The Writhing Process: How Can We Bring Back the Joy in Writing?
Zachary is already thinking about walls, or at least that’s what he tells me in his first writing assignment for our English Composition 1 class, an assignment that asks students to examine their writing process. He explains how he has struggled with grammar, punctuation and formatting.
“I hate writing,” he explains. “It’s torture. I spend so much time worrying about the details that I never get to say what I want to say.”
Zachary is not alone. Since I began teaching, my first order of business is to have students identify the things that stand in the way of their success in writing. Interestingly, they all have an answer — they all seem to know their weaknesses. Even more interesting is that the majority of their issues circle around the same things Zachary mentioned: grammar, punctuation and formatting.
I tell Zachary to relax. Despite what he’s heard, these surface-level issues are only one part of the total writing process. They are to writing what a well-placed salad fork is to a good meal. It’s presentation, and while presentation is important, it’s not anything if there’s nothing good to eat on the menu.
I recall my own journey into the world of writing. I remember as a child that I would draw elaborate pictures with sweeping storylines and vibrant characters.
As I imagine it was for Zachary, something diabolical happened along the way. Some evil struck my writing brutally and without mercy: grades. There I was, the greatest writer of my generation, bowing to the will of, not a sword held by an ill-tempered ogre, but a little red pen clutched delicately in the hands of my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Kirkwood.
Instead of writing for my own enjoyment, I was now writing to earn my teacher’s approval, and she held fast to evaluating the one thing easy to evaluate: grammar. She even brought her own language with her. I interpreted her language to mean that an ‘A’ meant I could do no better; a ‘B’ meant I should have spent more time on my essay; a ‘C’ meant I was struggling, but doing okay; finally, a ‘D’ or ‘F’ meant I should stop trying — maybe deep inside I was a math guy.
Though I doubt Mrs. Kirkwood or the teachers that would follow her meant any harm, all the joy and magic of my writing experiences were gone — lost to this new world of evaluation. Now it was all about commas and spelling and mixed-modifiers and dangling participles and split infinitives and so on until nothing but structure mattered. To not control these elements was to be a weak writer — a weak writer with a weak mind and no longer would I be allowed to write exclusively about monsters.
Umph! The writing process left me writhing.
It wasn’t until I went to college that the idea of joy in writing came back. Somehow, things had changed. Now, instead of writing being a painful process, it became a challenge. I began to work harder than ever on my writing, but it was good work. Sure, I still missed commas, and I never have gotten over my nasty little habit of using contractions, but my instructors had a better perspective on what those issues in clarity really meant: delivery, not weakness. My instructors cared a lot more about how I was working through my ideas than whether or not my grammar was up to snuff. My instructors allowed me to love writing again, and through that, made me want to worry about clarity — they allowed my ideas to shine and helped me to relate those ideas more clearly.
It is this joy in writing that many of us lose as we grow older. We get caught up in the idea that our ability to write is reflective of who we are. Society, of course, reinforces this notion. Of all of the subject areas we experience in school, English is by far the most common, and the most common way of grading English is to grade grammar. When did writing become the monster?
As a teacher, I try to instill the idea of writing as a whole with my students. I’m not going to say that college writing courses are easy. They are quite the opposite, but they tend to be about freeing the writer within, not about kidnapping that writer and holding him or her hostage to grammar rules. Still, grammar is important, but let’s be clear about what it really is — a piece of the writing process, not all of it, and certainly not something worth fearing. While it is important that instructors point out issues with grammar, clarity, and structure so that their students can express their ideas more clearly, we cannot do so at the cost of joy. After all, we know that grammar is a surface level issue; in college, we dig deeper.
Whatever your fears of writing may be, whatever walls may be holding you back, let them go. Writing can be beautiful again; the joy in writing can be recovered just like it was when we were kids. All you need to do is to pick up a pen or poise your fingers and let go.
Photo credit: stock.xchng
About the Author: Timothy P. Goss is a full-time English instructor at Grantham University. He teaches in the College of Arts and Sciences.
