Motivate Your Students with Purpose-Driven Lesson Plans

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Our students are now more distracted than ever.  As writing teachers trying to hold the attention of our students, we compete with Facebook, Netflix, and the upheavals of the modern family. To keep our students focused on our classes - and, more importantly, to keep them interested in writing - we need to give our students a reason to to study.

Blogging Thoughts

Websites are a funny thing.  I started 1-2-Writing after a few less-than-positive experiences with writing workshops - both online and in-person.  The biggest problem I ran into was price - I was paying money for workshops (some rather serious money - $500 for one of the online courses I took) and getting some really bad service.  It wasn't that I disagreed with the feedback or that the instructors were people I didn't like - it just seemed like they didn't know how to teach.  They were good writers, great people, but not very well organized.  I wouldn't have minded if the workshops were free, but they weren't.  It didn't help that I was barely employed at the time - I had just gotten out of the Army, I was paying rent for the first time in my life, and the only jobs I had were these part-time spots that barely covered rent, let alone food and health insurance and car insurance and my internet cable and...but who's counting?  When you get to the point that you're buying generic dried beans from Harris Teeter so you can make a batch of chili that's even cheaper than the last batch, you get a bit irate after dropping a few hundred dollars for a writing course that doesn't pay off.

Like I said, though, it wasn't that I disagreed with the feedback.  The real problem was the relative lack of feedback.  The course for which I paid $500 was a 15 week novel writing course - I received no feedback from the instructor until after I submitted my third assignment some nine weeks into the course (and trust me, two months is a long time to wait for feedback worth $500).  We were told the problem was instructor illness, and then the course was extended, and a new instructor brought in, but it was very hard to get back in the swing of things.  The web administrator offered us all $250 refunds, but there was no reply back when I e-mailed in.

You can imagine that this experience turned me off to online workshops.  Unfortunately, I think I was one of the lucky ones.  After this experience, I made it into an MFA program, so I don't pay money for writing courses now.  But I have friends who do.  I've seen one friend pay a very, very large amount of money (thousands of dollars) for writing help with turned out to be little more than line edits.  And it galls me because there isn't a lot I can do about it.  I'm not exactly famous, I can't exactly say I've written enough to argue with these instructors who've published several books each.  All I have out there is a short story and the fact that I'm earning in MFA.  But I do have some knowledge.  Maybe I haven't published much yet, but I've written a lot, especially compared to where I was when I first dropped engineering to pursue creative writing.  It's not so much that I know enough to teach everything, but I can teach more than some of my teachers have.  They may have known more, but they didn't have the time or - in my opinion - the knowledge of teaching necessary to convey their experience.

That, however, was two years ago - before I'd even finished applying to MFA programs.  Since then, I've taught three semesters of undergraduate writing as part of our MFA program.  What amazes me the most about teaching is not how much I know about writing, but how much I still have to learn about teaching.  I've had to reconsider what I thought about the $500 instructor who disappeared.  Sometimes, I wonder what I would really do if I became so sick that I couldn't teach - I'm not sure I would want my students to know just how sick I really was, and it's possible that she really couldn't continue with the course.  And although I feel that I am a better teacher than some instructors I've met, I realize now that I am not the best teacher out there, not by far.  Over the years, I've learned how to provide good feedback and good encouragement, but I've taken workshops from teachers who can literally light up a room.  Two teachers I highly recommend for anyone who has a chance - Zelda Lockhart and Pat Schneider - changed the way I write.  Another writer who I've only met through an online workshop - Karlyn Thayer - really kept me going when I was first learning to tighten my short stories.  I wish I had space here to list all the teachers who've helped me - there's no way I would have made it even this far without the help of many, many people, most of whom I've only known for brief periods between moving.  I have more than enough proof that writing workshops do work - maybe not always, and maybe not perfectly, but they do help your writing.

