Correction and Perspective

I have been ruminating over the concept of separating out the good from the bad.  Being able to recognize what is bad and letting it go while holding on to the good.  How to parse through and how to recognize what works well and what does not.  I have had several reviewers and their comments have helped greatly in allowing me this clarity.  As I have made changes I have found that when I change one paragraph I often need to then change the others because one train of thought leads me to one place and changing a few words then changes that thought and before I realize my paragraph leads somewhere new.  Now sometimes this new place is better and worth all the work it takes to change the other paragraphs to match but sometimes it is just different, not better.  So I change it back.  

Dr. Christie in class encouraged us to write our prospectus over again without using the previous draft for reference.  I have done this with several sections and I realize that the important part of my argument sticks while some of the other material fades away.  This exercise helped clarify my thoughts on my topic and gave me concrete footing in my argument.  However, I still need to work quiet a bit on my actual writing and expression of ideas.  It is here that I have been sorting the good from the bad.  I often see much more bad than good in my own writing; however, seeing my writing from this critical perspective often disables further writing and I find myself like a sailboat without a breeze. 

I met with a professor this week to talk about my project, to gauge interest in my subject and get feedback of my approach.  He commented that I was a good writer and therefore would be easy and enjoyable to work with.  I had quite a bit of difficulty taking in his statement, since I have long thought critically of my writing abilities.  However, I aught to take in positive critisim just as I do negative criticism, so that I can have a balance view of my writing.  I have a freedom in personal writing that I have not yet been able to lay a hold of in academic writing.                        

Why Write

“If you must write than you should write” – Dr. John Cressler

Trying to keep warm last night huddled around the charcoals of the BBQ before the big GT game, I stood listening to engineering grad students’ talk about writing with their professor.  This professor is in the top of his field and has published the lauded scholarly works on his subject.  He has now just completed his first novel and is working with agents to get his work published. 

I think that we do write because we must.  There is something that spurs us on and pushes ideas and material out.  Like some must talk others must write.  This is true both in nonfiction and fiction alike.  Dr. Cressler writes because he enjoys the process; he said that this novel was the best work he has ever done, the most rewarding, which is saying quiet a lot for a man that was just named the editor of the most prestigious journal in electrical engineering.  So does creative writing come more from the soul.  What is it that makes it able to affect such positive feelings?  Both academic and creative writing are certainly accomplishments to be proud of, the act of working in and of itself rewards and since writing must come from a part of the self it will intrinsically have meaning.  And yet these rewards do not seem to be quiet enough to encourage writing, or else most people would write.  So Dr. Cressler is on to something.  If you write only for money than the process is painful and the writing soulless, but if you write because you must, even if money is gained, then your writing has a chance at greatness.   

Learning about Writing

One difficulty with writing is that it is all in your head and once you put it to paper then it is still a product of your own thoughts and is from your own perspective.  It is difficult to understand how your writing will be perceived and if it will mean something similar when it is processed in another’s brain.  So how then do we find out what we sound like? 

One of the most helpful and beneficial practices that I have done in grad school is to have others read my work, others whose perspective and area of specialty greatly differs from mine.  I have gained insight into my own writing both its weaknesses and strengths.  For example, in my peer reviewed introduction to my prospectus each student labeled my thesis statements.  Several people identified a sentence that I thought was merely background and had added near the end of writing to build a case for necessity of my work; however, in looking at it again with their comments, I am able to see how it is actually a thesis statement of sorts.  Because of this I am to read my own work from another lens and actually to make my argument clearer for myself.  Because language is polyvalent often several ideas or meanings can crouch in.  Getting this feedback enabled me to separate out and make clear my ideas to my readers.  I greatly appreciated this insight.  There is always some nervousness and anxiety when others read your work; however, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed hearing both negative and positive feedback.  The negative just made my work stronger and the positive helped me to approach future work with more confidence.

