Once A Writing Teacher

I no longer teach writing for a living. I still write. That's more what my job entails now whereas it was just a benefit of the job I used to have. Teaching writing, I found it useless to ask kids to do as I said. They didn't much listen to me. But they sure watched me carefully. "Yo, what's up with that weird ass pen?" they asked about my fountain pen. "What the fuck do you have to write about in all them pages?" they wondered seeing my writer's notebook. "You like writing? That's straight up bullshit, nigga," to which I shrugged and admitted my guilt. In class, I wrote to show them about writing, but I also just wanted time with my pen. There are few things, yo, I like better than filling pages with my thoughts, and that's no bullshit, nigga. No bullshit whatsoever.

Though I'm out of the classroom, I still have opportunities and some obligation to teach writing. Yesterday, a colleague asked me to review a piece they had written. (I'm using the plural pronoun for anonymity.) They sent me a draft of something they needed to get right. Would I look it over? Sure, I said, but with some trepidation.

Here's the thing: most people don't separate their writing from themselves or their selves from their writing. Kids in school are often better at this than adults. Maybe kids are more used to it or I built relationships I haven't yet had time to build with colleagues. Whatever the case, I know that when asked to look over a colleague's writing, they're asking me to correct typos and then say it's great. If I was still in school, I could get away with that.

(In school I often told students their drafts were better than they really were. This softened things enough that they could listen to the single bit of criticism they most needed to hear. Rather than say an entire piece was out of order, convoluted, and unbelievable, I focused on the sound of the opening and how it related (or didn't relate) to what came next. Your piece is good got us to where I could teach them something.)

I do some of that with adults too. Yesterday, I said (mostly in truth) that they had written a complete, exact, and authoritative piece. Then I said, it's too long. Length matters. (Damn it.) In the case of writing, shorter is better than longer. What's true in the other realms, I don't want to consider here.

Prior to this paragraph, the first draft of this piece was 626 words long. That's not bad. Anything under a thousand is about right for me though I believe anything online that's over seven hundred words won't be read top to bottom. I don't fuss over word count yet. I haven't finished whatever I'm going to say. (Note that I don't know what I'll say until I've said all of it. I begin with an idea, but writing shapes that idea and the shape of writing it. For instance, I had no idea this would have so many damn parentheticals.) I'll keep writing until I've said whatever it is I end up saying.

Then I'll prune the living crap out of it.

In my mother's front lawn is a shrub that was half again as tall and a third again as wide. It had grown to obscure Mom's window and taken over the garden. My brother took it way down and the whole place is better for it.

It will be the same with this piece. (The 626 words became 431.)

It was the same with my colleagues' piece. I told them to remember that people need the fewest words and shortest draft possible. I put that very delicately but still worried sending that email — an email I cut by one quarter in the second draft.

The delicacy of that email grew from knowing how people conflate their identity with their writing. They should because I perceive who people are from how they present. I once worked with a spectacular person who could not spell. His writing would have embarrassed us both he was aware (and secure) enough to have me rewrite his stuff. Maybe my colleague now will be open to learning how to be concise. Maybe not.

I started this by saying I no longer teach writing. I hear you calling bullshit on that, yo. I'd revise the beginning, but instead I'll focus on pruning (significantly) and leave the beginning so as to set up this ending. If that's wrong, someone will let me know. Probably by saying, Brian, this is good piece and you're a good guy. Now about that beginning paragraph...

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I have no idea if Alan Jacobs reads this blog (I'd like to think that he does and you should definitely read his), but this appeared the next day. Coincidence? Yeah, probably. Still, I like to dream.

When To Take The Drawing Away

I've been writing a lot this last couple weeks but publishing very little on the blog (or anywhere else) because I'm torn between two competing instincts: to publish and to revise. It's difficult to know when something is ready to go, when it's finished. I have a piece about the power of leaving the classroom, the nature of real leadership, and the mistake of hierarchy, but I don't know that I've got all three things in the piece, that they all belong and are connected in some meaningful way. I liked the first draft but saw issues and have gone through four or five revisions, but wonder if it still requires significant restructuring and re-imagining. I wish it would just resolve into what I imagine it should be, but there is still work to be done.

