymakers, district leaders, administrators, and teachers) defining success without inviting input from the students themselves?
All right, I know part of the answer to this question: because the powers-that-be are more interested in creating workers and consumers for their corporations than in educating citizens to take part in a democracy or supporting human beings in achieving their potential. So to put the question another way: how do educators dissent with and resist this reductive approach to education, and how do we replace that model with an approach that honors students as citizens (in the broad sense of the term, not the legal sense; this is a loaded word in Southern California, and one I use with care) or community members and, above all, as people?
Is this question different in your context, Maha, and if so, how?
Like Simon, I find academic writing too restrictive. Blogs and other marginal spaces work best. I kinda like being marginalized. 🙂
Makes absolute sense to me, Michael but translated to my context it means something quite different (how does an American University develop Egyptian citizens at this time of turmoil and what does it mean to do so by teaching to write in English but not Arabic?). My Phd thesis has a whole chapter on developing critical thinking thru writing and there is an undercurrent of critical thinking for citizenship in the thesis and a lot of my later workk. So yes, agree with you!
I’d be interested in reading the chapter from your thesis that you mentioned. Can you email it to me? 🙂
hey Michael, I am not sure I have your email address, but my thesis is open: http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/4646/ (the chapter we’re talking about is chapter 7)
Thanks! I’ll have a lot of time to read on Saturday, so I’ll read it then. 🙂