And something else to consider is what I've learned from the writing instructors who weren't as helpful.  Sometimes, the books that best show you how to write well are the ones where you can see where the writing failed - I think the same is true for writing workshops.  The great workshops gave me the experience and the desire necessary to take up writing - it was the bad ones that pushed me to take charge of my writing, to stop waiting for my writing to "improve enough" for me just just start publishing.  What I've found is that it doesn't happen that way - some days you write well, some days you write through setback, and some days are so bad that you want to write but can't.  Regardless of the situation, regardless of where you're at or the resources you have, you have to keep faith in your writing and push onward.  If you read a book that's terrible, you sit down to write another one - if you take a workshop that's not worth the money, you start a website and do better.

With this thought, I encourage each of you to keep up the faith and know that, whatever your publications or lack of publications, you're a writer.  And something I've learned over the years is very simple, but many people forget either one side of it or the other: every writer has something to learn, and every writer has something to teach us.

Happy Writing,
Ryan

1-2-Writing Workshops Online
About Ryan Edel

Why We Write

The other day, the devil came and whispered in my ear “anything you want, you can have. All I want is the usual.”

The usual? My soul? Okay, devil, take my soul – just gimme a few more of those juicy publishable things I call words.

And so the devil, satisfied with this renewed bargain, allowed me a few more minutes of computer time while I – ever so excited – spewed on about my life in general. I wrote about my parents and my girlfriend and myself. I chatted – to myself, because some things cannot be shared – about the state of my future and the decisions that await. I made everything seem so dark and hopeful and twisted because it felt so right, so justifiable, so true.

And then I come back to this essay. This is shot number three at “why we write,” my contribution to understanding the motivation of the working writer. And by working I don’t necessarily mean publishing – I mean a writer who is putting pen to paper regularly, dripping blood and sweat through the ends of fingertips worn raw with typing. That alone is the qualification for a working writer – the closer we come to this ideal, the more the words will match our lives, the less room there is for imagination and the more sway we give to truth.

As I write this, I feel like a fraud. I feel like a lamb with a shotgun about to hunt down his own cousin so Mary can have a little lamb with her sauerkraut. I’m not a writer by trade – I’m a struggling human being. Forget the artist part of starving – I’ve spent my entire life scrounging for money. So I tell myself the experiences will contribute to my art – does that make me a writer? If it means dropping engineering to study English? If I then enlist in the Army to get money for grad school?

Currently, I don’t have enough money to marry. Buying airline tickets to meet my girlfriend’s family isn’t in the budget. But writers aren’t collections of money – writers are people who put pen to paper. Writers are dedicated souls who search for the meaning in life and then – harder still – do their best to share what they’ve learned without spoken words, without hand gestures, without lights or camera or CGI or even a hint of sound.

Am I a writer? Some days I feel more like a sellout. I take the easy way out in the name of “literature.” When I could have toughed it out and demanded a desk job, I allowed an injury to get me out of the Army. When I could have taken on some debt for that fifth year to finish engineering, I decided to graduate and get out. I see people talking and I’m too afraid to meet them. I see politicians argue and I’m too quiet to show that I care. I’m not a writer because I love it – I’m a writer because there’s nothing else for me, there’s no other way to get my words out to be heard. I don’t talk loud enough. I’m a guy, a male American, and I’m too afraid of my own voice.

So here I am telling you, another writer, my friend the reader, what it takes to be a writer. If I charged you a dollar, it would be fraud. But since this is free, it’s ethos. It’s the mythology of writing. It’s my contribution to the lore of the professional wordsmith. And you read this because you want to know why you should keep writing, you want to know why we all keep writing.

I can tell you this – I began writing in the seventh grade. It was a journal we were assigned to keep, a page a week for an off-campus class I was lucky to take. I don’t know now how I managed to earn a slot in this class, or why anyone trusted a seventh-grader to ride the train half-way across Chicago once each week to take this class and miss half a day of school, but this class taught me to write. It taught me to put personal words on the page. The teachers taught me to staple the pages in half for the days when I didn’t want to share my words. Later, when I read about Arthur the King and Frodo the Hobbit, I thought I could write the same kinds of stories. I thought I’d be like other writers, taking my personal life and weaving it into the worlds of heroes and dragons. I didn’t know what I was doing – I was fourteen. I couldn’t tell the nominative from the jussive if you held a gun to my broadsword. But still, in the nighttime hours, when my parents went upstairs and there was no trusting a teenager to cross Chicago by himself to see friends, the pen was there. Without classroom assignments, there was no need to staple pages shut. The trick was saving these pages from the fate of spring cleaning, when every useless toy and outdated scrap of homework met the dumpster. They were my precious thoughts, those pages, my personal publication for the audience of one. And still I save these story notes and journal entries from back then. They sit in a box at the side of my desk, pages and pages of incoherent scrawl I’m afraid to read for fear of heartburn. I wrote that? Ick! Thank God I learned to write before our home had a computer – it’s harder to back-up loose leaf. And vomit goes better on paper than mousepad.

