The first thing I enjoyed about LaMott's piece is the fact that the title recognizes that there are many instructions that apply both to writing in a learning environment and can also be analogous for life. My favorite of these being from someone else named E.L Doctorow:
"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
One thing I thought was interesting is the way LaMott posited that writing me a routine focused process. While I agree that if we want to improve any art to the point of mastery we need to apply a certain amount of time consistently (I recall Malcolm Gladwell's magical number of 10,000 hours) I find this author's approach to writing unimaginative and somewhat suffocating to the creative aspect of the craft. Of course it is not LaMott alone that believes this, friends I have known who make their living from writing approach it in the same way, with a die hard attitude of self regulated writing hours or they swear they would never publish anything and hence go hungry. From my perspective though, there are many times where I feel as though my writing is forced and therefore underwhelming. Not having to do this for a living, I can allow myself more freedom, but LaMott suggests that after some time of this "you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively" something I would like to experiment with (over summer holiday perhaps?...) She also says that "the process is pretty much the same for everyone." I have no evidence to disagree with this except for my experience with humans but I find this unlikely. King seems to agree in the sense that he warns "you must not come lightly to the blank page". As we have discussed at length in our various classes at Fordham, the digital era means a whole lot of internet writing that has been clearly approached 'lightly' and agree with King's sentiment that "if you can take it seriously we can do business". He suggest that if not, close the book- something which nicely translates to 'x out of that page', there while just be a lot of time spent x-ing with the next generation of 'writers.' More on that another time, I'm fairly sure.
As the indented quote earlier referenced, I love LaMott's idea of doing short assignments to get to the finished project: taking on writing an entire personal narrative? Overwhelming. Writing about your favorite teacher in 5th Grade? Feasible! I can definitely see how much this would help my students tackle the writing task and how much it could motivate me to write more in smaller increments.
On a side note, though I read it a few times and still only saw the most tenuous of links between the anecdote of her swearing son and a useless hope of being published, I absolutely adored the story about her 3 year old locking himself out of the house and trying to use his toy keys- it gave me a much needed midday giggle.
Although I find the idea of forcing anyone to set down and write stressful, our students could use with a little bit of stamina development. This is most evident when they sit down to write, to read, or to complete a standardized test. Even though the idea of forcing students to stare at a blank page for hours is daunting, something certainly has to be done to build their stamina up.
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