Breaking the First Rule

I have to update and I had a few mediocre ideas on what topics to explore and even where to go within those topics. But I can't remember what they were. Was that today's shower or two showers ago? There should be a compartment for laptops in the shower that makes it waterproof, although I am sure that would drive my water/electric bill sky high and then I would probably complain that there was no place to sit in the shower either and that the screen fogs too much. Sigh. It's that old "If you give a writer a computer in her shower, she's going to want..." cyle. So cliche. There are these, though. Buy them for me.

One thing that has been bouncing around my mind for the duration of the summer has been next year. It happens all summer and then, two weeks before classes begin, the inevitable school-related nightmares start happening. Shortly followed by the dread of going back which trails behind you, never in full vision like a tail, while the faint whispers of unpreparedness and guilt for not working the entire summer on re-imagining your entire approach to pedagogy attaches itself to every activity you decide to do that is not school-related.

In normal professions things like this don't happen because in normal professions there are no yearly two month long vacations. This kind of strange build up can only be shared by other teachers and maybe the unemployed. However, I imagine the unemployed version of this anxiety ride is way scarier because the end of the ride is completely unpredictable while a teacher's, depending on politics in the state, the nation and in the school, are only about 75% unpredictable. At the very least, you know that you might have a job when you go back and students will be involved in some manner. The rest, no matter what they told you on the last day, is completely a surprise. I wish I was exaggerating about that.

So, this year I made my college level students read a book that was recommended by a seasoned teacher as a summer assignment.
The number one rule when assigning books (which is obvious even to the most basic of organisms on the planet) is to read the book before assigning it.

(This next part is going to sound like the set up to a bad horror flick)

I didn't. Or hadn't in a VERY long time. I saw the movie, read snippets of the book here and there on my travels as a mostly-English major and enjoyed what I knew. I liked the statements, the overall philosophical debates within and I knew that it was a big hit with teenagers based on previous recommendations from others.

I am reading the book now and I adore it for its style, for its message, for its balls-outedness. However, I have met some of my darlings for next year and some of them are going to ask questions, questions that require answers that may or may not be easy to answer in a classroom setting. Some of the things in the book are offensive. No, wait. Scratch that - the book is supposed to be offensive - but mostly in the "government is evil", "sexuality is not a crime", "battle of the sexes" and "oh boy, I am cursing a lot" kind of ways. For some reason, getting past these indiscretions in a college-level class is not too difficult. It's the race offense that is the worst. How does a student read a book where the in modern day the slang use is offensive and the perpetrators of harm are also of that race, yet the narrator falls in love with a girl of the same race in a small chapter of the book. Is it still racist? Was it racist at all? Are we just very sensitive to race? Speaking as someone who is sensitive to commentary in classics about my own creed, I am afraid I may have picked poorly for these aspects of the book escaped me when choosing it. However, the book still stands firmly on its feet and the notion that the race of the "perpetrators of harm" is somehow tied to their inclination for it can be shattered due to the narrator's own mental state, for he is unreliable in judgement. Should I approach it like that?

I think the problem is within myself. I can't decide if I think it's truly racist or not. Do I think people will be hurt? Yes. But mostly due to its other brash qualities, which is the point of the book. If anyone should be offended, it should be women in general when reading the book. Maybe asking why is an important discussion point. Perhaps there should be a day of discussion asking "Is it racist?" I have to ask the lady who recommended this how she overcomes this very glaring issue and how my fellow educators have done it in the past. Like I have said, this book has been taught for many years and it is beloved.

I'd prefer to tackle this than to push it under the rug or pretend it isn't there or isn't in the back of everyone's mind as they read the novel. I am also excluding the title from the entry on purpose because this sort of debate arises all the time in the realm of teaching as well as in the cultural atmosphere. Discussion, open and intelligent, is probably the better tactic.

Abrupt Topic Switch

The other day I was talking to a former-student and he told me that  Brave New World was one of the worst books he read in high school. I smiled because I remember thinking the same thing. I remember having read 1984 first, after the middle school Fahrenheit451 (which started my love of dystopian* Literature, Science Fiction and Ray Bradbury), and then reading Brave New World and thinking it was cartoonish and ridiculous. However, I teach it in contrast with 1984 and I teach it because when it comes to the examinations and the essays that the students are required to produce, they can use so much of that book. I told the former student that there is a sort of loathing that I have for saying I love a book for the purpose of an exam or a discussion even though I personally do not like a novel. I guess that is the difference in showing someone how to do something and just talking about what you like, a distinction a lot of people don't think exists in teaching. I will continue to teach Brave New World because it is a great example of a lot of techniques done correctly and it is analytical fodder. I guess I'll say that teaching it a strange reality.

