Writing with a Hammer

[bobbie silk <bsilk@keller.clarke.edu>]

Last night I was reading a book by a Buddhist teacher (Pema Chodron) who
urged her students to "write less; don't try to capture it all on paper. 
Sometimes writing, instead of being a fresh take, is like trying to catch
something and nail it down.  This capturing blinds us and there's no fresh
outlook, no wide-open eyes, no curiosity." (This quote is from _Start
Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living_.) 

My first reaction was resistance.  I thought she was wrong.  As I've
turned this over in my mind since yesterday, however, I've thought of
several interesting connections.  I thought of Lady's distinction a few
days ago between people who think of themselves as writers and people who
do not.  I also thought of a conversation I had a few years ago with a
former colleague who is a physicist.  He told me that he does not enjoy
writing, but he must do it at least once a year when he writes up the
results of his research for publication.  With a shake of his head, he
said that he found writing either painful or tedious.

I know that as someone who sometimes (audaciously) considers herself a
writer, I think in writing.  It is my medium, how my thoughts often come
into being.  I write toward meaning (and then revise for an audience).
Instead of limiting my curiosity, as Chodron suggests, writing is my
medium of exploration.  But I think I can understand what Chodron means
and I can understand the writing-dread my Physics colleague experiences,
because I am a writing teacher instead of an artist--

When I started college (lo, these many years past) I intended to become an
artist.  I had a little drawing talent, but I was continually frustrated
in my art classes.  Although my work was occasionally praised, it was
always inadequate in my eyes.  That's because I could never make the
painting on the canvas look like the image in my mind.  I did not conceive
of the possibility that drawing and painting were mediums of discovery. 
Drawing and painting were for nailing down creativity, nailing down Art.

When the Physics professor begins his annual writing project, his
discoveries have already been made.  To use an odd analogy, when he has to
write about his work it's like he has to kill the living animal he's
bred and nurtured, grind the poor beast into hamburger, and then mound up
the hamburger and mold it back into the shape of the animal.  Like my
artwork, his research is dead meat.

Of course, I was wrong about my approach to art, and it's possible that
there are "high verbal" physicists who discover their best ideas through
writing.  But a "low verbal" physicist, no matter how gifted in his field,
probably never will be able to find the same passion of discovery through
writing that he finds through the thought-mediums of equations and
kinesthetics.

What do we do with such a writer?  Further, how do we enlighten such a
writer who is a teacher and whose writing assignments reflect his own
limitations and frustrations as a writer?  What are the implications of
this for those of us in writing centers?

  --Bobbie