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posted by: surrogate (reply) post date: 01.21.06 (1:35 pm) Why? As someone who has no understanding of the universe, but who wishes to, strives to, and yet realizes he never will, at least I do realize that I must at least temporarily pretend to have a little bit of insight in snippets of time long enough to get something down on paper in order to have anything I want to write have any "oomph" at all. That "faked" understanding must then reflect whatever philosophy I've decided to use as the basis for what it is I'm trying to say. I find that if I try to write something without having "firmed up" my own beliefs about the... what? rightness or truth of what I'm hoping to express, I end up feeling as though I've simply wasted my own time as well as the time of anyone who might become so unfortunate as to read my tripe. I would KILL to take a writing course or two if it weren't for the fact that I'm afraid of the sort of harsh (and surely justified) criticism I'd receive that might keep me from feeling confident enough to write in the future. It's strange to have a complete understanding of one's own (my own) limitations and knowing perfectly well that I've trained myself to put them aside day after day for as long as I can get myself to sit here punching keys. Yet, I'm afraid to analyze it too closely for fear of permanently admitting to myself that I am what I know I am: a hack with dreams. The only thing I've ever been taught about writing is to put the punch-line at the end. Might be about time to learn another thing or two. You teach some classes through this blog and I'd gladly pay the tuition. posted by: TaBooTenente (reply) post date: 01.21.06 (4:06 pm) thanks, surrogate. i'm working on a part II here, more specifics on the berlin essay. what i didnt have time to talk about in the first installment, is the way he (and probably every philosopher since they started building this nutjob universe) isolates specific components of reality. he goes on to group together four general arrangements of these components--four theories of how we perceive the universe, and how each of those theories demands a specific way of teaching writing. he points out that professors tend to have sloppy teaching habits. the way they present their ideas to their classes meshes together different elements of the separate theories--which in turn prevents students from understanding what they are really trying to do, when they sit down and write. i'll keep working on part II, but i'll say this about MFA workshops: they ARE scary, and sometimes rough. but not necessarily for the reasons you might expect. at the mfa level, usually every student has some talent, but not the kind of talent that puts other people to shame. the MFA student also has a locked, tunnel-visioned perspective--if his perspective wasn't so screwed up, he could be out in the world writing for a living, instead of serving his apprenticeship as a student. if you have talent, you still need to be willing to write. sounds obvious, doesn't it? but if you were on the tennis team at your highschool, you'd be forced to suck it up three hours a day minimum. you'd play a lot of tennis. donkey loads of tennis. no one would expect you to walk out on the clay and serve a winner on your first try. but when it comes to writing, it's too easy to give up. no one hangs you up by your jock strap in the MFA locker room. the worst part is that you'll be at some crappy supper party and some old testicle surgeon will sidle up to you with some pinneaple beverage dripping all over himself, and he'll say something like: "i'm thinking about taking half a year off to write a book. whaddaya think? should i do it?" then you have to smile and say something back, like, "hey, why not? give it a try. what's funny is that the other day i was thinking about taking some time off writing, just to give ball surgery a try. do you think i'd enjoy it?" so if you want to write, let yourself learn about writing, and start writing. i've seen what you post on your blog, and you've got as much talent as the blokes in my classes. if you wrote 16 hours a day like john gardner said he did, who knows? all i'm saying is this: check out the salad eaters in a workshop sometime. give 'em a scowl, and they'll tuck tail and run. tbt posted by: surrogate (reply) post date: 01.21.06 (4:38 pm) Sixteen hours a day? Poor guy. Must have made for a crappy sex life. "Oh darling, what direction are you going to come at me from?" "Damn it. How many times do I have to tell you not to end your sentences in a prepostion?" posted by: onebadjen (reply) post date: 01.22.06 (5:52 am) college freshman to write? i had a psych professor my senior year that swore he was going to teach us lazy southerners to write... he took an easy formerly multiple choice test type class dealing with the history of psych and taught it like an upper level english course. such an evil, evil man. he had us writing 2-3 page papers on essays he assigned us to read that were barely a page and a half. i actually miss that class a bit... not that my actual writing improved, but i do miss being required to think at times! posted by: TaBooTenente (reply) post date: 01.22.06 (6:23 am) it's a bit frightening how rarely our professors require us to think--memorize, yes, place bits of information in a larger context, maybe; but actually think . . . ? my brother started his highschool teaching career last fall, and told me that the SAT now has three sections, the original two and a third that deals with writing. i wonder who's dealing with more shock, the students or the teachers who now need to teach those students to write! i find it interesting that many undergraduate programs feel the need to require "freshman writing" courses. i mean, think of how many apps they receive every year--how many essays the admissions committee must read. if supposedly these schools are accepting the most promising young men and women, then these essays must be terrifyingly bad. how bad could they be? i mean, how bad could the best 10% of these young students be? tbt posted by: surrogate (reply) post date: 01.22.06 (8:23 am) Reply to: TaBooTenente My son was a creative writing major at U. of M. One time when he was a junior, he brought home copies of a bunch of papers from a class he was taking (what the class was called I don't remember) where the assignment was for each student to "grade" everyone else's work. Being a nosey cuss, I perused them myself. I remember being appalled at some of the writing. There were a few that were fairly easy to get through and fewer still that were really fun to read, but by and large, I felt like I was looking at work done by early high-school students. posted by: TaBooTenente (reply) post date: 01.22.06 (11:04 am) actually, i have a similar assignment for next week. i don't need to come up with a grade, just margin notes and an end note suggesting three specifics the student needs to work on before the paper resembles, well, a paper. not fun, by the way. tbt |
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