I believe that I write because storytelling is a part of being human. I was born with an instinct of communication and narration like everyone else. And because no one has experienced second for second what I have, no one can tell my story like I can. We just have to be good listeners as well as story tellers. Because if no one is listening, why write? Once again- because it’s in our veins. Why else would we even be here? I hope to learn, grow, and share with the world and I want my writing to reflect that.
“I sometimes think one writes to find God in every sentence. But God (the ironist) always lives in the next sentence.” I love this because it sums up humanity- constantly searching for what’s already there. The answers are inside of us, around us, but we get too wrapped up in everything else to stop and (wait for it….) pause. To experience God in that sentence. And once we find him there, we realize he was there all along. It was just up to us to stop looking and to finally see.
This blog was really one of the ones that hit home for me. I love storytelling and my childhood is made up of memories of my mom cuddling with me and my brother and telling us the latest stories of our blankets that she turned into superheroes. I remember that and then I look at my ten year old cousin whose mother never reads to her or tells her stories and when she comes to my house she craves it. She forces my mother down and makes her tell all kinds of stories. It makes me think that we need storytelling and writing like we need air. Everyone needs to escape from their real lives once in a while and this is the outlet that lets us. Or in the case of the article, it’s the outlet that shows us a person’s innermost thoughts. Because it’s impossible to write something, even a children’s book, without putting a little bit of yourself in there – you just have to. To write blindly is to open yourself just a little. To not worry about the audience or the grade, but instead to worry about just getting your feelings out there: your hopes, dreams, regrets, etc. I go back to my first comment and everyone else’s comments: will people still be able to write blindly in the future? I still don’t know, but you can be sure I’ll think about it every time I’m writing ten years from now. And I’ll let you know.
If you gave me a blindfold and asked me to talk, I would be hesitant. I am not sure if you would stare at me the whole time watching my mouth mouth and arms talk in expression. It would make me shut down and refuse to speak. But when I write, am I not giving you the opportunity to see me without me seeing you? I'm just a blindfolded idiot who doesn't know when to show up, but I am still worried you will watch as my words move and my paragraphs twitch in anxiety. Take it for what it is. I have learned a lot since I first read Writing Blindly.
“How permanent writing is." This is just a snippet of a blog that caught my attention while reading through the old ones. Writing is permanent but I really didn’t realize just how permanent it is. Spoken words can become twisted and fabricated based on how many times a story has been told. Written words are going to be truer because they can be seen on a page. I was watching Pawn Stars on TV the other night. A man brought in a newspaper about a battle during WWII, I believe it was, and wanted to sell it. Even though we know that battles took place during the war, we weren’t there to witness all that went on in that battle. The written words in that paper are permanent. They tell the accurate story of men who died while fighting. These stories become permanent in the newspapers that were printed. The newspaper editor probably thought that no one would read this paper about a battle so many years after it happened. So, we need to write like we think no one else will read our writing.
In class one day we talked about how people like to connect with each other. How it is human nature to want to share experiences with each other. “Oh, you like chocolate chips cookies, too? Well, let me tell you about this one time.” Truth is, we are scared to be alone and we are scared to be forgotten. At least that is how I feel anyway. I figure that’s way Dr. P. left those notes in the carpet. She just wanted someone to know that she was there. That she had lived there and that she had mattered. That is why people chose to write instead of something else. Writing can last a long time. Writing will be passed along and shared. Writing is a way to live forever. Now, about writing blindly. Does this type of writing actually happen? Maybe it did a long time ago before everything was so public. Maybe there was before Facebook or Twitter. But now, people write things with the knowledge that they will be read. Look at this write now. I am writing this and I am going to publish it in a public space where anyone can read it. So, am I writing blindly right now? Probably not. Writing blindly would imply that I didn’t care what people thought of me or that I wasn’t scared of rejection. And those things just aren’t true. I love what eponymous wrote in their original blog. “Is writing little more than trying to interject a little piece of ourselves into a universe where our placement seems all too temporary? If we can't make an imprint on the world, then we will write ourselves into the world.” So, put that in your pipe and smoke it.
I consider myself almost grown up (still have a little Peter Pan left in me) and I have no idea what I am going to do with my life. I realize that my degree will say B.S. Secondary English Education... so does that mean I have to be an English teacher? No. It doesn't. Will I probably be one? Yes.
Life if full of probably's but no certainty's. Will I live until I'm 100? Maybe? God willing, I'll live to be 200.
We are living in a world full of blind spots. No one knows what the future may hold for us. All we can do is make educated guesses and give it our best shot.
My guess is though, whatever our plan is, God will probably change it. He has a way of doing that, ya know?
Now when I see the title "Writing Blindly" I think about the Elbow Method Dr. P mentioned in class. Writing nonstop for about five mintues whatever comes to mind. I have tried to do this while writing my second paper, but I found myself wanting to stop to take a "mental break."
I also found myself breaking the Elbow method while writing most of my blogs for this class. I wanted them to sound "PERFECT"
Even though it can be hard to write blindly, sometimes we need to do it. Just to get the thoughts on the page and just get the English juices flowing. We can be missing out on some beautiful, thought-provoking writing by stopping our pen or pencil or hands from typing too early.
@ Luke
When he brought up the idea of gossip I thought about the game telephone. I think most of us are familar with this childhood game where someone comes up with a message and whispers it to someone us. As the message is whispered, people take liberty in adding details, taking out details, or exaggerating. (I'm sure if our class played the game the message would be hiliarious once it reached the last person.)
But the telephone games goes back to the oral tradition of storytelling and how it is always constantly changing. .
