The Learning and Teaching Cycle

Eric Witchey

Eric Witchey is one of the best writing teachers I have encountered. When I decided to write full-time, I took his novel-writing class and learned how linguistics and story and culture are connected in ways I had never imagined. I've accused him of genius, but he's far too modest to agree. Here is a reflection he recently wrote after participating in the recent Willamette Writers Conference:

Any writer who believes they know their craft is a liar or a fool.

It’s August 11^th, and I’m freshly home from the Willamette Writers Conference in Portland, Oregon—a wonderful conference that happens to be more or less in my back yard. I had the usual good time there. Old friends, new friends, and many new ideas made that possible. At one point, I was sitting next to a woman and decided to strike up a conversation. Since one of my jobs at the conference was to teach, I asked her what she was getting out of the seminars. 

She said, “I’m hearing the same things I heard last year and the year before. I must be getting to the point where I know what I’m doing.”

I nodded and said, “I guess it’s time for you to teach.”

That won me a puzzled look.

While I was teaching one of my sessions, a seminar student offered to buy copies of the modules I hand out if I would tell him where to find them on the internet. 

They aren’t on the internet. 

He was disappointed. However, I then told him that he should write his own. Mine were written to teach me how to write. That is, I have made a habit for many years of identifying my writing weaknesses, naming them, finding techniques to overcome them, practicing those techniques until I’m sure I can perform well enough to sell, and then writing up the techniques in order to prove to myself that I have truly learned them.

Of course, writing them up doesn’t actually prove anything. I must then use the written document to teach another writer to execute the technique successfully. 

You see, my test for whether I have truly learned something isn’t to just prove I can execute it. I must also prove to myself that I can make someone else successful in the use of the technique. Only then do I entertain the possibility I know something about the thing.

Why do I require this of myself? Because I am too good at tricking myself. 

If I am the judge of my own execution, I am much too likely to subconsciously restrict the context of my self-testing, to decide that I did a good enough job, to pay less attention to important details, or to simply move on without actually succeeding at all.

If I require myself to make someone else successful, their story, their world, their hopes and dreams for their fiction complicate the equation to the point that I must adjust perspective on the techniques in order to accommodate all the complexities of context, life, and form that they can, and do, bring to the page.

If I can teach the technique in the context of someone else’s life, story, psychology, hopes, and dreams, then I probably actually understand it and am much less likely to be fooling myself.

So, I suggested to the man that he could write his own modules.

He was not best pleased.

The last session I taught on Sunday was a seminar on how to run a writers group capable of launching professional careers. While talking with the audience about their experiences, one thing came up over and over. The groups that place a premium on new production (not revision) launch the most careers. The people who make their responsibility for analysis more important than their desire to receive critiques are the ones whose careers are launched.

In other words, the entire conference seemed to be focused on reminding me that writing success comes from writing a lot, constantly evaluating skills, learning new skills, practicing, and, finally, teaching. And that last one, teaching, is exactly what brings the writer full circle in this never ending cycle of growth in craft. The responsibility that comes with teaching reveals the tiny cracks in knowledge—the holes and, sometimes, chasms that we overlook if we are only serving our own pursuits. That new knowledge brings us back to the page with new vision. Then, we write a lot, constantly evaluate skills, learn new skills, practice, and, finally, teach.

What do writing groups do if there aren’t enough manuscripts to fill the time? Chat? Cancel? Discuss old stories?

Or, does someone step up and attempt to teach a concept, technique, or skill?

                                            -End-

Eric M. Witchey has made a living as a freelance writer and communication consultant for 25 years. In addition to many contracted and ghost non-fiction titles, he has sold more than 100 stories. His stories have appeared in multiple genres and on five continents. He has received awards or recognition from New Century Writers, Writers of the Future, Writer’s Digest, The Eric Hoffer Prose Award Program, Short Story America, the Irish Aeon Awards, and other organizations. His How-to articles have appeared in The Writer Magazine, Writer’s Digest Magazine, and other print and online magazines. Find Eric on Facebook or Google Eric M. Witchey for more information about him and about his workshops.

