How I Write

Last week I received peer reviewer comments for a chapter I have in an edited collection as well as an article a friend generously looked at after I got a journal rejection. It got me thinking about the disconnect that often occurs between how we teach students writing works and how professional writers, in this case academics, write and respond. This was already bouncing around in my head because the week before last a student asked me to look at a piece of writing in a way that I imagine most of us don't hear as often as we want. The student had turned in a paper, but for personal growth had a question about a section, how best to transition, revise it, their sense was that this bit seemed off. So I was happy to read it, and offer some comments on how to revise, an approach, that also expanded the section and talked about why this felt off, and some fixes. The student mentioned that this was the type of help they had hoped X class would serve. 

So I was thinking about how I teach writing, and how I can approach writing differently in my upper level classes. Because I do grade conferences in my composition classes we look at genre, define it, talk about rhetorical situations, read and analyze mentor texts, and talk about what elements THEIR versions of X genres should include. In these classes I focus on how well their piece of writing conforms to X genre, how successfully they cover the elements, then if they go further with creativity or revision. They get to choose their own topics and I focus a lot on them discovering their voice and exploring their interests. When we grade conference they tell me based on this class work and discussion what grade their work earned and why. I tell them what I love about it, what struck me, I ask questions as a reader, what I didn't understand or wanted more of. Then we use that to work on feedback.

I do something similar in my upper level classes with grade conferences and feedback. But I've redesigned these classes to cover more skills- so each class has a close reading paper, an unessay, a final paper, then some form of scholarly response. They still get to pick their ow topics, explore their own interests, but I want to make sure each class is reinforcing these key skills. So I think I want to spend more time talking about writing. Thinking of the two sets of notes I got on the article that was rejected, which both provide VERY different feedback (one from outside the field, one from an expert), and the notes on the edited collection, I thought that I'd use these pieces with my students. I want to share how we get feedback, and how the "fix these things, but I won't tell you how" notes are very different from how we usually tell students how to shape their writing.

I think too that me trying to get students to like writer's notebooks is about all this as well- my notebooks are my main lifeline, they are key to my process, and I really wanted to challenge students to explore that, stretch themselves and try something new. They hate them. I have tried different forms, they hate them all. But I think that I have a new way to try and accomplish and share what I'd like.

Keith Thomas' 2010 "Working Methods" about how he writes was making the rounds on Twitter over the weekend. It was the first time I had seen it and I really enjoyed it, particularly the tactile references within the piece and in the responses to the Tweet. As much as I love technology, draft in Google Docs, blog, and Tweet about my work, my process is grounded in a series of paper notebooks (no longer 100s of empty ones guilting me about not using them now that I use them all for writer's notebooks), color coded paper notes, Post-Its, multi-colored scribbles. 

So I think what I'll do with my upper level classes, as well as in my Intro to English Studies and Capstone classes, is share what process is AND present it as a way to address these more holistic comments of these were the issues, you figure out how to fix. 

So here is a brief overview of how I write. In general, ideas for chapters and articles and blog posts all start in the writer's notebook. Depending on the idea sometimes this is a short web, sometimes it's more detailed. 

This page became a CFP for an edited collection. Sometimes these notes then become a blog post which allows me to write through my thoughts. This is often where the structure emerges along with what I actually want to talk about. The next step is a relatively new one. I never used to outline, but on dissertation #2, outlining was one of the things my director recommended. Actually she recommended and showed me how in Word, to use outline view, where you can just see the first sentence in your paragraphs. It's a great way in especially larger works to see if your organization is working or running off the rails. It was during my work on dissertation #2 that I started outlining all my work. I start with a rough outline, then I leave it, and add more to it as it occurs to me.

This is another thing that I mentioned to the student from the beginning of this piece- that some revision only becomes clear with time to step away and come back, time to let ideas marinate, which undergrad classes do not always allow. Time is a luxury and a privilege, certainly a fact academics know, precarity robs many of this time as well as access, there is no protection or assurance of it.

When I'm ready to start drafting I put my outline on book desk stand so I can see it as I draft AND use the outline as my template, just file --> make a copy in Google Docs so I write with that in mind. I write my analysis first. I was taught that academics write conference presentations first because the genre focuses on THEIR argument and that's the idea I stick with. Once I have my thoughts, my analysis, which tends to be a close reading, I then start with research. I log onto the library and search articles and ebooks, things that are accessible. Many times there are articles that seem cool and I probably could use but my university does not have access to so I can't use. I print these out because I can't read and understand the way I need to electronically. I also use books. When I was at a larger university I used ILL and the library itself all the time. Our library here is mostly in storage due to renovation plans so not ideal. In both cases I have also bought books. For this edited collection there's a brand new book out on my topic for my chapter, like just perfect, so I ordered it for $119, which honestly, is FAR beyond what I can afford/what I normally buy. My medieval and early modern books tend to be more expensive than my horror or fairy tale books. When buying, I default to dissertation logic- is this a book that I can use down the road both in my scholarship and teaching? If the answer is yes I buy it.

