Re: A natural question about Unnatural Acts

["Meg Larson" <mgl@tardis.svsu.edu>]

How did I learn to write?  Well, besides being a reader from kinnygarden, I
have always been, and still remain, a motormouth of huge proportions (ain't
that right, Meehan?).  I had an annoying habit of taking what I
read--books, newspapers, magazines--and boring my firends and family with
it.  After a while, I got the hint to SHUT UP, so I started writing things
down.  The printed word carried an enormous amount of weight in my family,
and at my Catholic school, and I wanted that same kind of value (for lack
of a better word) for my own words.  I started writing stories for my 4th
grade newspaper, and although I, too, basically sucked (sorry!), I just
kept at it.  It was the most imaginative and creative and meaningful way
for me to live inside my head, so to speak.  Later, in college, I was led
to believe that I was good at writing, and that encouragement was all I
needed to keep at it.  Now, I'm finishing up my undergrad degree in English
with a concentration in comp, spending as much time in our wc, helping
other writers, as I can, and I think I was put on this earth for this
purpose--to help other writers improve as capable and interesting written
communicators.

When I work with students both in the wc and as a Writing Associate
attached to a class, I always tell them that writing is never easy for me,
but with practice it becomes less painful and more joyful.  I also tell
them that I _don't_ hit a *home run* _every_ time I write, but that's okay,
because the failures fuel the desire that creates the successes.  Which is
why, as some people on the list may remember, I take my tutees' "failures"
so hard--I simply want to help every single student I work with become the
most competent and capable writers they can be.  An unattainable goal,
perhaps, but one I feel is worth struggling for and chasing after.         
              

                                

"Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are
metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous
force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as
metal and no longer as coins"
 ---Friedrich Nietzsche                                                    
                                                                           
                                                       

Meg Larson
Saginaw Valley State University
mgl@tardis.svsu.edu              

----------
> From: Latisha LaRue <kfischer@keller.clarke.edu>
> To: Multiple recipients of list <wcenter@ttacs6.ttu.edu>
> Subject: A natural question about Unnatural Acts
> Date: Tuesday, May 13, 1997 11:38 AM
> 
> At the risk of being simplistic, (hey this is still vacation), it seems
at
> the taproot of all this talk is "what works best?"  How do people best
> learn to write or imporove their writing?  And I can't help but ask, how
> did all of you learn to write?  I don't mean the old  penmanship thing in
> grade school.  But what do you pinpoint as most important in advancing
> your own writing?
> 	For me, it was not writing classes.  It was not insight gained
> from reading handbooks or from being taught to diagram sentences (showing
> my age here).  Although I know that all the reading I did as a kid and
> having to learn how to forge notes from mom after days skipped in h.s. to
> go to the shores of Lake Michigan certainly had some influence on my
> writing, I think the biggest influence was a friend of mine, an excellent
> writer already at 18, who had the patience to sit with me time after time
> (after an English professor had been kind enough to grade my essays D-,
> truly a gift in many ways), assignment after assignment, one on one,
> giving me advice on countless concerns like wordiness, correctness,
> organization, and the lack of anything worth reading in my writing.  I
> was ready to hear it.  
> 	And then there was reading.  One week I wanted to be Virginia
> Woolf searching the rooms of her house to find the rooms of her selves;
> the next I was Emily Dickinson fashioning tightly metered lines with
> content that whent all over the place;  I never wanted to be Jonathan
> Edwards.  But in those years, most of what I wrote sounded more like a
> cheap knock-off of Danielle Steele.
> 	How about the rest of you?
> 		katie
>