In the previous blog, Beth Danner wrote about death. She said she would have no idea what to write, in fact it was prahsed in such a way that, I too couldn't know what I would write. I had to fly to Ohio this weekend to visit my grandfather. He is dying. My grandpa is the man who always had a joke, sings the words to songs he doesn't know, and values family above all else. He always asked waitresses for "the honeymoon salad." This was NEVER on the menu, and when they asked what it was he would clamly say "Lettuce Alone." The reason I am telling you this is because my Grandpa started writing blindly three months ago. He did it without anyone knowing. He gathered us all around and told us the rules of his journal: No one is allowed to read his words until he is gone. Or as he put it "let the dust settle then fight over my best-seller." How do you write to talk about something that you won't be around to discuss? How do you know where to begin? How do you know where to end? Do you end? To me, writing like this takes courage and bravery. I know whatever he says will be important to me because he is important. I want to be brave like my grandpa, but I want to have the brains to do it before I could die. Catherine Wright beautifully said "We are living in a world full of blind spots." This could not be more true. Writing is just like this. We are on one path when suddenly, a train of thought leads us another way which takes us to a whole different desintation. What I take away from my meandering rambling is simply the slogan from Nike: Just Do It. You can'e always see what is in front of you so just do it, just put it out there and cross the bridge when it comes.
For our second paper I took the term "writing blindly" to heart. I just didn't really "feel" the whole letter to me concept. I tried to write out some stuff about boys and heartbreak and hugging granddad, but it was crap. Honestly- crap. So I decided to try some raw feeling. Yep- we're talking raw like the gut-wrenching stuff. And it just started coming. My blind dive into emotion opened that proverbial floodgate. But then as quickly as it started, it had ended. As I looked down on what I had written all I could think was - "now what?" I've got this raw paragraph of emotion that required serious exertion to achieve and the best idea I've had so far is deleting it. But I left it, because it was so overwhelmingly me.
That blind hammering out of all the black clogged up crap inside of me had felt semi-cathartic, and semi-horrific and I was now stuck with it. Sort of. So I brought it into class and my expulsion of feeling was carefully cultivated by Dr. P and I into something workable. Maybe not great, but workable.
And from those 10 minutes of blind writing I was able to compose an entire letter to myself, that not only made total sense, but served as a bit of therapy for my long- pent up feelings.
Whew. Glad I got that out. Writing blindly is sometimes the best way to address ones self. WIthout over thinking and over analyzing, it enables a writer to just spit out the basics, which is always a great place to start. It's also where we as people start- simple emotion and straightforward writing without the lasting traces of criticism.
Personally when I think of writing blindly, I think about the tactic that Dr. P learned from Dr. Walters. "Write shit" I think it was. Just write...write anything. "You can revise shit." you don't even know.. Ive used this method very recently... like....last night recently. I was writing a 10pg single space papaer for a final. if it ahdnt been for this method I fear that I would still be floating...dead in the water at this very moment.
Writing blindly also suggests to me that we should just write.. write whatever comes to mind, not worrying about anything accept having our pens on the paper.. or fingers on the keys in this instance. Zeke stated that writing blindly to him evoked the memory of Dr. P's Elbow method, I can see that too. Anything that can make you write non stop... just write.
When I wrote my first stories on my dad's old teil non-electric typewriter when I was 12, I remember showing the first story to my dad, to his attempt at pretending he liked it (if I remember right it was about God being a lesser diety among the other gods, who was mocked for his creation Earth, and it ends in a strange Power Ranger-esque fight between God and Satan (I was a strange kid)). After that I kept my stories to myself, but I kept writing voraciously, turning out two more short stories in the next two days. Who was I writing for? Certainly not for anyone else, I dreaded that look of pretended satisfaction at what I had created. So I expressed myself to myself, and more so to the universe. I was making my imprint anyway I could, if only for myself. Around 14 I had one of my dads old briefcases that I kept all my writing in, I dreamt of being like Kafka, and having someone discover my amazing trove of genious and rushing out to publish it immediately. Now I write with less noble ideas of being discovered post-humously, but there is still a little piece of that 12 year old in me. Writing, blindly as it were, to the ether, to the universe. No target audience aside from myself. I just want to keep constantly impressing myself, pushing myself toward the writer I want to be, and in effect the kind of person I want to be. In other words, writing myself into existence. Even if I'm the only one that is affected by it, the universe is still a different place for it, and that is my imprint. My cemented footprint in the sands of time.
“I think that’s what we’re trying to do in this class, learn how to put reality on paper. Pure, unadulterated, un-candycoated, reality. We’re fighting for something that’s real.”
That was me, like two weeks ago. I talked about how we shape our reality with our writing – it’s how we process and even alter what we feel. I feel like I was “writing blindly” when I wrote that post in the sense that I was blind to the point that I was trying to make. About half way through writing it I lost my train of thought, my intended message. But I wrote on. At the time, I was a little reluctant about posting, but I was tired and had no desire to come up with a new blog so…
I kind of like the idea though – writing yourself in and out of thoughts and eventually making it to a destination. I might try to let myself go more often. Toby Keith has a song out with the line “if you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up somewhere else.” Out of context it seems like the point is that you have to have goals and direction in life or you’ll never get to where you want to be. There’s truth in that, but the song doesn’t have the serious tone appropriate for conveying that message. Instead, it seems to encourage exploring the world without a map.
I’m better at this concept now that I’ve had this class. I let my thoughts escape on to my paper, even the irrelevant ones (or seemingly so), even the distractions, tangents, nonsense. Why? Because I want to know where I’d go if I had no place to be. I want to know more about me.
“My writing may be blind to others, but its becoming clear to me.” I can honestly say that Elissa and I are on the same page (possibly the last pun I will ever blog.)
We all have a story to tell. We all want others to hear our story and relate to us. We all want to hear other people's story. We are social creatures.
I believe that the Jews in the Concentration Camp wrote those letters because somewhere deep inside they believed someone would eventually read them. It's that hope that we have to cling to. Someone is out there. Someone who cares.
When you really think about it… who knows the correct way to write? Yes, we are told how to write formal essays and cite sources correctly, but when it comes to the best method of touching people’s inner soul with writing – we can only guess. Beth’s post really made me think about this idea on a deeper level. She wrote about she didn’t know what she would do if she was going to die. Would she write about all the reasons she didn’t want to die, or would she simply write, “I don’t want to die.”? After thinking on this, I decided that I would simply write, “I don’t want to die.” This is straight forward and simple, yet also complicated and deep. By making this simple statement, it would allow my readers to imagine all of the possible reasons I don’t want to die. Instead of telling them why, why not allow them to use their imaginations.