Once I've read all my scholarship, I go back to my draft and read it over, hard copy, printed out. I make notes both on the draft, in a nice, easy to see difference, colored pen, and on legal pad for larger additions/changes. I also physically cut pages and use a glue stick to paste items back. I try to then set this aside. The next time I write I type up all these revisions. I've learned there is a magic time between wanting some distance so I can see things clearly and waiting too long and not understanding whatever code I wrote revision notes in. When I was working on the PhD I made writing a habit. I sat at my desk every morning after walking Nehi, ate lunch at my desk, and was there until 4p. Some days I got a lot done and some days I just sat there staring at the monitor, mostly on Twitter. But even on these days because I knew I wasn't "allowed" to leave my desk or office, I ended up getting stuff done, even if it was the more minor stuff that allows and contributes to writing even if it's note ACTUAL writing.

Back to time as a luxury, now with a full time job, this is not my schedule, and this is not a bad thing because one of the things the diss 1, diss 2 situation taught me was the consequences of forcing writing. For me there's a fine balance between making writing a habit and not forcing ideas that you'll end up having to just junk and rewrite. I agree with others that Tweeting about my work and blogging about teaching and scholarship made diss writing (especially the second time) easier. When I was teaching high school full time, when I had scholarly stuff I was working on, I set aside Saturdays for whatever I needed. I'd set aside the whole day for reading, drafting, whatever I needed. This last year, my first at a new job, had a steep learning curve, so things were more piecemeal. I got one chapter done over summer after moving, before school started. Then had revisions for that chapter and proofs for another over the fall. Over winter break I wrote an article and submitted it before we were back. I had planned on redoing the book proposal over spring break but because of the pandemic that got tossed. I've found that my schedule just does not allow for my scholarly Saturdays. I often have events, I spend most of Sunday lesson planning for the week, so I really need my Saturdays off. So, what seems to work is only writing or revising on breaks, so over the summer, fall break is really just a long weekend, but Thanksgiving works, as does winter break, and normally spring break. Knowing this I need to plot out how to get stuff done which means having a clear research agenda and set of ideas. 

This schedule helps me because it means I can set a timeline that ensures things get done, that I have articles or chapters in various forms of submission, and I don't feel stressed when I DO have to work on weekends or things come up. This summer I want to get the edited collection I'm co-editing sorted, so get the introduction drafted with my partner in crime, research and write MY chapter for this so it's done, and set the TOC so folks can start their writing. I'd like to also revise my Guthlac article and send it back out AND redo the book proposal and get that sent out. That last may be too ambitious as it also means rewriting a sample chapter, but those are my goals.

When I get notes and revisions back I try and knock them out right away so that they're off my desk and so they don't get short-thrift as stuff comes up later.

I am still feeling rocky about balance with my new job and how to stagger articles and chapters so I'm always working on one thing, have another submitted and waiting to hear, and then one going to print. Of course all this is influenced by fact that I haven't presented at conferences in a couple years because of high school teaching then this transition and will not be for the foreseeable future so all my ideas are fresh out of my head. I am lucky that my new job requires 3 peer reviewed texts for tenure, and after my first year I have one published, one coming out end of this year/beginning of next, so I think I'm on track to be okay, but it is all new.

Anyway, that's how I write, and I hope sharing this with my students, the process in general, and some my of my specific tactics, will help.

The Feminine Lore

In Supernatural it's a running gag to consult "the lore." The lore is not some pie in the sky knowledge pulled out of the ether, it is usually contained in a very material book, leather bound, old ink. The lore is something you can touch, the knowledge gained is tied to its materiality. In the show both Dean and Same frequently ask different versions of, "what does the lore say?" In this way this collection of material knowledge is also anthropomorphized. The Lore takes on the role of unknown mentor and guide. The first few seasons the Lore represented their father in the form of his leather bound journal the boys used for guidance as they went about their day to day (or rather week by week) adventures of "saving people, hunting things, the family business."

The idea of lore as unknown or secret knowledge passed down through generations is not a new one, neither is its embodiment in a book. However, how it is gendered is different. In movies and television shows like Practical Magic (1998), Charmed (1998-2006), The Witches of East End (2013-2014), and the reimaging of Charmed (2018-present) all feature a family spell book or book of shadows that allows the ancestors to pass down their generational knowledge and in many cases speak directly to them.

