Talk It Out

I’m a fan of notecards. I use them regularly when writing. I’m also fond of scraps of paper, napkins, flyers, and whatever white space I can find on utility bills. So Boice’s recommendation for using notecards as part of the prewriting process resonated with me. The one problem I’ve found with this prewriting system is that I amass quite a collection of disconnected and fragmentary thought and then struggle to piece together meaning into a coherent whole. I find especially that I’m often in the process of beginning and never finishing. Sometimes weeks/ months at a time, until I accrue these insane quantities of fragment notes and then, dismayed at the sight of them, abandon the project entirely. Perhaps I am one of the “perfectionists” Boice refers to.

I’ve found that Boice’s idea of free-talking helps me get through these piles of fragment notes, though I had never given it that name before. A few years ago I heard an interview on NPR with the novelist Michael Chabon (and what follows is a terrible paraphrase of that interview relying only on faulty memories). He and his wife have regular “plot walks” where, once he has an idea for a piece of writing, he goes on a walk and just talks about everything that might occur. It’s only after these so-called “plot walks” that he’s able to sit down and write, and often he does them when he gets stuck in the middle of a piece. The point being, he doesn’t just sit there inside is head trying to get the words on the page—he walks around and talks it out. This is a similar principle I use when conferencing with students, typically in the pre-drafting stage. I have them come with a collection of random notes on a particular topic and then spend the entire conference listening to them “talk it out.” I don’t really say much, or keep it to a minimum. When they’re done “talking it out” I send them off to do some free-writing on what their plans are post-free-talking. Or I’ll have students do this kind of free-talking in pairs during class, talking out what they might do with a particular topic but stressing to them this is preliminary thought.