Bird By Bird by Anne Lamontt

Anne Lamontt writes on page 103 in her book, Bird By Bird, "If you find that you start a number of stories or pieces that you don't ever bother finishing, that you lose interest or faith in them along the way, it may be that there is nothing at their center about which you care passionately. You need to put yourself at their center, you and what you believe to be true or right."

I identified a great deal with this passage. It created a bridge for me from my experience as an artist and the struggles I have to the less understood struggles I have when writing. There are many times I will be working on multiple paintings at once and sometimes leave a painting alone face-up against a wall (I don't want to have to look at anymore) for months before I work on it again. Usually I don't work on that particular painting for awhile because I can't figure out what is wrong, and why I don't like it. Lamontt gave me the idea that I may not like this painting because there is not enough of myself, my ideas and beliefs in it.

Maybe this is why writing has always been a challenge for me. It is hard for me to put myself in my writing so when I do write creatively or not, the writing to me seems very contrived and incomplete. I need to do what I do when I paint; give the passage a break and come back with new perspective and the idea that I am going to put more of myself in it. Is this really what I want to say? What I believe? What exists for me?

With concerns to teaching, I think it would be very beneficial to my students to know that I struggle too and how I deal with those struggles. Also I would want to be able to give them the time to not be happy with their writing, walk away for a bit, and come back with new motivation to put more of themselves in it. Is this possible? If I'm teaching language arts for 50 minutes a day to 6-7 different groups of students is it possible to let them set it aside and come back to it next time? Or if I'm teaching 4th grade and we only actually have 4 hours of teaching time from transitions, specialists, lunch and recess and a need to teach math, science, arts, social studies, health, and other aspects of literacy besides just writing.

I think my answer to this dilemma of time is interdisciplinary teaching, where two subjects are taught at once. For example maybe after studying the planets and researching one, each student will write a creative story using aspects of their planet about what life is like on their planet. In this way I am combining their knowledge of science in a certain subject area with their skills of writing. Awesome! Even more, what if we make a class wiki or the students made their stories on a classroom blog (only if available through the school district server of course). Now there is technology too and way more excitement and engagement without being too contrived.

In the end I think it would be important to help students realize that the writing process is not something that comes easy or is quick, it takes time and dedication to an overall idea and belief. Whether the belief is policy on health care or that there are martians who swim on Neptune in a society similar to that of the story of Atlantis, students need to be able to feel that their writing is not something I as a teacher have contrived for them to do but is creatively their own!