Michael Steinberg

Note: Lately I’ve invited selected writer/teachers to fill in for me while I’m recuperating from hip replacement surgery. My current guest, Mimi Schwartz, is a highly regarded writer, teacher, and scholar who has worked in this genre for much of her professional life. Mimi and I have been colleagues and friends ever since we began teaching freshman composition back in the 70’s. It goes without saying that she’s one of the teaching writers whose work I most admire.

Moreover, along with Bob Root, the late Wendy Bishop, and Lad Tobin, Mimi Schwartz was one of the earliest practitioners to use elements of creative writing in her composition classes. That, along with the 1980's teacher-as-writer movement, are responsible, at least in part, for some of the more innovative approaches we're now seeing in the teaching and writing of creative nonfiction.
MJS

Blog No. 22

Halfway Through a Story by Mimi Schwartz

I was on a roll. I knew my topic: living in a historic neighborhood. I knew my purpose: an opening for a collection I’d been publishing as stand alones over the years. All combined memoir with history or politics, including the politics of writing creative nonfiction. If this new essay worked as I hoped, I might just have a book I’d call When History Gets Personal.

I began writing easily with this beginning:

"I live on a cul-de-sac in Princeton, New Jersey an old white Colonial (actually Colonial Revival), built in 1903 by the president of Evelyn College that is no more. Evelyn College was supposed to be the sister school of Princeton University down the street but was closed for ‘moral turpitude’ and/or for influenza before World War I. Either way, it is now a two-family house instead of a girls’ college meant to be what Radcliffe was to Harvard."

A few pages in, I went to the Princeton Historical Society and got great stuff on Evelyn College. And on George Washington, who stayed five houses away on his way to crossing the Delaware River. And on Albert Einstein who, in the 1930s, gathered in the corner house for discussions with friends. I quickly filled six pages.

But on the top of page 7, I started cleaning closets (two days). And revising my Web site (four days). And inviting friends for a long weekend. Only after the last load of sheets and towels was put away did I confirm what I already suspected: I had landed in the no man’s land between nonfiction that gives information and memoir that recreates personal experience and was overwhelmed by the information part. The “I” had been pushed aside by research and didn’t like being there.

My natural inclination when stuck is to keep rewriting the beginning. It is procrastination in the form of a battering ram that assumes the front door will open or fall down.

“I live in Princeton, New Jersey in a cul-de-sac of five houses. Mine is #4, an old white Colonial (actually Colonial Revivial) that was built by the president of what was Evelyn College….

“At the end of our street is what was a college, Evelyn Place, and we live in an old white Colonial that was built by its President in 1903.” Read More 

Blog No. 21

Guest Blog: Finding My Way, by Patrick Madden

Pat Madden is a first rate writer, editor, and teacher, who, in my opinion, is also one of our foremost scholars on/about the evolution of the personal essay

Note: In the last two entries (# 19 and 20) I've written about how simply retelling a story the way you remember it differs in significant ways from following the unbidden discoveries and surprises that often appear when we're drafting our personal narratives. Pat Madden's essay, "Finding My Way," is another take on this notion. Instead of sticking to his predetermined plan, Pat elected to follow wherever the writing was taking him. As a result, he discovered a richer, more complex approach to composing the piece.

Finding My Way

So without stopping to choose my way, in the sure and certain knowledge that it will find itself—or if not it will not matter—I begin the first memory.
— Virginia Woolf “A Sketch of the Past”

One of the earliest writing lessons I learned (I refer to creative writing, not elementary school writing) is this: that I should allow my writing to guide itself instead of beginning with my conclusion already in mind. This is common advice, something you’ve likely heard yourself, but I repeat it here because I can remember how I struggled with it, how I tried to believe it in theory without putting it into practice. And I see again and again student pieces that seem to be transcripts (sometimes elaborations) of a predetermined narrative and meaning with no room for detours from “the point.” The writing in these is sometimes very clean, even beautiful, but it simply serves the goal, without being part of the process.

Now I would not say that I have arrived at any fully formed writing abilities, but I have learned to trust in the notion that I should write without knowing where I’m going. Whereas I once tried to express in words the lessons I’d already processed from highlight-stories I’d experienced, I now attempt to find or create connections between seemingly dissimilar things that flit into my consciousness coincidentally. The act itself is as fun as it is rewarding, and even when it fails, it gives me good exercise.

One recent example, among many, came to me as I was sitting in Montevideo’s Estadio Centenario watching the Uruguayan national team play a World Cup qualifier match against Ecuador. I knew I wanted to write something about Uruguay’s improbable and, frankly, amazing soccer tradition, going back nearly a century and including two Olympic championships followed by two World Cup championships, and I wanted to tie this to the team’s recent resurgence as a FIFA powerhouse. Soccer is a great source of pride for Uruguayans, and I, who’ve lived in the country for four years and who’ve married a Uruguayan, share the sentiment. But I did not want to write a straightforward narrative (“I went to the stadium to watch Uruguay play against Ecuador… It was a 1-1 tie… Let me tell you about Uruguayan soccer history…”). So I kept my eyes and ears open in the stadium for other entry points to help me essay the theme instead of simply writing the story.

I thought I found my hook when I was startled by a loudspeaker promotional jingle playing all through the stadium during the middle of the match. It was hawking ball bearings. How strange, I thought, that someone would think it worth their advertising pesos to blast such a commercial to a stadium filled not with auto mechanics or race-car fans, but futbol aficionados.  Read More