On the other side are today's Morning Pages. Running my pen over three pages, I came up with something that felt good in the moment, but I worry it will require just as much revision as the leadership piece. There are only so many balls I can keep in the air. Here's what the Morning Pages sound like:

The most vivid of dreaming this morning began with a woman who could not wait to get me alone and naked. She was dream-familiar in that she probably combines eight to ten women I've known or seen on the screen. I'm trying to conjure her now in order to figure out who she is, but she is a figment, fleeting, insubstantial as smoke. Maybe I have no idea who she is and with every attempt to pin her to reality some part of me says, "she's not of this world. Let her go."

In a later dream I was saying goodbye to Danny Devito whose son I had helped somehow. I said, "I hope to come back someday." He stared sadly at me, not wanting to explain that this was a one-off. The woman appeared again, silent, withdrawn, and I was possessed of a need to make out of desire something like love because the chance wouldn't come again. But I also knew that chance had never come at all. I hugged her — around the legs of all things. She allowed it because even I knew it was an embrace rather than my usual desperate hanging on.

In the real world, something like my old school job was posted yesterday. This morning the school's website is down. Coincidence? I don't think so! (Actually, I'm sure it's coincidence but still enjoy that joke.) The posting describes only half of what I used to do. This is either management omitting crucial details and withholding information or it indicates a programming shift in which the two parts of my old job are split from one another. I suspect it's the former or else there would be a part-time job posted as well.

Whatever the case, some poor sap will walk into my old job like stepping on a rake, the wooden handle snapping up hard in her or his face. They'll see stars and it will leave a mark. Some admin will say "it's nothing, keep walking, there are a hundred more rakes in the yard. Good luck!" They'll give the sap a push forward, turn out the lights, and blamed that teacher for every bruise and beating they receive.

Here's what really bothers me about all this: I won't know; I'll be out of that loop. No one in management will notice I'm gone and those on the ground will be too busy to pine for me. Though I want to say it doesn't matter, I'm so troubled about being easily replaced that I want to see the place fall to pieces without me.

"Why are you still carrying her?" the elder monk asks me. I have no good answer. Anger, anxiety, and ego get in the way of enlightenment. I'm still back in the place I left in June, trying to change someone other than myself.

(There's a topic to discuss with my therapist today. Will I continue therapy after August when I have to change insurance plans? It will be a luxury I likely can't afford and I wonder if it's a better vehicle than this writing. Is it just a shield against making the same old mistakes?)

In the dream I was only close to the woman twice and each time something got in the way. First it was other people, then it was me. When Danny Devito asked how he should pay me for helping his son, I said, "call it tutoring. That's what I do." He shrugged and wrote the check.

Then I was with a guy trying to figure out our next move in a long-term plan to teach writing. I asked what our next event should be, but he refused to say even the first word.

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That was this morning's pages. There are things that interest me, but it's a mess, just a draft. I'm torn between revising and losing the feel of the thing. It reminds me of a scene in Six Degrees Of Separation:

FLAN (VO): How easy it is for a painter to lose a painting. He can paint and paint – work on canvas for months and one day he loses it – just loses the structure – loses the sense of it – you lose the painting.

A BRIGHT WHITE LIGHT shines on FLAN who turns to see A TEACHER, in her forties, very pure and happy, hanging beautiful and brilliantly colored children's drawings in the air. FLAN'S VOICE echoes in this vast space

FLAN: Why are all your students geniuses in the second grade? Look at the first grade. Blotches of green and black. Look at third grade. Camouflage. But the second grade — your grade. Matisses everyone. You've made my child a Matisse. Let me study with you. Let me into the second grade! What is your secret?

THE TEACHER: Secret? I don't have any secret. I just know when to take their drawings away from them.

I have no idea when to take the drawings away, but I keep wanting to be Matisse.

