Mindset

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Mindset: the established set of attitudes held by someone (MacBook Dictionary)

Mindset keeps popping up in my life lately. I blame mindset for everything: when I don’t agree with someone’s theoretical stance, it is their “mindset” that I point to; when I talk about how we can encourage good learning habits in students, I suggest that we have to develop their mindset.

One place where I don’t seem to be using the word enough, however, is with my writing. And it is here where mindset insidiously influences what I do. When I teach, I have no choice but to confront my set of attitudes—teaching happens at a required time, students respond to what happens in class, and external forces demand certain accountings of my practice. I continue to question and be aware. But, except for external deadlines or my annual report, I do not have to face my attitudes about writing.

Do I want to write? Of course I do. Do I think writing is important for my sense of self? Indeed I do. These are not the attitudes I am worried about. I worry more about my attitudes toward getting to that writing—a mindset that suggests I need time to really delve into a piece, that reminds me that I have so many other urgent issues demanding my attention, and that I don’t know what I will say so I should wait until I do. I am sure if you write (or are required to write), you will recognize these attitudes.

What troubles me about this mindset is how easily I let it happen and how easily I let it guide what gets written (or doesn’t). I have to work to change this mindset—and I do think it takes work. Just consider the two parts: mind/set. That sounds pretty stubborn and suggests effort is needed for change to happen.

My challenge, then, for the New Year is to listen to my set mind and interrupt its chatter. When I realize that I am not accomplishing my writing, I can ask why and then create conditions where it can occur. I can account for my practice and stay aware. It's time to move from mindset to mindshift.

Time for Writing

I have met very few people who tell me that they cannot wait to sit down to write. No matter how accomplished they are at this process, it seems that most people struggle to find the discipline needed to meet the blank page. I am the same. Once I sit down and if I persist beyond ten minutes or so, I usually can become absorbed in what I am doing. On the best days, I lose track of time altogether as I write and rewrite. It is that pleasurable absorption that keeps me returning to my laptop or journal. But it never seems to get easier.

The best approach for me has been to observe my habits of avoidance and then counteract those peccadilloes. For instance, if I am not sure what I want to write about, I set a timer on my laptop for thirty minutes or so and just begin to type ideas. The trick is to keep writing something, using that language to cajole my thinking, and keep typing no matter what. After a few minutes, my brain stops trying to talk me out of this foolishness and actually gets interested. Threads appear that point to where my writing should go.

Another thing my brain tries to suggest to me is get up and do something else just when I start writing. Is that not dust on the upper bookshelf? It needs to be taken care of! Is that the oven timer? Perhaps I should go check. So, I have learned to make a deal with my brain. If you want to get up and go somewhere, take the idea you are avoiding with you. Just walk around and think about it for a while--but not long. Set the timer. There's a theme here you see--my writing is like a hard-boiled egg. It needs timing to set properly.

Most of all, I try to think about my resistance as a bit humorous and something of a game. I like to imagine I am outside myself, watching the writer. I ask, "How am I go to play with this writer today?" This approach helps surprisingly. At least I don't get frustrated with my slothful ways. And why do I feel guilty about not writing anyway? (That's a whole other blog entry.)

But more seriously, I find it an interesting phenomenon that I struggle with the opportunity to engage in this creative work. I don't have trouble convincing myself to work in my flower garden or take my camera out in the field. What is it about writing that meets with resistance? Perhaps it is because we narrate ourselves and our experience that our writing becomes the heartbeat of our identity. Perhaps written language shapes us more definitively than other things we do in life--even more than spoken language.

In the meantime, I continue to choose humor over despair. And Margaret Atwood's tips for writing keep me smiling.

Denise Levertov's "The Secret"

I listened again to Denise Levertov's poem, "The Secret," on YouTube and realized why that poem continues to resonate with me. It so beautifully portrays that sense of wonder writers have when readers make strong connections to their words--and especially when those connections reveal interpretations they could never imagine. That is the power of writing--that ability to connect to others we may or may not know and stir memories of experiences about which we know nothing.

