This will definitely get you all the girls!
Home » Posts tagged 'media'
Tag Archives: media
Who Cares What Your Mommy Thinks?
Don’t worry about what your mother thinks of your language.
ELMORE LEONARD
#amwriting #writing #writetip— Jon Winokur (@AdviceToWriters) May 6, 2013
We all have a “Watcher,” a little being that sits on our shoulder, like a conscience, that reminds us of how terrible we are as writers, or artists, or as whatever we’re deciding to be that day. It’s inevitable that at several points in our lives, we will be over-taken by the words of our watcher, put down our tool of choice, and walk away with the feeling of utter frustration and pain. We are, after all, our own worst enemies, and the watcher is our own creation. In my Creative Writing class, I have my students draw a picture of their watcher, and explain its origin. It’s always interesting to see how many students draw their mother, or father, or a former teacher. I always wonder if it’s more than one of those people pushed them to work harder, and not simply that they were their toughest critic for the sake of being a critic.
In Gail Godwin’s essay, “The Watcher at the Gates,” she tells us that we must “outsmart, pacify, or coexist with your Watcher.” She gives us tools to work with when our watcher wants us to be constant pencil sharpeners, or dictionary lookers, or coffee drinkers. Setting timers when we write. Writing until the teapot sounds. For me, I write like to write where I know I’m being watched: my classroom while students are working (as I’m doing now), in a crowded mall where I feel uncomfortable, on a park bench in downtown Portland, or on a very specific tree at Cannon Beach. I guess in a way, I like my watcher to feel like it is being watched as well. It’s harder to doubt oneself, when the watcher feel uncomfortable.
It is not easy to avoid self-doubt. It’s the one thing that holds the majority of us back. I’m no stranger to the watcher. I finished a novel more than five years ago, only to be told that I needed to revise it one more time before the publishing company would take another look at it. I was upset, and frustrated, and chose the road most taken – which was to unfortunately shelve the book, and not do what I needed to do in order to possibly call myself a published novelist. I was scared of something, and frankly, it was the fear that I wasn’t as good as I thought I was. When I wrote the original draft, I wasn’t thinking about how anyone else would feel. I was just writing. It came out naturally, and easily, and a lot faster than I had ever imagined. But when I was told that someone else had issues with certain parts, it hurt me, and I didn’t take it as constructive criticism, but rather just criticism. I should have said “thank you,” hung up the phone, and completed the re-writes over the next few weeks. Instead, it sat until this last summer when I finally decided I would finish it up. Now, I’m sitting on it again, waiting to submit it, all because of the mystery watcher that questions if it’s really all that good.
As Elmore Leonard points out, we cannot “worry about what [our] mother[s] think of [our] language.” If we do, then we are bound to fail. Art is not about what other people think – at least not in the early stages. Creation is our job. Once we are finished with a product, and that product hits the world of public opinion, it is everyone’s to judge, but as long as we are satisfied, then it should never matter.
Reading Guides for the Dumb One in the Class
Before you start reading this, let’s get one thing perfectly straight, this post is not just about the students in your class, or the kids who say they don’t like reading; this post is very much for the teachers who stand in the front of the class, attempting to hide their sweat, and the fact that they are on the exact same page as their students – that they have never read the book that they are in the middle of teaching. It’s way more normal than people might think. Frankly, the first time teachers hand out an assignment, it’s not unusual for them to have never gone through that assignment, and be absolutely clueless as to how it’s supposed to go. Unless they were assigned certain texts in high school – and let’s face it, most teachers, myself included didn’t read everything they were assigned – they’ve never even considered opening the book that they’ve already placed on their classroom desks.
Last week, one of my students returned from a two weeks pre-arranged vacation. He was aware that we would be smack dab in the middle of reading Catcher in the Rye, and had been given all of the assignments ahead of time, as well as a reminder that the assignments, and the actual text of the book could be found on my classroom website. When he showed up in my classroom to ask what he had missed, it was more than obvious that he hadn’t followed through with any of the work we’d spoken about before his foray into the sun. We were just about to start chapter 20, and his response to me was, “Well, I read through the Sparks Notes last night, so I know everything that’s happened in the book.” Yikes. It took me a moment to figure out if he was serious. I mean, Sparks Notes were the hidden way to catch up when I was in high school, and not something that you openly bragged about having read. I told him that while I was glad he had a brief overview of the text, he had missed out on a book that might have taught him a little bit about his life. I mean, come on, even Holden Caulfield got A’s in English.
