Avoiding the blank page

Last winter I wrote about finally finishing an article after working on it for about seven years (you can read about that here). I am now in the position of finding and working new writing projects.  Although I love research and working out new lines of thinking, I much prefer the revision process to getting started. A blank page is daunting! 


Many students don't like the fact that I assign the essay topic and direction.  But what would you write about if I just said, "Go off and write an argumentative essay"? How would you make key decisions:  What is the topic of this essay? What is the scope of this essay? What other voices and sources should I bring in? To whom should I imagine I am writing? What is the central question I want to explore?  At one point should I stop reading and start writing? If you think about all of these choices, you might thank me for limiting your options some!


Since I'm no longer a student, no one is telling me what to write, or giving me deadlines.  My writing is all self directed and that actually makes it harder to get started.  Right now, I'm trying to make a start on several different projects:  a conference paper, a new course,two journal articles, and revisions to a longer book project. I'm a bit overwhelmed as I try to bite off little chunks of this work, and do the research, narrow my focus, and find my arguments.  


Some of what I do might be useful for you to consider as you get started on your first paper for this class. For example, I spent some time this weekend talking over one of my ideas for a new course with someone. It sharpened my focus and let me see some unproductive directions and dead ends.  I also keep a notebook handy whenever I read anything--even if it's not "officially" research.  No matter what I read, I find that ideas crop up that I can use in my own writing and I want to capture them right away. In fact, I keep my notebook handy all the time since relevant ideas tend to appear in the most unusual places.  While riding the bus, or waiting at an appointment, I often work on idea maps--just words clusters or lists that I later review when I am actually writing.


Since I try to do bits of writing and thinking all through each day, when I sit down to write, I don't have to face a truly blank page. It takes a bit of the pressure off . . . 


I like pens and paper notebooks for all of this, but can the many tiny new devices we all carry now help us keep track of our thinking as well as helping us keep track of--and in touch with--the people in our lives?

Writing On Plato

Earlier in this blog I wrote about my love of (obsession with?)  office supplies.  I especially like colored ink pens and I really, really like using colored ink pens to write on xeroxes of readings!  Why? Well, colored pens are easier to read than pencil.  When I was an undergraduate I used to write all of my marginal notes in pencil--I guess I had more respect for books back then?  But now I go back to those texts and I can barely read the faded notes.  Maybe that's not so bad, maybe that forces me to carefully re-read and make new notes. Are notes a way of responding and questioning?  That's one of the questions I was getting at in my last post.  I sort of think they are--although I'm not convinced it is really the same as being able to talk to the writer of a text in person. (Which writer would you like to talk to?)

Here's what part of this week's reading looks like in my copy of the course packet. I'd like to continue the argument I made in class about the importance of annotating by taking you through some of the process I went through.  


We never really read the same text twice because what we bring to the text changes.  For example, in planning this semester, I've been thinking about problems of serious discussion as opposed to entertainment (look for this in Unit 3!).  In reading this page of Plato, I saw the distinction between earnestness and play in a new, and newly important (to me) way.


What else happened as I read?  The first thing I underlined is the word father; here I was reminding myself that Plato is comparing artists or writers to fathers; artwork or texts are like children. This isn't a complicated metaphor--it's used all the time--but since he keeps going with it, it seemed key to give myself that visual reminder. It's a sort of mental shortcut.


As you can see, I got kind of excited in the middle of the page when he started talking about a word that "knows to whom it should speak and before whom to be silent."  This is the thinking, or prethinking, that went into my last post. You can see that I was trying to make connections between the different uses of "know" and the issue of living people, or living audiences:  knowledge, as Phaedrus comments, that seems to "mean the living and breathing word of him who knows."  At the same time, I started to see a connection between these ideas of audience and the distinction between the writer/ speaker's intention as either earnest or delightful and amusing.  


Is all of my thinking worked out?  Absolutely not, but when I went back to my notes to write up the last post, I found I had alot to say!

(Re)Reading Plato

Although I've known about the bit of Plato's Phaedrus known as the critique of writing for years, I didn't actually read it until I started teaching it a  few years ago (a terrible admission!).  But every time I re-read it  I am amazed and happy that I finally discovered it for myself.  I genuinely learn something new every time I read it.  This time around I've noticed two things about my response to Plato:  that this is a critique in the true sense of that word and that Plato is very concerned about audiences--or, as I would think about it, readers.


Many people may consider a 'critique' to be something that just points out weaknesses. But to think critically about something (and then to produce a critique) means, of course, to be skeptical and reveal problems or flaws, but it also means acknowledging what is good and right in a work (textual or otherwise).  So while it is true that Plato is worried that people might start valuing writing more than real, embodied knowledge, he also admits that there can be serious intentions in writing and that it might be useful to have a written reminder sometimes.


This way Plato characterizes the relationship between writer and reader, though, is what really struck me this time around. The line of thinking appears throughout, but emerges quite clearly when he compares writing to painting--both paintings and texts are 'silent.' The key difference between audience and reader or viewer hinges on this silence--audiences, composed of living people can clap, or cheer; in a live performance (let's imagine a musical performance), the performer might become more animated and give a better performance, send a shout out to the audience, take requests.  Or, to take another example, isn't the excitement of the crowd why football teams do better at home games? How does this work at movies? Does the responsiveness of the audience matter at a play?


Plato follows this up later by suggesting that written discourse that doesn't allow "opportunity for questioning or teaching" should not be "treated very seriously."  Here he seems to suggest the importance of that living response--the questions, the teacher responding to questions. Writing stops that live process--or so he seems to suggest. Does writing have to stop our questioning even if the writer can't talk back? Do books stop our questioning? Does new media?