That is why it seems important to me that I also understand my relationship to my writing. If I try to write something exactly as it happened (whatever that means), then it suggests that I also feel I must and can control all interpretations of those words. That, of course, is impossible. Rather, I like to begin with the sense that I am writing personally but through the drafting process begin to see that the text is both me and not me. Like any creation of our making, writing becomes something apart from us. It carries the traces of our fingerprints and the images of our memories, but it also lives within the contexts of its genre, the traditions and practices to which it points, and the processes of dissemination. Even our writer's voice, although distinctive, is not isomorphic with our selves.

This kind of thinking tends to tangle me in knots as I try to describe what I sense about my work; we know so much more than we can articulate or even bring to conscious awareness. It is why I enjoy working in groups of writers, hearing back from those readers and seeing my writing in a way that all my self-reflection cannot muster.

It's been almost a month since the scholarly writing class ended . . . I miss our conversations and the writing, but I am determined to continue the blog. The busyness of March and April stopped me for awhile, but it has become a more public space for me to continue to think about these ideas, and I will continue with regular posts.

Vulnerability

I have been thinking a lot about vulnerability lately--especially its relationship to writing. When we commit language to the page, we are saying something about ourselves, whether that be our intimate secrets or our abstract thinking about a theoretical issue. And if we make that page public, it is a further commitment to openness and vulnerability. Some might say that abstract thinking is easier to share because such work seems more distanced from our affective domain. On some level we still buy the story of scientific objectivity. But I disagree. Just go to an academic conference and challenge someone's paper. Think about your reaction when you receive a peer review of a paper. Academics are always worried that they are not smart enough, that someone is more brilliant than they are. That is why merit systems work so well!

But if we are going to write things that matter--whether that be a poem, a play, or a dissertation--we have to "put ourselves out there." We have to feel a bit of fear and let ourselves be vulnerable. We have to be willing to change our minds, both in the sense of making another decision and developing new neural pathways.

None of this is easy. That is why working in a group of other writers who are trustworthy and honest is so important. They can create the conditions for you to dip your toe in the water before taking the polar bear plunge into language.

Here are a couple of interesting links that make me think about vulnerability this week.

Brene Brown: On Vulnerability

The Monty Hall Problem

Rewriting

I have a funny relationship with rewriting my work. When I am crafting the first draft of a poem, an essay, or a story, I long to have a complete piece with which to work--I long for revision. And when that initial draft is finished, I am relieved. I can still think; I can still write. I return to the work joyfully, anxious to examine every line, consider the images, and hone the rhythm. That pleasure lasts for one or two rewrites, then I arrive at a difficult crossroad. The writing is "good enough" to sit as it is, and I tend to be pleased with my erudite thoughts. But this is dangerous thinking because it is at this place where I must look again, ask myself if I am happy because it represents my thinking or if I have found the integrity of the piece itself. Is the writing ready to go out into the world with its own character, prepared to engage with readers?

Usually the answer is no.

That is when the writing must be left for a time--I need the threads of emotional connection to fade enough that I can snip and reshape, so I can grow the piece into itself. When talking to beginning writers or writers who have never thought much about revision, it is hard to identify the emotional process in which one must engage. It can be difficult to understand the writing is not about oneself, especially in an era all about the individual and her or his achievements. And how does one even describe what that feeling is like when every writing event is different, when our emotional connections vary from form to form and from topic to topic? We can think of it as no less than an epiphany as James Joyce describes it:

First we recognize that the object is one integral thing, then we recognize that it is an organized composite structure, a thing in fact: finally, when the relationship of the parts is exquisite, when the parts are adjusted to the special point, we recognize that it is that thing which it is. Its soul, its whatness, leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance. The soul of the commonest object, the structure of which is so adjusted, seems to us radiant. The object achieves its epiphany. (Grudin, 1990, p. 58)

The challenge of rewriting, of considering writing an art form, has long obsessed me. The closest I have ever been able to come with sharing this process was in my paper, Rewriting the Poem, available online in Textorium and published in How We Work (Morris, Doll, & Pinar, 1999).

