On writing…
The series continues, with another random reflection on my life thus far. I’m writing this in my car (not driving, in case you were worried).
As much as I’ve always loved writing, I’ve always hated writing for assignments. I wrote for assignments, sure, and generally did fairly well on them, but there were always those exercises that I found to be completely pointless and demeaning to the student’s intellect. Stream of consciousness, for example. Let me get this straight, you want me, for a classroom assignment, to write out everything that comes to my mind for five minutes? Are you sure you want to subject yourself to that? Here’s how it will work: I’ll spend the first minute and a half going over how stupid I believe the assignment is, follow it with another minute and a half of why I don’t think this should be an assignment in the first place, spend ten seconds prattling on about some shiny object that caught my eye as I was rolling my eyes over the assignment, and by the end of five minutes you have a half page dissertation on why squirrels would be better off migrating instead of hibernating. You wanted what’s going through my brain in a five minute period of time? Congratulations, you now know more than you ever wanted to.
The other assignments that always bothered me was poetry. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to poetry, iambic pentameter is a beautiful thing, and I do enjoy the occasionally Shakespearean sonnet every now and then, but I generally don’t like putting the effort in to make my lines and beats match up when I’m writing. If I ever write you a poem, it’s either because I really care about you (in which case, I probably put a lot of time and effort in writing it because of how much I loathe doing it in the first place), or I’m just quick on the draw (like the time one of the girls in my PoliSci course at PCC got a valentines basket from a guy who was practically stalking her and, during the course of class, I wrote her a four stanza joke poem called “The Stalker’s Valentine” to commemorate it that started with the line “Roses are red, your screaming is shrill, if I can’t have you, then no one will!” and it rapidly devolved from there.) It’ll either take a lot of effort or no effort, poetry is not something that just flows from me. And before someone makes the comment that “you can write unstructured poetry”, that’s stupid to me. Poetry is supposed to have some kind of form, certain rules and guidelines, to just throw a series of nonsensical words together and call it a poem is a cop out (like taking a can of paint, sloshing it across a dead woodland creature and calling it “art”. That’s not art, that’s roadkill covered in fuschia).
Writing as a class is a multi-faceted enigma. On the one hand, you can teach the basic mechanics and give someone the tools to be able to write effectively, but at the same time you have to be careful to not teach that your method is the best and only method. I’ve thankfully had enough teachers and professors that didn’t stifle me, but I always had at least one person in the class who was hypercritical of how I chose to write stylistically. Writing is one of those things that doesn’t have to fit “the formula” all the time, even if its best that it lean that way. I’m sure there’s plenty I don’t do according to the rules of writing, but I’m not professing I know all there is to know about writing, either. I know I can write and I know I love writing. There are probably others who write better than I do. And that, dear reader, is why you’re stuck reading this. Because it keeps me out of trouble. :-)
Besides, the greatest words tend to be written:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” ~John 3:16