Marcus Austin

Hacking It Up

                I often get the feeling that I am not the sharpest tool in the shed. Of course, that is why I run to the “how to write” section of the bookstore every time I walk through the doors. Only an idiot would persist at something for so long, yet have little to show for it. It is refreshing when a professor tells you that you get an A for effort, but you don’t know what you are talking about so here is a B. It makes you take stock of what is really important.

                What has been important for me in this class is the development of a friendly, but rigorous writing workshop to produce writing and model instruction. I came into the class wanting to learn, and share. This past summer, I worked to develop a writing workshop with another teacher for some high school students. While I was explaining the workshop concept to her, and how just simply talking about, and seeing examples of professional writing, and peer writing, will show in the student’s writing, I could see the light bulb turn on above her head. It is a concept so different from the way the TAAS test taught us to write the five paragraph essay, and it works.  The concept of writing as a social activity is often foreign to beginning writers, and even more experienced writers can have a hard time believing it when they are sitting in front of a computer typing away late at night when the only sound comes from their keyboard and their sighs of frustration. I guarantee that everyone who was present for Dr. White’s comma discussion will recall the way that convention of writing expressed itself in class, way before they ever recall that same rule from some stupid grammar worksheet in grade school.

                Talking about writing with peers and instructors who assume the position that what you have written does not need to be “corrected”, but that you could simply use some experience with conventions, and the practices and concerns of other writers to make your writing more powerful is one way that the workshop works to explode the popular image of a writer as an isolated genius producing masterpieces overnight. Conventions, Minot says, “are not rules; they are simply identifiable patterns that are widely used” (239). Becoming familiar with how other writers write, and noticing patterns is indispensable to progressing as a writer. Reading the story Sausage and Beer and then reading about how that story evolved into a finalized piece provided a wonderful contrast. Reading the piece by itself, there is no indication of what it was before; only in the next chapter does Minot explain all of the work that went into getting it to a finished product.

                Minot’s explanation of the way Sausage and Beer was revised goes a long way to show that a work is something that is always in progress, until that final stroke is made and the author decides to just leave well-enough alone. The poetry workshops provided me with the most profound experiences of revision. It was helpful to point out in other’s work where revisions needed to be made, and it was equally helpful to see where others thought that my own work needed revision.  Minot says not to be tempted to use the “well-worn defense, ‘That’s the way I intended it’” (144). Of course, it’s impossible not to defend some parts of your work, but it’s another thing altogether to use that defense without deeply considering your critic’s opinion, and the fact that your work is your “baby”, because it may be for that reason alone that you don’t want to hack it up. Hacking it up it what it’s all about, though. Tearing down something you built to make it stronger in the end. That is how we build muscle, too.

                Fake it until you make it; keep working on those chops, and eventually, you can hack away without being a hack. The trick is, you may never know that you are not a hack anymore (okay, a Porsche bought with the money from your new book deal, might convince you), so you have to keep plugging away, making your writing stronger and learning from your fellow writers, either through workshops,  cooperative relations with individual writers, or reading.

[6:45pm–8:00pm, December 10, 2009]