I’m a neurotic blend of perfectionist, elitist and blocker, so I’ve far from mastered Boice’s Beginning Before Feeling Ready, but I think it’s an important concept to teach. For terrified college freshmen, the first formal writing assignment can be so intimidating that feeling ready to start it never happens. When I was a freshmen I had a series of pre-prewriting rituals so strict that if my table was already taken in the library or my blue ink pen leaked on the pages of my black, Cambridge notebook, I descended into despair. Like I said, neurotic.
I teach Beginning Before You Feel Ready as Resistance, what Steven Pressfield termed it in The War of Art. I pass out Pressfield’s first chapter at the beginning of every semester and students, without fail, love it. They feel relieved to hear Resistance identified, to know it’s a problem even published writers like Pressfield face, and they remember the lesson, reporting throughout the semester their battles with and victories over Resistance. Pressfield identifies Resistance as anything that stops you from doing what you were put on earth to do. In class, we identify Resistance as whatever keeps us from sitting down and doing our work, namely writing. Pressfield has chapters on perfectionism, procrastination, opposition and elitism—all devices Resistance uses to keep a writer down.
I think the value of Pressfield’s book, and of Boice’s chapter on Beginning Before Feeling Ready lies in understanding what you’re up against. As a perfectionistic, elitist blocker, I can identify Resistance when I see. And I know the only way to conquer it is by performing the simple, difficult task of sitting down and writing. I try to remember Ann Lammot’s Shitty First Drafts—another favorite student handout—and just write, not going back to read whatever drivel I’ve turned out. I've cast off lucky tables, pens and notebooks, and it's a good thing, too. The fire at Ellis this weekend would have sent my freshmen self into a tailspin.
I am really interested in this Pressfield piece that you mentioned. I use a different piece by Gail Godwin, called “Watcher at the Gates,” which is a reference to Freud. Nevertheless, the piece functions in a similar way, in that we attempting to figure out what our watchers are and how they prevent, complicate, detour, and every once and while contribute to our creative process.
ReplyDeleteSo, in this sense, I am right on track with you, in terms of teaching students the importance of recognizing the challenges that repeatedly and consistently crop up in their writing process. However, the part that I am still curious about is something that perhaps the class could help with. Boice provides us with several individual ways in which we can begin before we are ready, but what ideas do you all have in terms of putting this philosophy into practice within the classroom? After all, it is one thing to have students read it, but how can we make the information come to live for them? How can we help students to see the value of this expanded and multi-faceted approach, particularly as they are still used writing one draft the night before a paper is due (that is, before they entered into our process-oriented class)?
I have two copies of The War of Art, I think. I'll bring one for you to borrow if you want to. Great reading for students b/c the writing is funny and readable. Love this book for teaching writing.
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