It seems that all too often that we tell instead of show in our writing. Maybe we should take the chance and “write blindly”. What if we just started writing? No real vision in sight. No idea of what we want that piece of writing to turn into? Just write. I think that we would surprise ourselves. All too often we write to please others instead of writing to please ourselves. Why do we care so much about what other people think? We are human. We know that people judge, but really what right do we have to judge? I have been trying to get myself into the habit of “writing blindly”. I’ve found that if I write what’s important to me – without the fear of judgment from others – it turns out to be a much better piece of writing.
There are many reasons to write... school, a love letter, a journal, notes to your friends, creating a novel, etc. What is sad is that when I was younger I used to keep diaries and journals, and I did write notes to my friends every day, but as the years passed I don't write for fun anymore. I only write when it's required of me, and it usually has nothing to do with me or anything I have experienced in my 22 and a half years of life. How lame is that? What happened?
I think it stopped being fun for me. Once I was forced to write it wasn't my own personal escape anymore. My teachers would nit pick the hell out of everything I wrote, judging it by slapping these deathly letters on the top. They would make them bleed red. Ever since then... writing hasn't been fun. It's been a competition for who can get the higher grade, or the difference between passing or failing a class. Where did the fun go?
I don't write blindly anymore. I used to... all the time. But I should, right? It's important to express yourself and write because you like it or need it, or just because you have something to say. It's a shame we lose it along the way. Now it's something I will have to struggle to get back.
Tyler, I LOVE the “write shit” doctrine. And not even just because Dr. Walters is one of the greatest people I’ve ever been lucky enough to encounter. Writing shit is exceptionally alluring to me because of the unblemished beauty of the most real of real writings, which sometimes come out of most mindless movements of the pen, can bloom from these scribbles of words. They are stubborn and just sprout for spite. Whether your twirling pen can handle it or not.
During one of the peer reviews for the second paper, (after arriving atrociously late) I cowered in a corner of the group - ashamed of what I had written and had had the audacity to bring in for review. And after reading a few of your letters my shame only worsened. Please don’t blush…but the ones I read were that good. Dr. P was the first person who read my letter - which I had written in resigned, blind frustration. But when she read it, instead of hurling tomatoes at my head, she had a full basket of encouragement. What I had written was so personal and so real to me, so much that I thought anyone other than me would find it irrelevant and bland. My few pages of writing hurt so much that I fell to the verge tears a few times. After a bit of a struggle I found those blindly written words - blind in shame and blind from substance; blind in the act of love and writing - to be some of the most impacting compositions for me to date. And why? Because I wrote shit. I wrote REAL shit. Which turned out to be an eye-opening experience. Because our pure, blind humanness has the greatest chance of reaching people. After reading “I Am Writing Blindly” I see that we need to tell each other our stories, no matter how imperfect they may be. We write blindly and some lucky fella is bound to find it, as though you had written just for that lonely drifter.
Honestly, I hope to never have to even think about what I would write as my last words to my family on a fastly filling submarine, let alone actually have to do. I fear nothing I could say would amount to the truth I wanted to portray. I may even decide to let my life and the last words I sopke to my family (granted they were kind ones) speak for themselves out of fear of my own innability to write blindly. Which leads me to wonder. If not my writing, then my life would have to speak for my last words. Am I living blindly? Absolutely not. I take the paths I belive my mother would recommend. I worry whether I will please my father. I worry what chances I may risk missing while on the road to find others. I do just that - worry. I cannot write blindly because I have yet learned to live blindly, thus granting me the warrant to do so. I have no idea what either of the two mean yet though I am nearing the revelation (partly through this class.) So until then, may my words be few and my actions large until my words learn to speak louder.
Writing blindly is good for the soul. You are able to let go of everything and just let it rip. Its amazing what the end result will turn into-- is there ever really an ending though when we're writing blindly? Food for thought, friends.
In my first post I talked about us as humans being narrative beings. We love, or at least I love the sound of voices. Usually in rhythmic inflections, pausing, starting again, letting it soak in some more and boom! The main character is beheaded by his own sword.
I might say that to really live is to have stories. I have this thing in my head before I write it's like a bar with a view of the ocean. It's dimly lit and it smells like old cigars and straw woven sea hats. I'm looking in the dark corner and there is a man there with awesome facial scruff (not a beard just unkempt scruff like the "I-care-but-I-really-don't-care-that-much" look). Well that man will gamble me down to the clothes on my back and he will also tell me a story or two. He is my muse. He doesn't always have a story for me when I come to him, but sometimes if I'm lucky and it is late enough in the night he will tell me: my thesis, my plot point, my title etc.
I don't know if that is normal or not but I know it's kind of cool sometimes to think of it as someone else giving you the IDEA as a gift to spread amongst your peers.
Katy Perry said, “I have this problem of writing the way I speak. There have been events in my life that have made me closed off in a lot of ways. So I find myself telling someone about one of these events, but instead of dishing every detail, I'm skipping things and leaving out the true emotions I felt. I had an epiphany when I read this article. I shouldn't write the way I speak... leaving things out and sugar coating stuff (which I usually never do when talking to others about themselves, only when talking about my past). Instead, writing should be a way to let out all of the details and emotions that I for whatever reason can't say out loud. I have also developed a lot of trust issues from these events, and I think that is reflected in my writing as well. It's like I'm afraid to pour my heart out, even on paper.”
This is something I struggled with at the beginning of class. I was SO worried by what others would think that I edited (more like removed) a lot of the parts of the stories of my past. I’ve never been comfortable talking about my emotions, let alone writing about them where someone might be able to read them. Writing is so much more… permanent. But when the teacher asks, I shall try to give. It may be crap (it started that way) but with enough pushing you can soon create something to be proud of. One thing I have to say is that I don’t think I would have been able to have opened up this much with any other class. I grew to trust our class and with that came a willingness to share.
