Eats, Shoots, and Leaves

I'm currently reading Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss. I have completed the introduction and the first chapter on the apostrophe. I'm ankle-deep in the second chapter, covering the comma. Here are my two favorite observations:

1. Various grammar books have various rules. Some say "Keats's poem" is correct. Others say "Keats' poem" is correct. I love that. The rulemakers can't even agree on the rules. How then can we expect non-rulemaking college students to follow them?

Everybody always comes in asking about grammar. One student came in today with a sheet of feedback from his teacher. Nowhere in that feedback did she mention anything about his grammar. She asked for focus, for clarification, for specifics, but said nothing of commas or sentence structure. I read the feedback and read over his essay. His teacher was 100% correct, and as I began to discuss her feedback with him, he waved his hand over his paper and asked if I could just look at it and tell him about his grammar.

I don't him he doesn't care about grammar at this point and explained that ideas come first. Most people think in this manner: writing=grammar. That is not true. Grammar is an aspect, not everything. I think that is driven home by Keats's poem/Keats' poem; does it really--really--matter? Not particularly. We still know who wrote the lines.

2. Truss quotes Sir Ernest Gowers: "The use of commas cannot be learned by rule." True. I can't remember a single writing student who learned where to put a comma based on an explanation of a rule. Rule + example is the minimum. The rule is theory, but the example is practice.

I can always tell readers when they come in. Their sentences bounce and flow with rhythm. They can't necessarily explain the placement of a comma, but they usually don't need to because their commas are properly placed. They have seen the tool in use enough to understand how it functions in live action.

This is same way I learned to use a semicolon. I saw enough of them in print and it sunk in that they pair sentences.

This is How We Do It

Writing Process is an interesting term. It implies steps, an institutional kind of order even, a 1-2-3-done kind of thinking--but it also allows for creativity and variety for individuals to invent their own way to bring a piece of writing to completion (and to continue to reinvent that process as needed).

I'm interested in Writing Process in all its incarnations: the overall how-to's that are passed along from writing teachers to writing students, the innovative ways that writers (both students and professionals) think of to help them build an idea into an essay or a story, and the unthought-of, unnoticed little steps that people who are engaged in the act of writing go through that are definitely part of the process, yet outside of what those in the field of writing would discuss when asked to discuss Writing Process.

Here is an example of what I mean about the last of those three. It comes from Robert, a student in my Writing 100 class from this past Spring semester:

"When I'm trying to complete a writing assignment, I sweat a lot, then go into contortions, and then start swearing."

And All of This Comes Down to This One Thing

"If a piece of autobiographical writing is an essay, it has already moved beyond private confession or memoir to some shareable idea, for which the personal experience works as evidence."
-Gordon Harvey, "Presence in the Essay"

This, the shareable idea, is what I think a thesis really is. I've seen a lot of students struggle with thesis (both on the idea level and the word level; it's a terribly intimidating academic word that is simply not fun to say or hear if you have not been warmly introduced to it at some early part of your life), but I think this could clear some of that confusion up.

I switched to using the word purpose during my summer session class, and that helped. I think the phrase shareable idea tacked onto purpose would be even more benefitial because it not only speaks to the thing (the idea) but it has purpose and audience embedded in its language (shareable, as in something intended to be given or taught to other people).

Also, the concept of the shareable idea makes sense to me because that is why Writing classes exist, isn't it? To help people share ideas better? I know argument is an important word, along with debate, but those seem to set up hesaidshesaid or meversusyou situations before students even get into the idea we ask them to birth and nurture and send out into the wide, wide world. The shareable idea could be a response to a poem or a story. It could be a proposal to fix potholes or stop smoking. It could relate lessons learned from prison time or landscaping jobs. It can be anything that formed in one head and grew into something transferrable to another.

Can we simply share ideas intelligently and objectively?

I Went to This Conference and All I Got Was a Few Books for My Writing Teacher Friend

Matt just returned from a weekend jaunt to Denver for a conference about Writing. I know, I know, you're wondering why Student Life Coordinator Matt went to a Writing conference: He went to present along with Shawn Hellman, our department chair, about Writing classes collaborating with their Student Life Coordinators (they discussed a project based on the book and movie The Pursuit of Happyness that culminated in hearing a speech by Chris Gardner at the University of Arizona). Matt texted me during the conference to inquire about books I might be interested in because he was being offered book after book after book. I responded that I would be interested in anything a) creative or b) related to tutoring.

Matt returned with a few finds, including Writers Without Borders*: Writing and Teaching Writing in Troubled Times. I've already found it worthwhile**, and I'm not even past the introduction. Here is the second sentence of Lynn Z. Bloom's introduction:

"Creative writers, the writers whose work we read, remember, quote, and read again, set the agenda and determine the arena--the entire world, the universe unbounded to be created ever anew."

That is why I am involved in helping people understand words and language and how to use them. People who can think clearly and put those ideas down on paper, out into cyberspace, on a t-shirt or a poster or a coffee mug or a billboard, those are people who can ask what the world can be. They learn to ask and answer questions, to explore and in that exploring find new answers they did not anticipate and new questions they simply must pursue.

*All the cool kids use this, apparently: Doctors Without Borders, Words Without Borders, Teachers Without Borders, MBAs Without Borders, Mothers, Sociologists, Engineers, Reporters, Geeks, Builders, Clowns, Burners, Grantmakers, Acupunturists, Chemists, Hedgehogs, Alpacas, and on and on and on...

**I knew it! Matt came through!

A Real Writer Really Said This: The Novelist Richard Price is Intimidated and Likes It

I read this quote in a recent Believer interview with novelist and screenwriter Richard Price:

"I have to be a little intimidated by what I’m writing about. I have to feel a little bit like I don’t think I can do this, I don’t think I can master this, I don’t think I can get under the skin of this, because when you’re a little scared, you’re bringing everything to the table because you’re not sure you can do it unless you . . . really, really get into it. Terror keeps you slender. I need a sense of awe."

He makes a living as a writer and here he is, admitting that being intimidated by his projects (the equivalent of writing assignments) is a positive. A Positive! He likes to be bullied by projects that are menacing, that are like avalanches or rockslides or men with thick necks and enormous, meaty fists. He's like the scrawny underdog in a sports movie who wins in the end because of perseverence and stick-to-it-iveness.