Another beneficial teaching strategy that has greatly helped my writing has been the concentration on writing itself that has taken place in my pro seminar course.  A prospectus and a thesis require a different style of writing than I have had to do before.  During my undergraduate degree I never wrote any type of proposal and also did not need to sustain an argument for fifty pages.  Yet, even without the experience of sustained arguments I am expected in graduated school to just know how to do it or just figure it out.  I think there is an implied parallel here between intelligence and skills.  It’s like saying, “you are smart; you can do it”.  Yet I learned in my undergraduate degree by going over how to make arguments, by learning what type and how big to make my claims, how to prove them and what type of rhetorical structures and analytic arguments I should have.  Breaking down each part of the prospectus and discussing what exactly is should do and how it should do it has given me a context within which I can write more successfully. I am very appreciative of the knowledge I have gained.  I will incorporate this in my career and will also incorporate peer review into my future classes. 

Practical Concerns: Practice and Clarity

I have begun to write my prospectus and worked on its introduction this week.  I was surprised at how easily the works came to my mind and to the paper.  I think that the habit of writing about writing has enabled me to get passed some self criticism that I apply to my work unconsciously during the writing process.  I have a difficult time putting anything down on paper that does not seem "good" or "complete" yet in blog writing I have no difficulty doing this and then going back later to correct, clarify and edit out what dissatisfies me.  This process has given me a little more balance and freedom in my academic writing.  Blog writing is a lot like speaking, just it can be edited later.  I have no inhibitions when it comes to speaking, even public speaking or any self criticism so blogging has bridged the gap between the way I approach speaking and the way that I approach academic writing.

Also I was able to write clearly because the structure of my writing was already framed in my mind.  By focusing in class on the structure of an introduction: what elements it should contain and in what order.  I was able to place my ideas into this structure and found it more enjoyable and less aggravating to write.  The writing came more fluidly along and I was less critical of the product.  The last course I had that focused on the mechanics of writing in a particular form was during my time as an undergraduate.  Almost all of the classes dealt, at least in part, with proper writing and developing form and voice.  I have struggled with my writing in graduate school to some degree, in part because I have had to produce more varied writing  academic essays, book reviews, proposals, and fictional writing and in part because the teaching on how to do this has not continued.  Even if I cannot yet produce an introduction that I really feel good about, I certainly can identify the mechanics operating in others that I do very much like.               

Inspiration

I came across a poem of Victor Hugo's today: "Demain, des l'aube".  Perhaps one of the most simple and beautiful poems.  I do mostly read novels so my bold claim cannot be applied widely but regardless I wanted to share it for this reason and also because I think it helps address a thought I have on the subject of inspiration.  In order to write well: beautifully, honestly, and wholly, in the sense that Virginia Woolf uses these terms, then something must inspire you.  I read because I love language and what it does.  I write because I love to see exactly how language works.  By writing I figure out what I have read; I appreciate it more and understand it better.  By reading and writing on many topics and authors that overlap I begin to construct an understanding about the pieces of writing and how they fit together in their time.  In all of this inspiration is at the forefront and is the tool without which nothing, be it novels, poems, or criticism, is possible.  Language does not have a fixed meaning and what is communicated depends on word choice and placement so it is possible to have many meanings emerge out of a group of words, both foregrounded and shaded meanings.  This structure allows language to build upon itself and to incorporate metaphor and other complicated structures.  When I read texts that use language well I want to say something about how they do it and I want to use it well too.  Victor Hugo inspired me with his thoughts and expression because he himself was inspired to write it.  He wrote this poem after his daughter died but while he was in exile and unable to attend her funeral or grave.  I have provided a rough translation in English underneath each line.  May we all be as inspired as Victor Hugo.

Demain, dès l'aube, à l'heure où blanchit la campagne,

Tomorrow, at dawn, at the hour when the countryside is bleached,      

Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m'attends.

I will leave, you see, I know that you await me 

J'irai par la forêt, j'irai par la montagne.

I will go by the forest, I will go by the mountains.

Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

I am not able to remain away from you any longer.

Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,

I will walk with my eyes fixed upon my thoughts,

Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit,

Without noticing anything around me, without hearing any sound,

Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisées,

Alone, unknown, hunchbacked, arms folded,

Triste, et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit.

Sorrowful, and the day for me will be like the night.

Je ne regarderai ni l'or du soir qui tombe,

I will not be able to notice neither the gold of dusk that falls,

Ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur,

Nor the far away mist descending towards Harfleur,

Et, quand j'arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe

And, when I will arrive, I will place on you tomb

Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyère en fleur.