I love Mark’s comments on Stevie Wonder’s ability to write blindly. I never thought about it that way.
[My grandpa is the man who always had a joke, sings the words to songs he doesn't know, and values family above all else. He always asked waitresses for "the honeymoon salad." This was NEVER on the menu, and when they asked what it was he would calmly say "Lettuce Alone."] That made my day so good, so happy. I glanced it. And I saw there was more. And there was death to come. And I don’t want that. I don’t want to read about that. I just want to imagine my grand-father saying his stories about Ralph, Pennsylvania. I want to hear him tell me the story about how he and my great uncles- John and Joe- would go with a wheelbarrow to pick up scrap coal that was overlooked in favor of larger chunks. [It was how some Pennsylvania towns warmed their houses at night while industry and commerce consumed the premium coal. Imagine going into a cotton field, post harvest. You get the little bits of fiber left on the bolls to make your shirts, pants, and fabric.] I enjoy hearing how Uncle John would trick my grandfather, who was younger (Joe was youngest), by offering to drive the wheelbarrow to where the unspent coal could be found. Soon as it was full, he would let my grandfather drive it back. - During one of the peer reviews for the second paper, (after arriving atrociously late) I cowered in a corner of the group - ashamed of what I had written and had had the audacity to bring in for review. And after reading a few of your letters my shame only worsened. Please don’t blush…but the ones I read were that good. Dr. P was the first person who read my letter - which I had written in resigned, blind frustration. But when she read it, instead of hurling tomatoes at my head, she had a full basket of encouragement.- *You at least had the balls to come to peer review. Testicles- I’ve got. Cajones about my writing- I don’t* I think I’ve been writing blindly this whole summer. I’m so scared and arrogant and ashamed and in love and in hate with what I put down on paper that I can’t let anyone see it. I’ve been fitting my race horse with blinders which don’t block the peripherals. They block the straight in fronts. I can’t look ahead of me or at what’s directly happening. Too busy looking at what’s there on the side. I really do despise myself at times.
After looking back over everyone's comments from this blog, I was intrigued by Beth's the most. She questions what she would write if she were dying. Awesome? I think so. I've never really given thought to it because honestly I don't want to think about me dying anytime soon. Yeah, I know. I'm still a child at heart.
Anyway, what exactly would I write about if I were dying? My family? Friends? Past or present lovers? I honestly don't think I would write about any of these things. I would write blindly about what I want to do before my final hour. Skydiving would be nice. Or maybe traveling around the world. Hmmmm decisions, decisions. Either way, I firmly believe I would write something worthwhile.
It all goes back to writing from the heart. Writing about what's real. I still want to hope and dream even though I know death is coming. Why not? I mean, I'm sure most of our grandparents think about it. I know my granddad did after watching The Bucket List.
All I truly want is to write blindly everyday. This means writing about those things I want to do with my life, even if I never accomplish them. I want to feel something different for the first time and know it's true beauty.
What would I write about if I were dying? Every messy, screwed up thing this world has to offer.
In my original post I talked about writing as a kid versus writing now as young adults. Why do we write in so much detail about experiences and memories as kids, yet now we sometimes tend to shy away from those types of details and sharing our emotions with others.
In some ways I feel like I was a better writer at the age of 5 or 6 when I didn't have a specific audience or grade in mind. I just wrote blindly for the sake of writing because I wanted my experiences to be heard and my grandma and my parents to understand exactly how I felt down to every last detail...
Yet now I struggle to show all that detail and emotion in my papers/essays because I wasn't sure if my audience or peers would approve. I guess what this class has taught me is to be that 5 year old kid again and let the 'real' you be heard. Don't try to just please others with your writing, write because you want to show people your emotions and details of how a moment changed your life, rather than just telling them through a drive-by narrative.
I still love this post, too. Ok, maybe I’m being a little nostalgic trying to grasp on to every fraction of this class that’s left that I can. Guilty.
I like what Catherine was saying about uncertainty, though. Were not just writing blindly, guys…were LIVING blindly. No one truly knows the future, and for that matter even the difference between right and wrong. Culture decides that and culture is only an abstraction that categorizes people into acceptance groups. I wish just being a human like everyone else was enough sometimes. I think I wish a lot of things, and I think there’s a lot I don’t know…like why I wish the things I do. But I write and live blindly, to try and find out. I’ll admit it. I’ve found God, but I still search for him in writing. I bang my fingers on the keys only to wade through the shit that’s coming out in search of the things only God can know and answer. It sounds pointless when you put it that way, but I feel like stopping would only push me that much further away from truth, from reality, and from God.
There are a lot of reasons I write. I have this weird inner tugging that forces me to sometimes. Maybe its passion, maybe it’s a longing to discover, or maybe it’s God telling me to keep going…he’ll be in that next sentence someday.
When the notion of Writing Blindly first came up, I thought that the idea was to write whatever came to mind, like other people have mentioned earlier, write shit. Reading some of the posts above mine, however, shows that writing blindly can mean different things to different people. I liked Beth's question of what she would write if she was dying. It's an interesting thought that I never really invested to much time in before. What would I write if I were dying? It would definitely take the filter off a little more. If I'm dying, I am not going to be too worried about the potential backlash from the intended audience. You can really get to someone's true feelings and ideas if they were to honestly answer this question. So what would I write? Im not entirely sure. I dont think Ive lived enough to write a real winner of a dying letter to a jilted lover or a story about my youth. I dont have enough life experience at this point to write a real humdinger. Hopefully I'll bbe around for long enough to gain the ability to jot down the blog post to end all blog posts. Not yet though. For now I'll stick to being stupid
I believe that I write because storytelling is a part of being human. I was born with an instinct of communication and narration like everyone else. And because no one has experienced second for second what I have, no one can tell my story like I can. We just have to be good listeners as well as story tellers. Because if no one is listening, why write? Once again- because it’s in our veins. Why else would we even be here? I hope to learn, grow, and share with the world and I want my writing to reflect that.