I Write Fast

Writing fast isn't a virtue but it is a tool that allows me to better open myself to ideas. Careful, deliberate, self-conscious, slow writing often closes me, shuts the writing down. Fast writing allows me to begin with no more than a flash of an idea and write my way into and through it. Most of my fast writing occurs at a keyboard because I type faster than I write by hand. Once writing, I try not to stop or even pause because speed encourages me to let go and see what the ideas have to say for themselves. Words lead to words if I let them.

If you're the type who needs to know the process, here it is:

1. Have just the beginning of an idea.
2. Sit and write as though a countdown is ticking. Hurry!
3. Stop when the draft is done.

I write fast without much worrying in order to get a complete first draft. Most people don't get as far as a complete draft. Hell, most writers struggle to get that far. If all I get out of fast writing is a draft that's good enough. I've done the hard part. Next up: revision.

I make a game of it. Other writers put the draft away but I go right back in with the aim of cutting at least twenty percent of the words. I read through until I have cut words doing no good work. "Omit Needless Words." Every extra word loses a reader and I have too few readers to let them get away. While cutting, I organize, insert missing pieces, and do other rewriting. The whole process usually requires two to four readings. Once in a while a piece dies in this process, but not very often.

Again, if you need the step-by-step:

1. Count words and calculate the 20% threshold.
2. Read the draft at least twice omitting all needless words.
3. Read the piece aloud before publishing.

Yesterday's 1,400-word fast draft became, in under three hours, an 1,100-word finished piece of which I'm happy, maybe even proud.

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Keith Olberman writes fast too and describes that process in an excerpt I call "On Composition."

Process Story

Sometimes it's good to hear how someone creates. I like pieces about process: I did this, I did that, then I did this, and then this came of it. I would love to have Mark Rothko show his process, but he's dead and was too secretive while alive. Stephen King's On Writing is a good insight into his writing. Decades ago The New Yorker profiled Don DeLillo about his work. I love that stuff. 

When I'm composing well, I begin with an idea, most often a good one. I'm not much surprised by that. Of course I have an idea. I almost always have ideas. It's usually a beginning or a question I want to answer. I open my laptop and log into Writer, grab my fountain pen and notebook, or lift one of my typewriters onto the desk and roll in paper. I start writing without planning much. 

I might guess at how long the piece will be. It depends on how much time I have and how interesting the idea feels. This piece will be about 700 words, but others are going longer lately, and I bet I'll tend toward longer still. I may be growing. Who'd have thought? 

I write until I feel an ending coming. I've answered the question, come back to the beginning, or am arriving at a good place to get off that particular train and call it a day. When I feel it coming, I start listening for the sound of an ending. It has to feel final. 

After that I don't do what most writers suggest: stick it in a drawer for a week. When I do, the piece molders and dies. Instead of waiting, I go right back and begin cutting words. 1,200 words becomes 900 before I build it back up to 1,000. I do some of this on the screen, but it feels and works better on paper with a blue felt-tip. Feel matters.

When I'm disciplined, I read the cut draft aloud and hear what's left to be done. I catch typos. If mistakes remain, it's because I didn't read it out loud or fatigue got the better of me. There's always a point at which I tire of the piece and doubt it's worthy of publishing. That's when I give it a last scan and send it out. 

Occasionally, something draws me back to reshape an old piece and fit it to how I feel now. This is especially true with my prose poetry which I only come to understand after a very long time.

Mostly though, pieces are done and I move on. I can't imagine being a musician who revisits "Hotel California," "American Pie," and "Stairway To Heaven" ad nauseum. Going back requires a whole new vision and sympathy for the writer I was. I prefer to move on. 

I drafted this at the kitchen table and went to get my daughter from swim club. After dinner I cut 900 words to 700, then pasted it into the blog editor. There I read it again, amazed at all I'd left undone, correcting problems. I went to sleep and, a day later, read it again, made more changes, and am ready now to hit "Save & Publish." 

Now I'm off to the next one. I want always to be on my way to the next one.