Guest Blog Post, Bethany Reid: The Writing Assignment

“Work on one thing until finished.” –Henry Miller

“Try not to shoot off in every direction like fireworks.” –a Fortune Cookie’s advice

Bethany ReidBesides being a poet, a wannabe novelist, and mother of three teenaged daughters, I also teach English, full-time, at a community college. I do committee work. I advise. I’m busy. I like to consider myself the queen of getting-things-done. Many of my students, on the other hand, haven’t figured out how to find time to do the reading and studying  that they need to do in order to be successful in my writing classes. So this quarter, I decided to try a social experiment.

It helps that we’re reading a book of essays, Real Questions, that focuses on contemporary issues like what we eat and what media we consume and how we conduct our relationships. While reflecting on such things, it seemed plausible to imagine making some real changes in our own lives. What if we each changed one thing, and wrote about it? I worried that it sounded a little hare-brained, as if I were practicing to become a life-coach. The students loved it. Only a handful of them wanted to change something to do with writing or studying, but they all wanted to change something.

I cooked up a multi-part assignment in which students  1) write a blog-like proposal about something they would like to change, something they can actually DO, daily, for the next forty days of the term; 2) write a persuasive paper about why such a change is desirable; 3) tweet or just write a short reflection which they share with the class daily about the change for those forty days; and then 4) write a follow-up, reflective essay about how their experiment worked out.

In the proposing stage, goals tended toward “Lose 30 pounds,” or “Become a nurse,” or “Get an A in this class.”  One man wanted to quit smoking, which I applaud, and another wanted to “be happier,” which I wouldn’t mind doing as well. But even quitting smoking is not quite in the category of “doable,” at least not in the sense that after fifteen minutes one could declare success.

You can write a novel, you can lose 30 pounds, you can quit smoking. But you can’t really do those things right now, today. The first part of this social experiment, it turns out, has been a critical thinking step of figuring out how to narrow one’s focus, how to break things down into parts so small that they’re not merely doable, but scarcely avoidable.  I told them to think of things they can do in a single fifteen-minute increment.

When I thought seriously about what I could do, right now, and repeat for 40 days, I decided that the one change I craved was getting through my interminable novel rewrite.

WritingI’ve written this on a list of goals before, and I immediately began to line up my excuses for why it was impossible. This time, however, a voice intervened, a voice I knew—it was the voice I had been inflicting on my students for two full weeks. You can’t rewrite your novel today, but you can write on the novel. So I decided on writing, at my desk—like a smoke break without the cigarettes.

I already write every morning and blog about it, but writing in the afternoon—evening as a last resort—would double my time with the pen. It could make a difference in my rate of progress.

For her first day’s reflection, one student lamented that because the baby kept her up late the previous night, she didn’t get up early and didn’t do the two hours of work on her home business that she had intended. She couldn’t even start, she explained, because her desk was a mess and the thought of organizing it overwhelmed her, and then the baby woke up, and then it was time to plunge into the day. And now here she was, the day half-done, opportunity missed.

And there was that voice again. Wiser than my voice. Don’t give up. Spend five minutes tonight before bed clearing off your desk. Take out one project and lay it out. Just one! (Maybe you’ll actually do something on it! Maybe one step will turn into more!) Check today off your list. Done. Don’t excuse, negotiate, I told her.

I shared a quote that helped me get through my doctoral dissertation when my daughters were small, something the sculptor Barbara Hepworth—mother of four children including triplets—once said:

“I loved the family and everything to do with them….We lived a life of work and the children were brought up in it, in the middle of the dust and the dirt and the paint and everything….I found one had to do some work every day, even at midnight, because either you’re a professional or you’re not.”

How did my own plan work out? The first day it was 5:30 before I remembered. I needed to go home. Then my 13-year-old daughter wanted to go out for coffee and do homework. I, too, had homework, essays to read, a short story to reread in preparation for the next day.

But I couldn’t escape the voice. It’s not midnight yet, the voice said. What would I tell my students? Fifteen minutes? How can you begrudge yourself 15 minutes?