ReplyDelete“I sometimes think one writes to find God in every sentence. But God (the ironist) always lives in the next sentence.” I love this because it sums up humanity- constantly searching for what’s already there. The answers are inside of us, around us, but we get too wrapped up in everything else to stop and (wait for it….) pause. To experience God in that sentence. And once we find him there, we realize he was there all along. It was just up to us to stop looking and to finally see.
This blog was really one of the ones that hit home for me. I love storytelling and my childhood is made up of memories of my mom cuddling with me and my brother and telling us the latest stories of our blankets that she turned into superheroes. I remember that and then I look at my ten year old cousin whose mother never reads to her or tells her stories and when she comes to my house she craves it. She forces my mother down and makes her tell all kinds of stories. It makes me think that we need storytelling and writing like we need air. Everyone needs to escape from their real lives once in a while and this is the outlet that lets us. Or in the case of the article, it’s the outlet that shows us a person’s innermost thoughts. Because it’s impossible to write something, even a children’s book, without putting a little bit of yourself in there – you just have to. To write blindly is to open yourself just a little. To not worry about the audience or the grade, but instead to worry about just getting your feelings out there: your hopes, dreams, regrets, etc. I go back to my first comment and everyone else’s comments: will people still be able to write blindly in the future? I still don’t know, but you can be sure I’ll think about it every time I’m writing ten years from now. And I’ll let you know.
ReplyDeleteIf you gave me a blindfold and asked me to talk, I would be hesitant. I am not sure if you would stare at me the whole time watching my mouth mouth and arms talk in expression. It would make me shut down and refuse to speak.
ReplyDeleteBut when I write, am I not giving you the opportunity to see me without me seeing you? I'm just a blindfolded idiot who doesn't know when to show up, but I am still worried you will watch as my words move and my paragraphs twitch in anxiety.
Take it for what it is. I have learned a lot since I first read Writing Blindly.
“How permanent writing is." This is just a snippet of a blog that caught my attention while reading through the old ones. Writing is permanent but I really didn’t realize just how permanent it is. Spoken words can become twisted and fabricated based on how many times a story has been told. Written words are going to be truer because they can be seen on a page. I was watching Pawn Stars on TV the other night. A man brought in a newspaper about a battle during WWII, I believe it was, and wanted to sell it. Even though we know that battles took place during the war, we weren’t there to witness all that went on in that battle. The written words in that paper are permanent. They tell the accurate story of men who died while fighting. These stories become permanent in the newspapers that were printed. The newspaper editor probably thought that no one would read this paper about a battle so many years after it happened. So, we need to write like we think no one else will read our writing.
ReplyDeleteIn class one day we talked about how people like to connect with each other. How it is human nature to want to share experiences with each other. “Oh, you like chocolate chips cookies, too? Well, let me tell you about this one time.” Truth is, we are scared to be alone and we are scared to be forgotten. At least that is how I feel anyway.
ReplyDeleteI figure that’s way Dr. P. left those notes in the carpet. She just wanted someone to know that she was there. That she had lived there and that she had mattered. That is why people chose to write instead of something else. Writing can last a long time. Writing will be passed along and shared. Writing is a way to live forever.
Now, about writing blindly. Does this type of writing actually happen? Maybe it did a long time ago before everything was so public. Maybe there was before Facebook or Twitter. But now, people write things with the knowledge that they will be read. Look at this write now. I am writing this and I am going to publish it in a public space where anyone can read it. So, am I writing blindly right now? Probably not. Writing blindly would imply that I didn’t care what people thought of me or that I wasn’t scared of rejection. And those things just aren’t true.
I love what eponymous wrote in their original blog. “Is writing little more than trying to interject a little piece of ourselves into a universe where our placement seems all too temporary? If we can't make an imprint on the world, then we will write ourselves into the world.” So, put that in your pipe and smoke it.
What are you going to do when you grow up?
ReplyDeleteSomething we are commonly asked.
Who the hell knows?
I consider myself almost grown up (still have a little Peter Pan left in me) and I have no idea what I am going to do with my life. I realize that my degree will say B.S. Secondary English Education... so does that mean I have to be an English teacher? No. It doesn't. Will I probably be one? Yes.
Life if full of probably's but no certainty's. Will I live until I'm 100? Maybe? God willing, I'll live to be 200.
We are living in a world full of blind spots. No one knows what the future may hold for us. All we can do is make educated guesses and give it our best shot.
My guess is though, whatever our plan is, God will probably change it. He has a way of doing that, ya know?
Now when I see the title "Writing Blindly" I think about the Elbow Method Dr. P mentioned in class. Writing nonstop for about five mintues whatever comes to mind. I have tried to do this while writing my second paper, but I found myself wanting to stop to take a "mental break."
ReplyDeleteI also found myself breaking the Elbow method while writing most of my blogs for this class. I wanted them to sound "PERFECT"
Even though it can be hard to write blindly, sometimes we need to do it. Just to get the thoughts on the page and just get the English juices flowing. We can be missing out on some beautiful, thought-provoking writing by stopping our pen or pencil or hands from typing too early.
@ Luke
When he brought up the idea of gossip I thought about the game telephone. I think most of us are familar with this childhood game where someone comes up with a message and whispers it to someone us. As the message is whispered, people take liberty in adding details, taking out details, or exaggerating. (I'm sure if our class played the game the message would be hiliarious once it reached the last person.)
But the telephone games goes back to the oral tradition of storytelling and how it is always constantly changing. .
In the previous blog, Beth Danner wrote about death. She said she would have no idea what to write, in fact it was prahsed in such a way that, I too couldn't know what I would write.