I did a lot of thinking about what my student had said, and it brought me back to my first couple years as a teacher, where, much like I mentioned earlier, I had not read all of the books that I was going to teach. I remember scrambling for “themes” and “meanings” and “symbols” and any possible “teachable moments” in the text just before the morning bell. That’s why, while I was not happy about what the student had done, I had to laugh it off. Frankly, the kids only mistake was telling me about his venture through the yellow and black.
There are some really good aspects to reading guides like Spark Notes, and sometimes it’s just the push we need to actually figure out what we are supposed to be gathering from certain texts.
For an example of what I’m talking about, RapGenius.com, has published a guide for The Great Gatsby. The movie is coming out this week, and a lot of American Literature classes are scrambling through it because teachers know that their students will soon be forking over their money to watch Leo DeCaprio portray the famed liar. It’s not the easiest book to understand, and it takes some time to truly grasp the depth of all the symbolism. This is a fantastic guide, and honestly, I’ll probably use a good deal of it when I teach this book next year. I’ve read Gatsby several times, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t use a refresher course.
Sometimes it’s not just the students who feel like the dumb ones in the class, and it’s okay to admit that, as a teacher, you don’t know everything.
QOTD: How Do You Hustle Your Words?
It is so difficult to keep track of each and every social media outlet. For example, The Poetry Question is housed on WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (though, that one is not functioning quite yet). Realistically, these are probably the only media outlets we will use for the early days of this project. As we grow, will that mean we will also have a Tumblr, Myspace, and a physical outlet? It’s hard enough to make sure that everything is linked together in order to alleviate any need for duplicate posts, or overkill of posts that might turn away some of our readers.
As new media outlets become available, it seems that it is more and more difficult to find the websites, blogs, music, chap books, and whatever else one might search for. It leads people to find new ways of hustling their words – sort of. I remember when I was a teenager, I would head to Django Records in Portland, and crate dig. I would sit there with my portable Discman, and go through hundreds of CDs over several hours each week to try to find that next perfect disc for my collection. They used to have these massive $1.00 bins set up throughout the store, and they got to know me well enough, that they would simply let me sit there all day and listen to whatever I wanted, before giving me amazing deals on whatever I would take home. My days of sitting there typically came in lieu of going to school. Music, and the lyrics that came with that music, seemed much more important to me than sitting in class. I was discovering knowledge in my own way. This search is much like how bands and authors are getting their material into the hands of today’s public.
I spent my weekend in Las Vegas, and while the big lights, sounds, and clink of chips definitely grabbed my attention, I found something beyond the typical Vegas thrills to make me smile: poets and musicians hustling their words and music. It’s normal to see buskers, or vendors on sky bridges in between hotels; however, it is not as typical to see a poet, standing on a crate, giving a reading of his work. He didn’t have a crowd around him, but he spoke loudly, and with confidence. He wanted someone, anyone, to hear his words. I was with my parents, and my fiance, so I didn’t have a lot of time to stop, and listen to what he was saying, but I asked them to wait a moment, and they did. I listened to the last portion of one of his pieces, and he handed me a copy of his chap book. He wasn’t looking for donations, or anything beyond someone to appreciate what he had done. It was his hustle, and in his honesty, it worked.
Beyond the chap book, I was able to take home a few CDs from people who just wanted someone to hear their work. It is incredibly difficult to get people to take notice of your art. As a musician for more than 15 years, I’ve definitely found that getting people to notice what you’ve created is more difficult than the writing process. There is nothing more meaningful than when someone takes your creation, smiles, and offers a true “thank you” for what you have given them.
So, this brings me to my Question of the Day:
If you are an artist, what is your hustle? How do you get your art into the hands of people who might not notice you otherwise?
– Margolin