The women in these stories are never alone because their mothers and grandmothers continue to guide them, through ghostly forms and the books they hold.

These physical books are tied to gendered, physical spaces. In Practical Magic and The Witches of East End it is the surprisingly similar looking kitchen. The line between making and creating food and making and creating magic is non-existent. It's an idea 1999's Simply Irrestible made explicit with the character of Amanda, a horrible cook trying to save her dead mother's neighborhood restaurant. She is only able to create great food and magic once she puts on her mom's earrings, and suddenly her food is magical.

Practical Magic and The Witches of East End don't take it that far, although magic tequila does make an appearance. Instead the kitchen is presented as the center of a house, a home, the woman's place. These presentations do not denigrate the place or the work done there, instead these gendered places are places of power. The spell books and herbs as at place as the cookbooks and spices.

The books the women consult are creations in and of themselves. These are not pages fresh off a computer printer, attached by glue stick, these are heavy-weight pages written on using a serious pen, enclosed in leather. The books are creations that show care and work in their transmission of knowledge. They are also books that include the future, with the majority of the pages left blank for future generations to fill. These tomes are weighty, both in actual physicality, the characters often struggle to hold, carry, and navigate these books, and for the knowledge they contain. The women do not make Faustian choices, trading their souls for the knowledge of these books, but they do constantly face decisions on how to use the knowledge. The repeated idea of "do no harm" and that there are consequences for using magic for personal gain. The Charmed series does this the most explicitly although all of them feature some version of this throughout their runs. While the women

While many of these portrayals conform to traditional perception of women's work and women's spaces, there is some pushback against these gendered constructions. In addition to the kitchen as foundational spaces for creation both versions of Charmed feature attic spaces where the women often go to do what is portrayed as more "serious" and less day-to-day spellwork. This physical space has more in common with tower labs gendered male. Those spaces also blend and cross boundaries, science and magic, book knowledge with the personal experience of experiments. The current reimaging of Charmed does this through the character of Macy who is a scientist, with a PhD, who blurs these sames lines. Yet this work is not limited to her in the show, both her sisters and her mother before them are shown performing spells in the attic space. In the original Charmed all three sisters performed spell work in the attic.

Even when these characters push into these traditionally male coded spaces they are not required to act male to do so, they remain inherently themselves. In this way these shows differ from other genre shows like horror or science fiction that often require their women to discard their femininity in order to participate in male spaces or acquire skills or knowledge traditionally considered the domain of men. These attic spaces themselves provide clues to this, padded, rounded furniture, homemade candles, couches, rugs that soften the space. These attics are also the repository of childhood toys and relics rather than more scientific specimens or equipment.

Returning to Supernatural, we can see that the lore is gendered here too. From the first season Sam is presented as less than Dean, less of a man because he initially chose a "normal" life over demon hunting, he chose college over the road, a life alone over family. Dean performs in a traditional masculine manner while Sam is shown as soft, weak, and fails to live up to this manly ideal. This contrast and construction is seen in Sam as the interpreter and research of the Lore. Journals are generally gendered, as is research as we see above. Sam as the keeper of John's journal, and the main researcher, is feminized by the Lore, a traditionally feminine, and weaker role, despite the Lore and Sam's use of these skills granting him knowledge that provides an advantage. From the first episode Dean is portrayed as the typical man while Sam is somehow less than.

Yet the women described above are a helpful lens to reconsider Sam and his interaction with the Lore. Sam ultimately holds the power. Dean may be a guys guy but Sam is able to think through, think ahead, first because of his possession and use of John's journal and later because he uses the computer, both for hacking and fact finding, coming to blend both types of knowledge as the seasons move on. 

If we separate these portrayals from our initial gendered reactions and judgments we can reconsider the Lore itself. The Lore as knowledge is not a weapon of offense, of violence, but is often a way to see the truth, make informed decisions, guide people. Yet the Lore can also be used to defeat, kill, send villains back to hell. The variety of use seems to depend on the vehicle. Charmed used the Book of Shadows to vanquish demons on a weekly basis,  their murders never given an ethical thought. The reboot on the other hand shows murder and vanquishing of enemies as something only evil characters do. The Witches of East End made similar arguments about murder, and Practical Magic certainly showed that there were serious ethical considerations around death, and severe consequences for murder, even if it was justified. In each of these works the Lore is used to varying degrees of offensive actions, with the knowledge generally used in a balanced manner, as much to help as harm.