 

Finding Me, by Dr. Laurence Peters

Laurence

My friend and colleague, Laurence Peters, writes about the self-exploration process of memoir-writing:

Agee is where memoir writing starts for me.  It begins with those classic words from A Death in the Family, “We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville Tennessee in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.” How can you resist the beat of that sentence, so perfectly balanced, the voice so intimate and inviting?  Agee seems to have a preternatural understanding about our shifting concepts of self. Look how masterfully the tense shifts from present historic to simple past and the use of that perfect phrase “disguised to myself as a child.” There is part of ourselves that remains behind that is distilled in the next self that comes along and part of us that is forever lost in the process. Agee writes:

How far we all come. How far we all come away from ourselves. So far, so much between, you can never go home again. You can go home, it's good to go home, but you never really get all the way home again in your life. And what's it all for? All I tried to be, all I ever wanted and went away for, what's it all for?

Few other passages in literature seem to capture so perfectly the mourning for our lost selves that becomes so inextricably mixed into the search for meaning in our lives.

Few other writers are able to use their skills with language and storytelling to tell us not just something about the experience of being a child, but the pain and beauty of remembering the childhood experience, through the lens of loss. Here he captures in Keatsian fashion both the sadness and the beauty of memory:

By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of the night. May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.

Agee lulls us into experiencing the scene through his eyes only so far and then pulls up with a startling question that clearly haunted him then and haunts him now. The question’s sharp almost metaphysical urgency is so very poignant, coming when you least expect it to emerge:

After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her: and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.

The first time I read that passage it sent a shiver down my back. I had never read something so beautiful and true about what it was like not just being a child, but being a person in the world. The question the writer leaves us with can sound rhetorical, but the memoir writer whether they want to or not has to find the mettle to grapple with it in one form or another-”who can tell me who I am?”  It is the key question  for any memoir writer, for no one is going to tell us who we are and it is our task and ours alone to make those answers as real to ourselves as well as to our readers as possible. It is also a question for the self alone to discover—it is built into our life journey. 

As writers we have the privilege of using our full intellect, our conscious and unconscious self our imaginative abilities to probe back into the details of our lives and go beyond the usual

idle brooding we all, from time to time, engage in. We have a responsibility to ourselves to probe inside the family dramas that play out over and over in our heads and explore what happened when we felt forced to make a choice that may have upset others, either our parents, or those moments when we first felt the power of that change rattling around in our pockets and decided that we needed to hop onto that bus and sneak into the downtown cinema, or when we ran as fast as we could down a hillside rolling over and over into long summer grass.  But these moments, however beautiful, arresting, heartbreaking or dramatic should not be confused with our essential selves and our story. They are just interesting fragments. Pull them together in a row and make a story out of them if you will but they need a voice, a sensibility, and a perspective if they are going to add up to be more than just fragments of our past and of interest to other readers.

In other words, where do you search for these lost selves that can give these stories the resonance they deserve? My best answer is that it all comes from a commitment to wanting to find a self in the story. Not the self—just a self, and it is a long complicated process we can best analogize to beginning a walk down a long country road at night using a flashlight. We may start with only a rough map, half recalling a few landmarks and some remembered bends in the river, but once we are committed to the journey we must be prepared for surprise detours along the way.  We live in such a world of distraction that some of us are not used to using our minds in such an open and imaginative way, let alone be prepared to suffer the psychic toll that such openness can bring. But we must not short change the process—and allow our conscious minds to try to tidy up some of the narrative structures. In this business of self exploration the unconscious mind has a big role to play; just think back to any one of those passages from Agee just quoted—it is the dialogue between the half-formed child and the fully-formed adult that is so fascinating; such a conversation is only possible if the subconscious mind is allowed full room to express itself.