In writing about rewriting, I understand the process more clearly; nevertheless, I feel that this work will always be a draft in process.

I Love Grammar

I don't meet too many people who say they love grammar and, like anyone with an obsession, I have to wonder why there are not more aficionados of the practice.

Perhaps the answer lies in contrasting grammar with mathematics. I have a friend who is a brilliant mathematician, and I can see that when he talks about his field, a world opens up. Mathematics takes him below the surface into the magic of the universe. For me, math was always difficult and I could not understand why one needed to know this language beyond the practicalities of arithmetic. But through my association with my friend, I have come to understand that my passion for grammar equates to his for mathematics. For me, grammar opens up language, gives me a sense of power in my fingertips, helps me to express those emotions and ideas that always teeter on the incommunicable.

Interestingly, I think grammar and mathematics are taught similarly in school--it seems to be rare to have a teacher who deeply understands or feels a passion for either. While the passion is important, it is the deep understanding that facilitates teaching. I was fortunate to have been encouraged to write freely in my early years and then later be taught by someone who understood grammar very well. From the beginning, I grasped the fun and the facility that grammar brought to my language play. The same did not happen for me with mathematics.

I have no easy answers for how we might "fix" this as teachers. As someone who has wondered on a Monday morning what to do with a class, I understand the appeal of skill sheets and drills. Is it enough to hope that at least once in your education, you have the privilege to taste the potential and see what lies beneath? I do know as a teacher educator, that it is not enough to provide the evidence to my students through studies or student quotations or my own experience. They have to somehow feel it for themselves. But how that happens best? There is no formula and, as with most teaching, one can never know the reverberations your work will have throughout a student's life.

Further to our discussion in class last week, here is a Grammar Girl (my favourite daily fix) post about "that" as a subordinate conjunction. Grammar Girl

Street Haunting

We did a close reading in class of Virginia Woolf's short piece  Street Haunting: A London Adventure. I was amazed how, in a very short time, we could be immersed in the meandering, yet beautifully crafted sentences. Opening up a Virginia Woolf text in this way, one is able to see the precise skill she brings to create rhythm and imagery through punctuation, description, and figurative language. As is typical of Woolf, she is fascinated by the workings of human consciousness. The narrator in the story follows her mind into byways, lingers on objects and characters, and remembers. The whole piece has a sensation of the incredible richness of the city, but also its shadows and darker underbelly. As one of the students noted, it is cinematic. I had not thought of that piece in quite that way before, but of course as you read there is the sense of movement, just like a camera. That is the beauty of close reading skillful writing together. Everyone brings something different to the noticing and we are all richer for it.

Writing Rooms

I read Virginia Woolf's essay "Room of One's Own" around the time I was deciding that I would be serious about writing, that I needed to become a writer. My first "room" was a little wooden desk my husband built for me in the corner of our very small bedroom. The surface of the desk folded down to hold my typewriter (yes, it was a typewriter and not a computer), and could easily be closed back up to hide my mess of papers. The desk did what it needed to do for me--created a space that allowed me to portion a part of my life to writing a novel (filed in a drawer) and short stories (some published). As we moved houses and cities and even provinces, my desks got bigger and fancier and my typewriter was replaced by a computer. First a rather large and clunky desktop that had floppy disks and later Windows and later still a small Mac laptop. The house where I live now has a room dedicated to my writing. I have a large desk that looks out across the lake where we live. I have two full bookshelves. My great-aunt's rocker sits in the corner and I have an old dresser full of drafts (and old floppy disks--don't ask me why). Still I find that most of my time is spent writing in other places--at my kitchen table, in an easy chair, on the deck in the summer. Having a laptop has seemed to change how I write. Although I love my dedicated room and will go there for long stretches when I need to get away from daily life, I now realize that I don't need that room for writing. What I have learned to do over the years is create a mental space for writing. That is something I can do anywhere. And now when I reread Woolf's essay, I recognize that much of what she was saying really was about creating that sensibility: that a time to write, the right to write is what creates a room of one's own.

See http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/writersrooms for some interesting writing rooms.

My Writing Room