When I sit in my classroom, I ask students to join me in putting their thoughts on the page. This is old stuff to me. I do it constantly, dribbling out lines that seem to come magically from the pen. They form themselves on the page into what we call sentences, made up of words, phonemes, syllables, letters. And the letters themselves were once ideograms—images, as in Chinese writing—that depicted the thing itself. Now we need a more elaborate process to discover the meaning in the letters. We must attend schools for years where teachers encourage us to spill out our minds and give the contents structure on the page. It’s not unlike what a brain surgeon does when s/he cleans up the mess after a head-on collision.
But where am I going with this mess, this tangle of letters and lines, interweaving and incestuously delivering me of these infant ideas? I’m heading towards the mystery of writing and thinking itself and how complicated it’s become. At one time, we were much simpler beings and could communicate with each other in more direct ways. A letter in the alphabet might resemble a tree, an animal. We could draw a symbol and point. Maybe grunt. The transaction was complete. A few gestures, some sounds.
But now I sit in a California classroom and try to help students free up their minds so they can make shapely forms on the page that have some meaning. Not just squiggly lines that go nowhere, but elegant, graceful panthers, growling and preening, opening the way into the wilds where who knows what awaits.
10 thoughts on “On teaching writing”
Lily, it is really appreciable the way you always encourage your readers to write something on any issue. Your writing expertise is a sort of asset for your readers to start writing wheter they are young old or already in this business. kuodos with love and hugs!!
Hurray! Keep writing!
No doubt teaching prospective writers is a good idea but it is not everything as most of the writers and authors in different languages were illiterate or semi educated but they have wonderful and amazing ideas by which they became famous and people adore and admire them. Just one example of Shakespeare!
From which school he graduated? Another Rabindernath Tagore. Kuodos to
Lily for inspiring and motivating youngsters to become writers.
You make good points here, Ahmed! Yes, writers are everywhere.
Thanks for your encouraging remarks which is not less than a tonic to improve my reading and writing skills. No doubt you are an inspirator and motivator for countless would be writers and authors etc. Kuodos!!
I’m delighted if my posts encourage readers of my blog to dig in and write themselves!
Be careful – once people start writing, it’s hard to stop! Ask me how many million words there are, typed in personally by me, in my Scrivener files for the three Pride’s Children books! My fingers are proud of themselves.
Hah Hah!
This is great! Reminds me of reading “The Little Prince” aloud while the HS Seniors drew images in their journals. Fun, interesting, and they each loved passing it around the class. I think that works well for every grade level!
Thanks for sharing your experience in the arena, Janet.