So I ordered my decaf latte and my daughter ordered her Frappuccino and we found a table. I set up my laptop. I went to www.e.ggtimer.com and set it for 15 minutes. I pulled out my manuscript and I started reading and making notes. I circled an image and I brainstormed and I suddenly saw something I hadn’t seen before. I worked for 25 minutes.

I can’t wait to tell my students.

Guest Blog Post, Ramy Sidarous: Piecing Together the Puzzle

Ramy SidarousSome words a previous photo professor once said to me really got me thinking about the art I make.

In a certain class I was taking while still in school, I was advised to avoid photographing mountains, since Ansel Adams was already known for doing so. This brought a lot of confusion to me; I thought about it, and all subject matter at one point or another had been photographed before, whether it had been trees, rocks, people…everything had been done. What could be possibly left to photograph?

Brainstorming ideas for creating something new is certainly a challenge that I often face. Looking at the work of other artists and exchanging ideas with them, getting inspired by my surroundings and life are all necessities when thinking of new ideas. Over time, I began realizing that thinking too much about this only prolongs the creativity from flowing; it has to just happen on its own. Allowing the artwork to grow and develop over time is just as important as the idea behind it. An idea may not be completely clear when beginning a new project, but visiting the same piece over and over will open up new ways of thinking about it and will slowly reveal its purpose. It can’t be forced; this is something that has to happen naturally over time. I will sometimes make sketches if I have an idea floating around, but almost 100% of the time, the end result is something unexpected.

Thinking back to what my professor told me, I realized that his comment opened up new ideas on the way that I think about my artwork and how I brainstorm in general. I don’t believe his intent was to keep his students from photographing a specific subject matter, but to have them question why they are photographing it. Even if all the mountains, people, trees, and rocks had been photographed before, there will always be a new way to look at it and perceive it.

 

 

Solar Gradient Shade 2012

 

-Rock Formations 1 2010

Guest Post: The Secret to Getting Started


I love being a writer.  What I can’t stand is the paperwork. ~ Peter De Vries

If we all felt the way De Vries purports, the world would sorely lack reading material. I believe the great Mark Twain offers a solution to the daunting task we often ascribe to writing and the reason we procrastinate, telling ourselves we’ll do it as soon as we’ve finished X, Y or Z. According to Twain, “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”

While Twain’s quote easily applies to myriad goals or projects, I firmly believe his advice also works well when it comes to the writing process as a whole.

I’ve found that for me, it helps to take a good look at the big picture and then put into practice what Twain suggests: break down the seemingly insurmountable goal into doable steps. But even more importantly, each stage must be easily attainable, or I will hesitate to begin the first one.

The following is a model for accomplishing Twain’s solution.

Step #1: Planning

  • Make time to come up with the gist of your story. This may occur through daydreaming, brainstorming or writing organically for a pre-determined length of time, and can take place anywhere you do your best thinking: working out, meditating, hiking or lounging on your chaise.

Step #2: Writing

  • Commit to write a minimum number of words a week. This requires you to put pen (or pencil) to paper, fingers to keyboard, voice to recorder — anything to get a word count somewhere other than the gray matter inside your right brain.
  • Set aside the required number of hours per day, preferably uninterrupted. Accomplish this by removing distractions; i.e., log out of Facebook, instant messaging, Google, Dr. Phil — whatever keeps you from the first part of this step. If you’re the type who’s inspired by a little Beethoven or Pit Bull, by all means turn up the volume on your iPod. Along these lines, don’t underestimate the power of your muse; keep it forefront in your mind (stay tuned for a future post on this concept). The short of it: if an ocean view is what you need to write, then plaster your surroundings with the sights, sounds and smells of a tropical paradise. And if you can bring the real thing to life, all the better.

Step #3: Editing/rewriting

  • Read drafts one at a time, making notes/edits as you go. Try to read your words with new, fresh eyes. Pretend you’re picking the piece up for the first time and gauge your reaction as if you’ve never seen it before. Be critical.
  • Schedule a day or a week to rewrite. This is where a lot of us lose steam. But it’s important to consider this just another part of your “job” as a writer. Take what you’ve edited in the first part of this step and get it done. If you don’t, someone else will.

These manageable steps can be adapted to any writing assignment, such as articles, short stories and blogs. It simply takes an idea and a commitment to see it through.

What is your secret to getting started?