Supernatural on the other hand has spent 15 years pretty much killing with impunity. They're demons and monsters, not worthy of ethical considerations, although there have been a few episodes where Sam, Dean, and friends, are on opposite sides of this argument. For the boys the Lore is a weapon to make their monster hunting more effective, as seen with the introduction of the Men of Letters and their base in season eight. These additions made the Lore exponentially more powerful, for its reach through time and across the globe. The size of the library, the specimens, these physical objects always playing in the background on the set emphasize the weight of the Lore, its ongoing presence. Sam and Dean are surrounded by the evidence of the Lore, its purpose, its power. Here the Lore is not feminine or masculine but rather seems to represent all the Men of Letters throughout the years who have used the Lore to fight against evil, and added their own knowledge to the cause.

Taken as a whole generational knowledge in the form of journals and books and ghostly advice offers a measured, balanced approach to knowledge and actions. There is a great amount of knowledge out there, available to any who would seek it, but this knowledge represents great power, great responsibility, and great consequences, for good and ill, if used. It is a power and knowledge inherently grounded in feminine spaces and practices, but this does not mean that use of the Lore feminizes the user or is less than other forms of knowledge of power. Instead, it seems to offer a middle way, one of moderation that reembraces or reinscribes the power of the home and passing on our stories to the next generation. Voices they may need if we are not here to share them ourselves.

The Stories We Tell

The last few years I have scanned all of the old family pictures. The albums were falling apart, the plastic coverings were degraded and starting to affect the photos. I'm necessarily sure why I did this. I am the last in my family, I am not married, I have no children, and there is no one after me who will care. I imagine when I die that the my computer will be wiped, donated, and the images will just disappear.

But the older I get the more I realize how much who I am was shaped by my very earliest years. And the older I get the more I realize that the majority of that time was a fiction. It was a story Mom told, then repeated, until it became THE story, replacing the truth, whatever that may have been. Now with Mom gone, that stories she told, are all that remain except for some artifacts- a jade elephant with a broken trunk, these pictures, and old wooden box.

The story Mom told was that we lived in a commune house outside of Washington D.C, called The Big House.

It was probably, supposedly, exactly what you would think a hippie, commune house was in the early 1970s. It was a group of friends who raised their children together, two born a month apart and inseparable as children. It was cinder block bookcases and plants and friends. It was communal meals and shared ideals.

It was shared work and shared care. It was long nights sitting on the floor, listening to vinyl. It was the smell of pot so prevalent some of the young folks growing up in this house *may* have thought this was incense, since both seemed the same. It was a group, a collective, that carried this sense of family with them. So when a group decided that D.C. was no longer the best place, they decided to migrate to a small set of barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina. It was different but in many ways the same. People talked about being close to nature, taking long walks on the beach, collecting a ridiculous amount of shells and beach glass. It was people living hand to mouth, but focusing more on the quality of life, the love, the comfort, the support, than anything else.

It was an ideal, it was a dream. Later it was watching The Big Chill and not thinking that folks were the ones who gave up but the one who stayed doing what they originally started doing to give back. 

But it was also all a lie. The group stopped talking. One went into beach development and real estate, far removed from, and a total betrayal of the original ideals. Another went onto work for corporations and multi-million dollar companies, although would have denied they had given up on living their true life. Another over dosed, the life an excuse for the drugs that soon became all consuming.

But I was much older before I realized it was all a lie. I believed the story I was told. I believed that people were innately honest. I believed it was our individual job, our duty, to do what was best for the common good. I believed that people should always work together for the common goals of the community. I believed in following my heart, the strength of my convictions, and going where I was needed. It's why I'm a teacher. It's why I'm a writer. It's why I collect beach class, and collect vinyl, and spend hours on the floor listening to vinyl, and burn incense (the actual kind). 

The dissonance between my innate nature, shaped by believing these stories, and the reality of the world, is the source of my greatest disappointment in life. 

I do not do well with institutions. I do not do well with things that are not in the best interests of all. I don't understand people who lie or are duplicitous. I don't understand why everyone cannot work together to accomplish things that best serve our community. I am continually hurt by people who do these things. I am always surprised when people say one thing and do another. I am disappointed in people and structures I have placed my faith in. I am constantly in trouble for saying these things, advocating, standing up. Trust me, if I was capable of sitting there and not saying anything, I would have done it by now. Because me being me, me buying into my Mom's stories, is my greatest strength and foundation, it is the basis for my quiet life, but it is also the greatest source of hurt. People don't like it when you tell them things are bigoted and racist. People do not like when you speak up, speak out, demand more.

My advocacy has both been of varying degrees over my adult life and a constant. The older I get the more I think it is my privilege and responsibility to do all I can with what I have.

So I will stick with my Mom's stories. I will weave my own using her foundation. And every day continue to believe that maybe the story can be true, if people just want it to be.