In my own memoir writing I found the temptation to connect various “me’s” together into a coherent narrative was best resisted. In the end it produced such flat prose that revealed very little about who I was—I was still representing t a version of myself to a would-be dinner party guest. I found the real writing excitement was to be found moving away from conventional storytelling and allowing my unconscious mind to guide me to reveal aspects of me that I had almost forgotten that would never appear as part of any social conversation. They remained private, and as yet unexplored parts of me could be recalled only when I really relaxed and allowed my mind to wander. The scenes were often random, not particularly important—like the time I copied a painting by Manet and stayed up half the night to complete it and discovering in the experience an imaginative energy that kept me going for days during an otherwise dull winter. Another challenge was to explore how early my fascination with the America had started. As a small boy I remembered reading and re-reading a stash of letters my mother had kept hidden in the bottom drawer of her dresser from a GI who had been smitten by her before my dad came along. Before writing these scenes I had only a hazy recollection of the correspondence, but the more I started writing about it the more I remembered, including the details about the technicolor photographs the GI’s mother had sent of great iconic places in the US such as the Empire State Building, Niagara Falls, Yellowstone National Park, and some American university campuses. How were these images connected to me? Before I could get to that question I had to answer the question of how my mother related to them—why she had kept them all these years carefully hidden in the back of a drawer for me to find one summer day bored out of my mind and looking to find out who I was.

About Laurence:

Dr. Laurence Peters is a global educator—he passionately believes that we need to help our students achieve a “global perspective” in their studies. His latest book, Global Education: Using Technology to Bring the World to Your Students, ISTE, 2009, points to the ways teachers and their students can use the web to connect with their counterparts globally to enhance global understanding. Laurence grew up in London England, and having attended the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, and working for Congress and the US Department of Education, now lives and works in Washington DC. He has just completed a book on the Intellectual Origins of the United Nations (to be published this fall by Palgrave Macmillan) and is currently interested in the topic of lifelong learning. He encourages everyone to check out his website, changingtimespress.com  and by completing the survey http://www.changingtimespress.com/blog-2/ which will enable you to win several e-books he, together with his brother, recently published.

Dreams Come True

Sheri Nicholls

Walt Disney has been credited with saying, “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”  I have a dream that I have begun acting on—writing an historical fiction novel based on the real life events of my grandmother, Mary.

The seed was planted when a respected business colleague—after reading a press release I had prepared—said, “You should write a book; you are a good writer.”  Over the years others have made similar comments and the seed germinated.

There came a point when I knew my life would be transitioning and I asked myself, “What next, writing?”  But I did not have a journalism degree nor was my education loaded in literature or composition classes.  My business success was not realized through academic credentials however, but via my strong work ethic that lies deep in my gene pool and re-enforced by my upbringing.  I have always had a vivid imagination, love to read, am curious, and crave creativity.

I read Colleen McCullough’s book, “Morgan’s Run,” and was inspired by the riveting story she weaved from a few unique tidbits she had discovered about a relative who was sent to the first penal colonies in Australia and Norfolk Island.  Then I searched on-line for “How to Write a Novel?” and found many suggested methods.  One suggestion was a book for young writers by Walter Dean Myers titled, “Just Write: Here’s How!”  I bought Mr. Myers’ book thinking why not start simple?  I attended writers’ seminars.  I engaged a writing coach, Camille Cole.  I have begun.  Grandma Mary’s story deserves to be told well.

I know I will be rejected; I am accustomed to being turned down in business.  There will be nay-sayers; I never let negativity stop me before.  I know I will be criticized; I will learn from my errors.  I have been told many times, “It’s harder than you think.”  So it is that my admiration for the craft grows every day. 

I am grateful for positive comments about my writing practice; they invigorate me.  I have taken on the unknown before, and my thirst to learn has fueled my progress.  I will dig deep for courage; it has served me well in the past.  I agree with you Mr. Disney, for I have a dream whose time has come. 

By Sheri Nicholls--

....an emerging writer who lives in Kennewick with her Mini-Dachsund, Cooper.  For thirty five years she resided on a cattle ranch in Eastern Oregon and was the CFO of an agriculture exporting firm.

Don't be Afraid to.....

Let Your Light Shine

by Gloria Taylor Brown

 Note from author: Although this is not specifically about writing, in many ways, it is EXACTLY the issue that keeps most people from writing.

 

The excitement backstage was palpable, one little girl had already thrown-up and been removed still crying by her distraught mother. I was one of the six remaining little girls, aged 4-6, all dressed in perfect white dresses, with yellow hair ribbons. It was the Sunday after Easter and the church was full. My grandmother placed her hands on my shoulders and whispered in my ear, “You’ll do fine, my dear, I am very proud of you.”  She gave me a hug and pushed me into line, second from the end. A moment later, the choir director motioned for us to come on stage. With much shuffling of feet and a minimum of giggling, we were in front of the congregation. This was my debut, my first time on stage, and I was terrified! I was also very excited. We began singing,“This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine….”