Still, the writing happened. Somewhere along the way I learned the feel and the sound of words written well. It may have been the long summer days stranded alone in the middle of Chicago – I had the choice of biking down to the end of the block and back or reading a book. Going around the block – and out of sight of the house – required special permission. My brother was autistic, my buddy from two-doors down grew up on Playboy in an attic that smelled of cat piss, and visiting my friends from school required a parent to drive. The books ate the time. I spent days on Treasure Island with the pirates. Black Beauty was a dear equine friend. King Arthur was more than my hero – he was my inspiration, my guide for how to live, how to act, how to be.

Still, I produced more tripe. Piles of tripe. Great bound piles of pages that weren’t fit for bathroom reading. Even in college, I did this. Somehow I found my way into creative writing workshops, and somehow the teachers liked me. I don’t think it was the work so much as it was the way I listened. When they said my stories needed conflict, I stared at them and waited for the punch-line. When I presented my eight-hundred-word masterpiece for Intro to Journalism, the professor cut four-hundred words and said the rest needed work. Again, I waited for the punch-line. I was barely twenty – I had no clue what I was doing.

Still, I wrote. I wrote because my girlfriend at the time wouldn’t have understood my leaving her the computer. I wrote because my parents couldn’t understand ne’er-do-well English majors. I wrote because I was too tired to study math or physics or any of those other subjects. I wrote because I wanted the bad guys to win. I wrote because I was only a phone call away from being the bad guy to someone, somewhere.

I’ve spent the past three weeks asking myself why we write. Twice I've tried writing the answer, but the words didn’t flow. They didn’t ring true. I was asking the wrong question. I wanted to explain why writers write – I should have been asking why I write. It’s pointless for me to fathom the depths of your soul – I might understand a bit, but I can’t explain why you should write. I have enough trouble understanding my own reasons. Especially this week, when I’ve written hardly a word aside from this essay. I tell myself I want to write fiction and that I want to publish novels, but then my own chapters make me nauseous. I get headaches and vision loss and a serious urge to “go outside” at the thought of editing my own work for mass consumption. And don’t get me started on the thoughts of finding an agent or, worse yet, publicity. It’s not my vibrant social life that fuels my writing – it’s the vibrant writing which fuels the little social life I have. Except with my girlfriend – she’s foreign, so her English isn’t the best. We hold entire conversations involving two syllables and a helping of curry-fried-shrimp. And where did I meet her? Online. Through e-mail. With the words we share beyond sound.

And so, when the devil returns again – when it’s morning, and the sun shines, and I’m late for work – I’ll look deep inside and ask what comes next. Is it the writing, this craft of my voice made audible through print? Or is it the daily struggle of getting out and saying hi and smiling back?

Ask yourself – before you forget – about why you write. Ask yourself the meaning of the words on the page.

I say this, now, because next semester I start a new phase in my writing. In the past, I’ve written in the dark, on hidden notebooks, majoring in the wrong subject, short on cash, in the middle of Afghanistan. But now, suddenly, I will be paid to write. A university has decided to trust this kid from Chicago. The professors see great promise in my work. They look forward to meeting me. They tell me that they are fascinated by my life experience. They believe I will be a fine addition to their MFA program.

So write. Write as much as you can. Write until it makes you sick. And then keep going. Learn from the authors you enjoy, learn from your mistakes, learn from everything you can. But remember where you came from. Fix your motivation in your mind – and in your writing – now. Because it does matter. Because it shapes who you are and what you write. Because the depths plumbed with words begin with the vast ocean we call life. And the minute you forget where you came from, you lose everything worth writing for.

1-2-Writing Workshops Online
About Ryan Edel