ReplyDeleteI had to fly to Ohio this weekend to visit my grandfather. He is dying. My grandpa is the man who always had a joke, sings the words to songs he doesn't know, and values family above all else. He always asked waitresses for "the honeymoon salad." This was NEVER on the menu, and when they asked what it was he would clamly say "Lettuce Alone." The reason I am telling you this is because my Grandpa started writing blindly three months ago. He did it without anyone knowing. He gathered us all around and told us the rules of his journal: No one is allowed to read his words until he is gone. Or as he put it "let the dust settle then fight over my best-seller." How do you write to talk about something that you won't be around to discuss? How do you know where to begin? How do you know where to end? Do you end? To me, writing like this takes courage and bravery. I know whatever he says will be important to me because he is important. I want to be brave like my grandpa, but I want to have the brains to do it before I could die. Catherine Wright beautifully said "We are living in a world full of blind spots." This could not be more true. Writing is just like this. We are on one path when suddenly, a train of thought leads us another way which takes us to a whole different desintation. What I take away from my meandering rambling is simply the slogan from Nike: Just Do It. You can'e always see what is in front of you so just do it, just put it out there and cross the bridge when it comes.
For our second paper I took the term "writing blindly" to heart. I just didn't really "feel" the whole letter to me concept. I tried to write out some stuff about boys and heartbreak and hugging granddad, but it was crap. Honestly- crap. So I decided to try some raw feeling. Yep- we're talking raw like the gut-wrenching stuff. And it just started coming. My blind dive into emotion opened that proverbial floodgate. But then as quickly as it started, it had ended. As I looked down on what I had written all I could think was - "now what?" I've got this raw paragraph of emotion that required serious exertion to achieve and the best idea I've had so far is deleting it. But I left it, because it was so overwhelmingly me.
ReplyDeleteThat blind hammering out of all the black clogged up crap inside of me had felt semi-cathartic, and semi-horrific and I was now stuck with it. Sort of. So I brought it into class and my expulsion of feeling was carefully cultivated by Dr. P and I into something workable. Maybe not great, but workable.
And from those 10 minutes of blind writing I was able to compose an entire letter to myself, that not only made total sense, but served as a bit of therapy for my long- pent up feelings.
Whew. Glad I got that out. Writing blindly is sometimes the best way to address ones self. WIthout over thinking and over analyzing, it enables a writer to just spit out the basics, which is always a great place to start. It's also where we as people start- simple emotion and straightforward writing without the lasting traces of criticism.
Personally when I think of writing blindly, I think about the tactic that Dr. P learned from Dr. Walters. "Write shit" I think it was. Just write...write anything. "You can revise shit." you don't even know.. Ive used this method very recently... like....last night recently. I was writing a 10pg single space papaer for a final. if it ahdnt been for this method I fear that I would still be floating...dead in the water at this very moment.
ReplyDeleteWriting blindly also suggests to me that we should just write.. write whatever comes to mind, not worrying about anything accept having our pens on the paper.. or fingers on the keys in this instance. Zeke stated that writing blindly to him evoked the memory of Dr. P's Elbow method, I can see that too. Anything that can make you write non stop... just write.
When I wrote my first stories on my dad's old teil non-electric typewriter when I was 12, I remember showing the first story to my dad, to his attempt at pretending he liked it (if I remember right it was about God being a lesser diety among the other gods, who was mocked for his creation Earth, and it ends in a strange Power Ranger-esque fight between God and Satan (I was a strange kid)). After that I kept my stories to myself, but I kept writing voraciously, turning out two more short stories in the next two days. Who was I writing for? Certainly not for anyone else, I dreaded that look of pretended satisfaction at what I had created. So I expressed myself to myself, and more so to the universe. I was making my imprint anyway I could, if only for myself. Around 14 I had one of my dads old briefcases that I kept all my writing in, I dreamt of being like Kafka, and having someone discover my amazing trove of genious and rushing out to publish it immediately. Now I write with less noble ideas of being discovered post-humously, but there is still a little piece of that 12 year old in me. Writing, blindly as it were, to the ether, to the universe. No target audience aside from myself. I just want to keep constantly impressing myself, pushing myself toward the writer I want to be, and in effect the kind of person I want to be. In other words, writing myself into existence. Even if I'm the only one that is affected by it, the universe is still a different place for it, and that is my imprint. My cemented footprint in the sands of time.
ReplyDelete“I think that’s what we’re trying to do in this class, learn how to put reality on paper. Pure, unadulterated, un-candycoated, reality. We’re fighting for something that’s real.”
ReplyDeleteThat was me, like two weeks ago. I talked about how we shape our reality with our writing – it’s how we process and even alter what we feel. I feel like I was “writing blindly” when I wrote that post in the sense that I was blind to the point that I was trying to make. About half way through writing it I lost my train of thought, my intended message. But I wrote on. At the time, I was a little reluctant about posting, but I was tired and had no desire to come up with a new blog so…
I kind of like the idea though – writing yourself in and out of thoughts and eventually making it to a destination. I might try to let myself go more often. Toby Keith has a song out with the line “if you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up somewhere else.” Out of context it seems like the point is that you have to have goals and direction in life or you’ll never get to where you want to be. There’s truth in that, but the song doesn’t have the serious tone appropriate for conveying that message. Instead, it seems to encourage exploring the world without a map.
I’m better at this concept now that I’ve had this class. I let my thoughts escape on to my paper, even the irrelevant ones (or seemingly so), even the distractions, tangents, nonsense. Why? Because I want to know where I’d go if I had no place to be. I want to know more about me.
“My writing may be blind to others, but its becoming clear to me.” I can honestly say that Elissa and I are on the same page (possibly the last pun I will ever blog.)
We all have a story to tell. We all want others to hear our story and relate to us. We all want to hear other people's story. We are social creatures.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the Jews in the Concentration Camp wrote those letters because somewhere deep inside they believed someone would eventually read them. It's that hope that we have to cling to. Someone is out there. Someone who cares.