A bouquet of green holly and some flowering heather.

Sailing the Sea of Scholarship

I have on my desk some 70 resources on Jane Austen. I am looking for a conversation that at least 5 of the authors have with one another and it has to be the right conversation. I am lost in a sea of information where each person rides their own wave. There have been some seminal hurricanes to come through which have piqued the attention of other sailors and brought them into conversation with each other, works such as Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. Those essays and books which make this essay their starting point make the argument that this text is truly amazing but amiss in too many very important places. They then go on to point out the ways in which their own arguments diverge in thinking and are stronger because of it. Some do this very successfully and others less so. Unfortunately, Gilbert and Gubar nor any other text I have yet to locate causes a congregating around the topic of Austen and reading.

There are quite a number of resources dealing with Austen and education, or contemporary fiction, or conduct books, or Northanger Abbey. However, even in this narrowed search where they seem to be aware of and influenced by each other's works, there is little cited directly, especially in the book length works. They often bring up similar points, take up similar arguments and yet are unwilling to show by citing that they are a part of a community of equally brilliant and thinking scholars. And perhaps these ideas and facts are self evident or so well canvased that they need not be cited or perhaps they are afraid that this would decrease the merit of their own work. But regardless it makes it difficult for me to understand if there is a conversation about Austen and reading. I have concluded that the sea of Austen is so big and their are so many diverse boats that I may float along and become lost at sea just trying to figure out where everyone is going, where they started and who they have met on the way.

Overlooking Anxiety

“Many anxious graduate student writters…are often chronic procrastinators, dislike writing, have difficulty concentrating on it, and fear evaluation of their work” - Lynn Z. Bloom, "Why Graduate Students Can’t Write" 

At least I am not alone.  Since all of Blooms statements about anxiety ridden writers are true of me, then I have to ask myself several questions: “What am I doing mastering in English?; Why am I pursuing a career that will plague me with this anxiety?; Why do I choose a field where the main advancement comes from good writing and where I am judged based on my written performance especially when I don’t really even like to write?” Two possibilities occur to me: either the study of English Literature gives me something far more valuable which outweighs the trials of writing or I am unstable and crazy.  I plan on exploring the first possibility and will spare you my thoughts on the later. 

I love studying English Literature, I love bringing it to others and I love language itself.  I belong in English.  But it is not because I am a gifted writer but because I value the thinking and the transformative ability of language as it exists in literature.  As I write this I pause and start talking aloud to myself.  I complete all my thoughts on the subject verbally explaining myself and my understanding of what I am doing in this field.  It is now out of my mouth and gone.  I have no record other than my incomplete memory.  However, this fact that my words would be here and gone in a moment, is the very thing that has enabled me to compose them.  As my thoughts are not written down they will not stand for judgement; therefore I can compose freely without the constrain of the critic.   However, it is necessarily that I write; I have to; I will continue.

Perhaps there are two sides of the study of English.  One is like a puzzle, where I have questions that need answers and I have a wealth of information to put together.  I listen to lectures, I talk to colleagues, I read articles and books.  These are the pieces I gather, then when I have sorted by color and type I sit down and think, write and answer my questions.  The process of putting the pieces together can be nerve racking and anxiety ridden, sometimes it is also fun.  However, it is always work and the task of writing always feel like a task. 

The other side to English is the reading of the actual texts.  This hardly ever feels like work and I read with delight and full attention.  I marvel at the use of language, hundreds of questions come to my head, I make connections and I enjoy what I am doing.  Phrases and words from authors continue to come to my mind after reading and I keep my questions so that I can go about answering them.  What draws me to the humanities and especially to literature is that it seeks to answer not only the minute questions of one text or one sentence, but by discovering the answers to the smaller questions, it demands that the larger questions of life also be answered. 

The study of literature directly concerns the study of life, the world and humanity.  I am willing to make such a bold claim because I believe it to be true and for me it is the foundation of my work and my enjoyment of it. 

I am not particularly ambitious.  I simply want to think about the world through the experiences and conversations I have and through the literature I read.  English literature is the field where this is possible.