We each held up an index finger, pretending it was a candle, with our other hand shaped like a basket that we removed. We sang the song, ending with a flourish with our hands fully open beside our faces, spreading our arms as we sang, “Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!”

The minister came on stage, and his rolling orator’s voice began his sermon with the words “From the mouths of little babes…”. The congregation smiled as we were led offstage to our waiting parents and grandparents who greeted us with hugs and kisses. “Grandma,” I whispered, “I remembered all the words!”

What I did not realize is that I had not heard the message.

For the next 25 years, I did my best to hide my light. I played dumb when others thought I was too smart. I carefully avoided anything that would draw attention to me, until my early thirties, when I wasn’t sure I still had a light inside. I even considered snuffing out that light completely, my existence had become so bleak. When life seemed to reach its darkest point, I was blessed by meeting someone who not only could see my light, but also was able to make me believe in myself, once more.  He was able to love me and help me kindle a new brilliance so that I could begin to shine my light.

Still, I was shy, and concerned that if I would “be seen” somehow I would be harmed. I continued to hide my light from most people. I still hadn’t gotten the message.

Then, one winter day, I had a very clear vision of myself as a lighthouse, shining a guiding light out into the darkness. What does this mean?, I wanted to know. My spirit guides told me that this was a role that I could assume.  How could I do this? “Teach”, they said. Weren’t there enough people already out there teaching? In fact, it seemed to me that there was an overabundance of teachers in the world, why should I have to assume this role? Besides, other people were already teaching the subject matters I knew how to teach, how could I compete with these established individuals?  What if I led people astray from their true path? “No lighthouse worries about any other lighthouse”, I was told gently, “each shines their light, to the best of their ability, knowing that as a ship travels down the coast, it will encounter many lighthouses. Some of them it will pay attention to because they are on the boat’s course, others it will not heed, for those are off course”.

I mulled this information over for a long time, not acting on it, still keeping my light hidden. All my insecurities came to the fore, and I could think of a million reasons not to follow my guidance. “What is the worst that could happen?” a voice asked. “I could fail,” I answered immediately.

Suddenly it was blindingly clear to me that I could not fail. By being on this earth, and living my life the best way I knew how, I was a teacher, no matter what I called myself. The lesson I had to teach was the one I had to learn. I realized my life’s mission: to shine my light as brightly as possible, knowing that for someone coming out of the darkness, this might be the only thing they had to save them.

I began to shine my light, letting others see me. Soon more and more opportunities came my way, and I found the more I let others see, the greater the light I had to show. I began to realize that there were many others like me, hiding their lights under a series of bushel baskets. I began working with them, to help them remove the “baskets”, helping them create a new image of themselves. I found that I could provide them with the knowledge of where to get more fuel, so that their lights could grow brighter and brighter. Today, when I am teaching before my student groups, I always hug that little girl inside me and remind both of us that we finally learned the message contained in that simple song.

Now, my message is simple: that each and every one of you to let your individual light shine. You have chosen to incarnate at this time, because the world needs your contribution. You were born with a mission and it is an important one. Your mission is to be the best you can be as a human being, as an example for others, and as a steward here on earth. This is a mission only you can fulfill. There is only one of you, and you are indeed a chosen one. Let your light shine, let all of our lights shine, that we may chase away the darkness. For the one who sees your light may have no other guidance to bring them safely back to homeport. Become a lighthouse, and let it shine!

 

http://www.gatheringofpriestesses.com. 

 

Gloria Taylor Brown’s articles have been published worldwide. Her first article was published in Seventeen Magazine when she was only fourteen. She now uses her writing gifts to create much acclaimed classes and courses designed to enlighten and transform her students, who report: “This course has been an unbelievable help for me and my spiritual growth.” “Very helpful and enlightening, with a sense of healing for me.” “Dynamite....it’s perfect.” For more informations, gloriataylorbrown.com