*dystopian in spell-check is corrected to "utopian" - I smell conspiracy!

Draft or Bottled?

Every summer I say I am going to write. Every summer I say I am going to be an artist for the summer. This summer, I started. I hope I can follow through. I think follow-through is harder than starting or ending.

I guess my mantra for the summer is:

 Write where I want to be 

because I would not like my inner self and already atrophied adult being to curl up into a desiccated and stale chunk of what used to resemble human creativity.

I know that's too long to be a mantra, but maybe I'll just repeat the first part, "Write where you want to be". I guess it would be the way out of writer's block for the day. If all comes up dry, write about that. Where would I like to be - physically, mood-wise, career-wise, spiritually, etc. I can go anywhere and it all relates back to the goal, writing every day.


Draft or Bottled?


The first author that ever made me see prose as something gorgeous, the magical Ray Bradbury, described inspiration as one of those things you don't have the luxury of just letting walk on by. You have to take the muse when it comes and just write. Do not wait. The spark will not be there when you get back. The butterfly in the jar will have run out of air. I agree. I once told a friend of mine who wrote every day, all the time, continuously that writing for me was more like an urge to pee. If I felt I had to do it now, I couldn't hold it. I couldn't force it either. Oh, the luxury of being a college student writer. I believed that's how I would write forever. However, once adult life strapped itself to my head, sucked all of my whimsy away and replaced it with functional concerns like work, bills, chores, errands and other petrifying agents, my creative self started to stiffen and become more and more woodlike. 


It has been easy to put the playtime "arting" and crafting and writing to the back when my profession only demands these things of me on rare occasions. It's extremely easy to get lost in the exhaustion excuses or to fill my day with other things - even healthy things like working out or cleaning or cooking, etc. However, for someone like me who had their ships pointed toward writing and creating, to keep veering off and settling at other ports all slowly chips away at something in the back of oneself. It's that part of me that knows I am avoiding the big stuff because I am scared of it working, terrified of my love for it and the lukewarm reception of others and all the other things that come with creativity. Sometimes it's not even what others may think because having the opinions of others is essential to seeing the world from outside of the cranial command center of our egos. Sometimes it's just seeing what is usually inside and even hidden from ourselves in a tangible outside form. Maybe that's what giving birth is really like. Ray Bradbury called his books his children. Well, my self-worth had enough of cowardice ruling the joint and decided it was time to write some children. 


I decided to write for at least two hours every day to start and to blog at least once a week about the process. I had to decide about what I was aiming for. Is it a book? I guess it may be a book. Is it planned out or is it free flow?
Bottle or draft?


I have heard writers explain both. Some authors like to write and see what the characters do on their own. I saw an author speak a while ago about the complicated maps and taped together pieces of paper she creates to chart out her plots before she even begins so she knows the aim of each chapter. It covered an entire wall and collapsed to fit in her pocket so she could unfurl it whenever she got lost along the way.


Because of my affinity for logic puzzles (and I DO LOVE logic puzzles and puzzle games), I am going to hybrid and see where that takes me. I tell my students when they write to first brainstorm. Just let your mind go and put everything you've got onto the table, like idea-vomit. Just purge - no restrictions or self-doubt. Then, pick through it (vomit metaphor not so great). Find what you like. Now, write in that direction. Then we go back and fix and go back and fix and go back and fix if we need to. Once you've got the clay on the table, you can work with it.  I tend to think that in this compromise of the planned versus free tactic you are writing freely, but toward an event or destination or with some kind of development in mind. Like this, you can still add in subplots and other character details and then maintain the thrill of solving your self-made puzzle and do in in a way that will move the reader.


Even though I usually try to work with the hybrid model of draft/bottle, there are exceptions. The other day, I caught a butterfly. An idea came to me after a trail of musings and I held on to it (rare for me and my Memento memory) and I did not take Mr.Bradbury's advice, mainly because I was in the bathroom of Universal Studios theme park at the time, and put that butterfly in a jar. Today I checked to see if it was still alive and it worked enough to get the start of something. Unplanned, but going somewhere. I still have no idea what is going to happen, but as each paragraph unfolds, I find that my subconscious has been writing a story all along, it just hasn't shown me yet. 


I think at the end of it all, planned or unplanned - it's like anything else, doing is better than not doing. Just write.