Thursday, September 15, 2005

on writing

One of the things often forgotten in English is not just that we are always teaching writing, but that we, too, write. A weblog is one place to work with one's own writing - since it is immediate publication it is also a place for quick reception and ease in terms of revision. Overall, you must write to teach writing. This leads to a more meta-level question: what is your methodology for writing?
--J. Rice

methodology, system of methods, analysis of the methods used, how do I know what I know about writing and how do I do the writing that I do?

a weblog is a place to write but it is in between free writing and 'polished' or finished writing.

a weblog goes out to the public, in this case a real and particular public, in other cases potentially the same, or potentially it goes out to no one or to an audience that is totally unknown.

I write. I write myself my world my others. I do this daily sometimes, weekly sometimes. Lately I read too much to write. I keep a notebook on the table and sometimes I open it while eating cereal. Sometimes I push it around the table b/c there's not enough space for the books and the old mail and the dishes left uncarried to the sink.

I write on the computer. recently broke the habit of typing 500 words a day. but this is not that. that is unread by anyone else. some of that turns into poems, into essays, into nothing and more. 500 words a day of anything. that is a good habit, if it is not broken.

sometimes I write letters by hand.

once I wrote a story about a terrible crush. ok, more than once.

often i do not capitalize or use punctuation. for better or for worse.

by training i am an experimental poet. so i can write whatever and however i want. [sic]

but poetry is not academic essay writing is not magazine writing is not something for the sciences (but for the scientists maybe). these are different and sometimes the same. i have to sit down think about it put it down on the paper.

these are different because poetry is much more fun to write than a precis.

1 comment:

Mary Karcher said...

a weblog is a place to write but it is in between free writing and 'polished' or finished writing.

Is writing ever finished? And is everything that is published (as in a blog) polished simply by nature of its being published?

Another thing about a weblog is that it opens up the possibility for conversation. Writing kept hidden on a harddrive or in a journal is, for better or worse, only and always private, confidential. But anything written on a weblog, though it may be personal, is never private or hidden. It is always something out int he open for comment, question and discussion!