When you really think about it… who knows the correct way to write? Yes, we are told how to write formal essays and cite sources correctly, but when it comes to the best method of touching people’s inner soul with writing – we can only guess. Beth’s post really made me think about this idea on a deeper level. She wrote about she didn’t know what she would do if she was going to die. Would she write about all the reasons she didn’t want to die, or would she simply write, “I don’t want to die.”? After thinking on this, I decided that I would simply write, “I don’t want to die.” This is straight forward and simple, yet also complicated and deep. By making this simple statement, it would allow my readers to imagine all of the possible reasons I don’t want to die. Instead of telling them why, why not allow them to use their imaginations.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that all too often that we tell instead of show in our writing. Maybe we should take the chance and “write blindly”. What if we just started writing? No real vision in sight. No idea of what we want that piece of writing to turn into? Just write. I think that we would surprise ourselves. All too often we write to please others instead of writing to please ourselves. Why do we care so much about what other people think? We are human. We know that people judge, but really what right do we have to judge? I have been trying to get myself into the habit of “writing blindly”. I’ve found that if I write what’s important to me – without the fear of judgment from others – it turns out to be a much better piece of writing.
There are many reasons to write... school, a love letter, a journal, notes to your friends, creating a novel, etc. What is sad is that when I was younger I used to keep diaries and journals, and I did write notes to my friends every day, but as the years passed I don't write for fun anymore. I only write when it's required of me, and it usually has nothing to do with me or anything I have experienced in my 22 and a half years of life. How lame is that? What happened?
ReplyDeleteI think it stopped being fun for me. Once I was forced to write it wasn't my own personal escape anymore. My teachers would nit pick the hell out of everything I wrote, judging it by slapping these deathly letters on the top. They would make them bleed red. Ever since then... writing hasn't been fun. It's been a competition for who can get the higher grade, or the difference between passing or failing a class. Where did the fun go?
I don't write blindly anymore. I used to... all the time. But I should, right? It's important to express yourself and write because you like it or need it, or just because you have something to say. It's a shame we lose it along the way. Now it's something I will have to struggle to get back.
Tyler, I LOVE the “write shit” doctrine. And not even just because Dr. Walters is one of the greatest people I’ve ever been lucky enough to encounter. Writing shit is exceptionally alluring to me because of the unblemished beauty of the most real of real writings, which sometimes come out of most mindless movements of the pen, can bloom from these scribbles of words. They are stubborn and just sprout for spite. Whether your twirling pen can handle it or not.
ReplyDeleteDuring one of the peer reviews for the second paper, (after arriving atrociously late) I cowered in a corner of the group - ashamed of what I had written and had had the audacity to bring in for review. And after reading a few of your letters my shame only worsened. Please don’t blush…but the ones I read were that good. Dr. P was the first person who read my letter - which I had written in resigned, blind frustration. But when she read it, instead of hurling tomatoes at my head, she had a full basket of encouragement. What I had written was so personal and so real to me, so much that I thought anyone other than me would find it irrelevant and bland. My few pages of writing hurt so much that I fell to the verge tears a few times. After a bit of a struggle I found those blindly written words - blind in shame and blind from substance; blind in the act of love and writing - to be some of the most impacting compositions for me to date. And why? Because I wrote shit. I wrote REAL shit. Which turned out to be an eye-opening experience. Because our pure, blind humanness has the greatest chance of reaching people. After reading “I Am Writing Blindly” I see that we need to tell each other our stories, no matter how imperfect they may be. We write blindly and some lucky fella is bound to find it, as though you had written just for that lonely drifter.
Honestly, I hope to never have to even think about what I would write as my last words to my family on a fastly filling submarine, let alone actually have to do. I fear nothing I could say would amount to the truth I wanted to portray. I may even decide to let my life and the last words I sopke to my family (granted they were kind ones) speak for themselves out of fear of my own innability to write blindly. Which leads me to wonder. If not my writing, then my life would have to speak for my last words. Am I living blindly? Absolutely not. I take the paths I belive my mother would recommend. I worry whether I will please my father. I worry what chances I may risk missing while on the road to find others. I do just that - worry. I cannot write blindly because I have yet learned to live blindly, thus granting me the warrant to do so. I have no idea what either of the two mean yet though I am nearing the revelation (partly through this class.) So until then, may my words be few and my actions large until my words learn to speak louder.
ReplyDeleteWriting blindly is good for the soul. You are able to let go of everything and just let it rip. Its amazing what the end result will turn into-- is there ever really an ending though when we're writing blindly? Food for thought, friends.
ReplyDeleteIn my first post I talked about us as humans being narrative beings. We love, or at least I love the sound of voices. Usually in rhythmic inflections, pausing, starting again, letting it soak in some more and boom! The main character is beheaded by his own sword.
ReplyDeleteI might say that to really live is to have stories. I have this thing in my head before I write it's like a bar with a view of the ocean. It's dimly lit and it smells like old cigars and straw woven sea hats. I'm looking in the dark corner and there is a man there with awesome facial scruff (not a beard just unkempt scruff like the "I-care-but-I-really-don't-care-that-much" look). Well that man will gamble me down to the clothes on my back and he will also tell me a story or two. He is my muse. He doesn't always have a story for me when I come to him, but sometimes if I'm lucky and it is late enough in the night he will tell me: my thesis, my plot point, my title etc.
I don't know if that is normal or not but I know it's kind of cool sometimes to think of it as someone else giving you the IDEA as a gift to spread amongst your peers.
Katy Perry said, “I have this problem of writing the way I speak. There have been events in my life that have made me closed off in a lot of ways. So I find myself telling someone about one of these events, but instead of dishing every detail, I'm skipping things and leaving out the true emotions I felt. I had an epiphany when I read this article. I shouldn't write the way I speak... leaving things out and sugar coating stuff (which I usually never do when talking to others about themselves, only when talking about my past). Instead, writing should be a way to let out all of the details and emotions that I for whatever reason can't say out loud. I have also developed a lot of trust issues from these events, and I think that is reflected in my writing as well. It's like I'm afraid to pour my heart out, even on paper.”
