Hi, Rebekah here, and I chose a fascinating book by Joyce Carol Oates, The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art. She collected a variety of her essays about writing that she had written and put them together. I loved it. Each “chapter” provided much inspiration, mostly because she constantly discussed how other writers write. She referred to some of my all-time favourite writers (William Faulkner, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, etc.) and thoroughly demonstrated how writing truly is a process. Much of what she wrote about furthered my belief that writing has much to do with faith—faith in ourselves as writers, faith in what we do with our craft is not only valuable but effective, faith in our readers. She covered topics of inspiration from our first memories of school and writing to our first loves of literature. She wrote how inspiration comes in such a variety of forms and places, and that failure isn’t quite failure at all: “Is the artist secretly in love with failure?” (60). And her dissertation on the pitfalls and joys of failure was eye-opening and heartening at the same time.
So, my major questions that have sprung from the reading…..first, if inspiration comes in so many different forms and from so many places which are specific to the individual writer, how can we as teachers create lessons and plans that spark inspiration? What if there is someone we don’t reach? What is a writing teacher to do? And tied in with that, how do we feel about failure? What does it truly mean? Oates repeats that writing is a solitary act and that what we perceive as failure might actually be our best works and what we consider our best often isn’t. She mentions several authors who feel this way as well as authors who even tried other writing niches that didn’t work (for instance William Faulkner considered himself a failed poet and Henry James was a failed playwright). What does that all mean for us as writers and as teachers? If I (or my students) feel that we are “failures” at writing, are it that we just haven’t found our niche or is it something more? Overall, after reading this book, I have come away with much more faith (so to speak) in my own writing but am wondering even more how this translates into the classroom…..any thoughts?
Hi. Corbett here, and I’m starting a new discussion on On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King. This really was a pretty good read. Even if you don’t like Stephen King’s novels or his obsession with gore (not Al Gore!), you might just enjoy his advice and the personal history he writes about in this interesting read. King shares not only how he became a writer but also many of his childhood experiences in his attempt to prove that everyone has excellent stories within them to make them writers; in particular, you’ll cringe as he tells (surprisingly without much gore) of long needles being inserted into his ear drums when he was a boy with chronic ear infections, then you’ll laugh your head off as he recounts the fat babysitter who overfed him fried eggs, then locked him in a closet to eventually throw up on himself. I think King wants us to realize that all of us potentially have stories like these in our souls and memories, and though you wouldn’t necessarily base a novel on them, you could practice your writing skills by writing about them as interestingly as possible. King also discusses his personal process in writing, and though he gives some excellent advice (When writing, lock yourself in a room with a door that closes and Shoot your television set), he does emphasize that these are his methods, and they might not work for every aspiring writer out there.
For a while in the first half of the book, King rants about some things that I’d like your opinions on…if you happen to have an opinion on these things that occurred to me as I read. There were two in particular that made me wonder a lot. First, King expresses his hate of the -ly adverb. He says any writer who uses -ly adverbs is being wordy and telling the reader instead of showing the reader. He admits to using adverbs himself sometimes (I’d like to see him try not to use adverbs!), but he also denounces the adverb as the weakest part of speech. I’m looking at my first paragraph of this discussion prompt, and I count 7 -ly adverbs that used; apparently, I am an adverb lover (oh damn! There’s another one!) I could have revised them away, I suppose, but I don’t know if I want to. Do you think use of -ly adverbs strengthens or weakens writing…and why? Second, King says that creative writing teachers who teach kids to continually use verbs in dialogue other than said are doing their writing students a total disservice. If you want your characters to dialogue, this according to Mr. King, don’t convolute the story and plot by having your characters pronounce, declare, state, reply, exclaim, and verbalize. King says real writers just have their characters say what they have to say, and they don’t spend time pondering over their thesauruses (thesauri?). As a creative writing teacher, I did teach the “Said is Dead” lesson a lot, and it did turn the kids’ writing kind of phony, eventually taking away from their natural voices. I almost think King might have a point with this one, but I wanted to hear what other teachers thought about this. Do you think “Said is Dead” lessons do our students a disservice? Thanks for reading this!
The books you independently choose to read this summer will be discussed here. You will not only post two discussion starters about your two books, but you will also participate in the conversations started by five of your fellow Fellows.
To Start a Conversation about one of your books: (instructions coming soon!)
To Participate in a Conversation started by another Fellow: (instructions coming soon!)
