Composition Studies and Teaching

Sometimes I think that my education was the worst thing that ever happened to my writing. From a young age I learned that there is power in writing, but that the power of the novel or the power of poetry was not something you modeled when writing at school. I learned that my teacher did not want to read "my voice" when I wrote about the passion found in the last speech of Othello. A professor has no interest in "my" voice when I write about the disappointment of Aphra Behn.No, it is the ANALYSIS that is important, and that analysis is best seen through formulaic, impersonal writing. You know what type of writer you create when you place extreme restrictions upon the assignment such as "No use of the first person" and "Must be 1000 words" ? 

An indifferent writer.

A hesitant writer.

A cautious writer.

But most importantly, you create a writer that takes no ownership of their work. 

Students cannot give you their best work when their best work does not belong to them. I think the best way to encourage students to write and to improve their writing is by allowing them to take ownership of their writing. 

I just finished a 1600 word paper for an adolescent literature course. Let me preface this by saying that I absolutely love adolescent literature, and I absolutely loved the books I was writing about. Do you know what grade I expect on that paper? 

a B-.

You see, I have figured it out. I know exactly what this professor expects and I know I didn't deliver an A paper. My words were uncomfortable. They were awkward. I stared blankly at the screen for 5 minutes before I started every paragraph and every new thought.I checked my word count after every sentence.  I simply cannot get over the fact that I know now. I feel like I took the red pill. I now know that the way I have been writing in college (and have been making A's with for 4 years) is not ME. It's not my voice, and now that I acknowledge that is not my voice, I am having trouble writing even a sentence of my "usual" formula. Yet I know that if I write the way I want to write, I will receive an even lower grade. I know that because I have been trying that in my other classes, and I have been receiving those lower grades. I still engage the material in a critical way, but I'm not doing that in the exact way they want or expect, and so my grades are suffering. 

I don't even think I need to explain the pressure and important of grades within an academic setting.

If you look at my GPA, I am not an academic success by any stretch of the imagination. Yet, if you were to read my personal writing, you would find my success, my passion. Would you like to know why that is? What improved my writing?

I allowed myself to suck.

A few months ago I attended a poetry workshop by Xero Skidmore. He demanded that we write a poem, and his advice to those of us that didn't know where to start was 

"Allow yourself to suck."

and so I did.

I allowed myself to let go of my preconceived notions of what "good" writing was, and I just wrote. I let go of what I thought my professors expected, what I expected, and I allowed myself to suck. To write just to write, even if I thought it wasn't particularly good. By not expecting so much of myself by writing, my writing improved.

So what does this tell me about how to teach writing? Well, by pressuring students to conform to extremely specific guidelines, I am harming them as writers.