ReplyDeleteThis is something I struggled with at the beginning of class. I was SO worried by what others would think that I edited (more like removed) a lot of the parts of the stories of my past. I’ve never been comfortable talking about my emotions, let alone writing about them where someone might be able to read them. Writing is so much more… permanent. But when the teacher asks, I shall try to give. It may be crap (it started that way) but with enough pushing you can soon create something to be proud of. One thing I have to say is that I don’t think I would have been able to have opened up this much with any other class. I grew to trust our class and with that came a willingness to share.
I love Mark’s comments on Stevie Wonder’s ability to write blindly. I never thought about it that way.
[My grandpa is the man who always had a joke, sings the words to songs he doesn't know, and values family above all else. He always asked waitresses for "the honeymoon salad." This was NEVER on the menu, and when they asked what it was he would calmly say "Lettuce Alone."] That made my day so good, so happy. I glanced it. And I saw there was more. And there was death to come. And I don’t want that. I don’t want to read about that. I just want to imagine my grand-father saying his stories about Ralph, Pennsylvania.
ReplyDeleteI want to hear him tell me the story about how he and my great uncles- John and Joe- would go with a wheelbarrow to pick up scrap coal that was overlooked in favor of larger chunks. [It was how some Pennsylvania towns warmed their houses at night while industry and commerce consumed the premium coal. Imagine going into a cotton field, post harvest. You get the little bits of fiber left on the bolls to make your shirts, pants, and fabric.] I enjoy hearing how Uncle John would trick my grandfather, who was younger (Joe was youngest), by offering to drive the wheelbarrow to where the unspent coal could be found. Soon as it was full, he would let my grandfather drive it back.
- During one of the peer reviews for the second paper, (after arriving atrociously late) I cowered in a corner of the group - ashamed of what I had written and had had the audacity to bring in for review. And after reading a few of your letters my shame only worsened. Please don’t blush…but the ones I read were that good. Dr. P was the first person who read my letter - which I had written in resigned, blind frustration. But when she read it, instead of hurling tomatoes at my head, she had a full basket of encouragement.-
*You at least had the balls to come to peer review. Testicles- I’ve got. Cajones about my writing- I don’t*
I think I’ve been writing blindly this whole summer. I’m so scared and arrogant and ashamed and in love and in hate with what I put down on paper that I can’t let anyone see it. I’ve been fitting my race horse with blinders which don’t block the peripherals. They block the straight in fronts. I can’t look ahead of me or at what’s directly happening. Too busy looking at what’s there on the side. I really do despise myself at times.
After looking back over everyone's comments from this blog, I was intrigued by Beth's the most. She questions what she would write if she were dying. Awesome? I think so. I've never really given thought to it because honestly I don't want to think about me dying anytime soon. Yeah, I know. I'm still a child at heart.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, what exactly would I write about if I were dying? My family? Friends? Past or present lovers? I honestly don't think I would write about any of these things. I would write blindly about what I want to do before my final hour. Skydiving would be nice. Or maybe traveling around the world. Hmmmm decisions, decisions. Either way, I firmly believe I would write something worthwhile.
It all goes back to writing from the heart. Writing about what's real. I still want to hope and dream even though I know death is coming. Why not? I mean, I'm sure most of our grandparents think about it. I know my granddad did after watching The Bucket List.
All I truly want is to write blindly everyday. This means writing about those things I want to do with my life, even if I never accomplish them. I want to feel something different for the first time and know it's true beauty.
What would I write about if I were dying? Every messy, screwed up thing this world has to offer.
In my original post I talked about writing as a kid versus writing now as young adults. Why do we write in so much detail about experiences and memories as kids, yet now we sometimes tend to shy away from those types of details and sharing our emotions with others.
ReplyDeleteIn some ways I feel like I was a better writer at the age of 5 or 6 when I didn't have a specific audience or grade in mind. I just wrote blindly for the sake of writing because I wanted my experiences to be heard and my grandma and my parents to understand exactly how I felt down to every last detail...
Yet now I struggle to show all that detail and emotion in my papers/essays because I wasn't sure if my audience or peers would approve. I guess what this class has taught me is to be that 5 year old kid again and let the 'real' you be heard. Don't try to just please others with your writing, write because you want to show people your emotions and details of how a moment changed your life, rather than just telling them through a drive-by narrative.
I still love this post, too. Ok, maybe I’m being a little nostalgic trying to grasp on to every fraction of this class that’s left that I can. Guilty.
ReplyDeleteI like what Catherine was saying about uncertainty, though. Were not just writing blindly, guys…were LIVING blindly. No one truly knows the future, and for that matter even the difference between right and wrong. Culture decides that and culture is only an abstraction that categorizes people into acceptance groups. I wish just being a human like everyone else was enough sometimes. I think I wish a lot of things, and I think there’s a lot I don’t know…like why I wish the things I do. But I write and live blindly, to try and find out. I’ll admit it. I’ve found God, but I still search for him in writing. I bang my fingers on the keys only to wade through the shit that’s coming out in search of the things only God can know and answer. It sounds pointless when you put it that way, but I feel like stopping would only push me that much further away from truth, from reality, and from God.
There are a lot of reasons I write. I have this weird inner tugging that forces me to sometimes. Maybe its passion, maybe it’s a longing to discover, or maybe it’s God telling me to keep going…he’ll be in that next sentence someday.
When the notion of Writing Blindly first came up, I thought that the idea was to write whatever came to mind, like other people have mentioned earlier, write shit. Reading some of the posts above mine, however, shows that writing blindly can mean different things to different people. I liked Beth's question of what she would write if she was dying. It's an interesting thought that I never really invested to much time in before. What would I write if I were dying? It would definitely take the filter off a little more. If I'm dying, I am not going to be too worried about the potential backlash from the intended audience. You can really get to someone's true feelings and ideas if they were to honestly answer this question.
ReplyDeleteSo what would I write? Im not entirely sure. I dont think Ive lived enough to write a real winner of a dying letter to a jilted lover or a story about my youth. I dont have enough life experience at this point to write a real humdinger. Hopefully I'll bbe around for long enough to gain the ability to jot down the blog post to end all blog posts. Not yet though. For now I'll stick to being stupid