Getting It All Down

I used to write down everything. Random thoughts, fragmentary ideas, first lines for stories, names, observations, images, plotlines, interesting bits I culled from newspapers and magazines, titles, overheard dialog, inspiring quotes—anything that I thought would help me with my writing. I wrote on torn pieces of paper, napkins, matchbooks, cardboard, newspaper, cereal box tops, and even the back of my hand. When I got wiser, I used tiny spiral-bound notebooks, filling one after the other. If something came to me, I recorded it. For years I was relentless in my recording. I filled desk drawers, file folders, and shoe boxes with scraps of paper and little notebooks. Once, I tried organizing the scraps by taping them into composition notebooks. I took the time to number pages and create a table of contents for each of my seven notebooks. I tried grouping like items together. My attempts at organizing the content were, at times, fanatical. (I am by nature obsessive-compulsive.) In the end, though, my efforts proved futile as finding anything was an exercise in patience. Too often I was taken out of the writing moment, flipping notebook pages for something that I knew I recorded. At some point I gave up, packed the notebooks in a box, labeled it accordingly, then lugged it up to the attic with other boxes containing stuff that I no longer used but still wanted to keep.

I’ve always admired writers who kept notebooks. James Joyce kept one. So did Hemingway. Kerouac. I knew a guy who filled so many notebooks that stacked on top of one another they reached the ceiling. Of course I like the idea of a notebook, getting it all down. But what about making use of what one writes down? That’s always been my problem—at least at a certain point.

Recently I discovered a piece of software (for while my writing everything down has waned, my quest to figure out a way to organize it all has not) called Evernote (www.evernote.com). Evernote is an electronic note-keeping program that allows one to organize notes in any number of ways (how my mind works, for example) and—best of all—allows one to search content. Say I have an idea for a story in January. I can write that idea down and give it a tag like “story idea” and maybe add another tag like “winter.” In July when the muse strikes, I may want to pursue that winter story idea—and Evernote gives me an easy way to find that idea. What’s even better is that Evernote works on any computer as well as smartphones and iPod touches. The content is stored in the clouds enabling me to synch notes from one device to the next. Slick!

While I don’t know what kind of effect my new method of recording my thoughts and ideas will have on my writing, I can say that I am slowly getting back into the swing of getting it all down.

Why Writing Matters

For about ten years, I conducted a little experiment in my freshman composition courses on the first day of the semester. Standing before the wide-eyed group and posturing myself as professorial as possible (I probably even wore a tweed sport coat), I posed this question: Why does writing matter?

I’d waggle a finger in the air and add, “I don’t want you to answer this question - it’s rhetorical. Just think about an answer.” I’d pivot and pace across the front of the room noticing out of the corner of my eye one or two eager beavers reaching for their college-level dictionaries (required) and thumb quickly for “rhetorical.” The others sat slack-jawed and glazy-eyed.

I instructed the students to rip a piece of paper into fourths and write on one the name of a vegetable they couldn’t stomach, on another a movie they hated, on the third a rule or law they thought was inane (probably not the word I used in class), and on the last the word they used for their mother or someone they loved deeply.

“Take the piece of paper in which you have written the name of a vegetable you can’t stand, drop it on the floor, and stamp all over it,” I instructed. Blank stares and a smattering of nervous is-he-serious laughter filled the room. “Go ahead,” I cajoled. “It’s ok.” And they did it, reluctantly at first, but soon with growing enthusiasm as if to say, Hey! College is fun!

They stomped all over the cauliflower and turnips and broccoli. They loosened up and some smiled when they stamped their feet on the movies they hated. Most delighted in their perceived rebellious behavior of trampling out a rule or law they thought was stupid. Then I paused. The brighter students knew what was coming next (they were almost always the ones who had reached for the dictionaries earlier). I asked the students to hold up the piece of paper they had written the name they use for their mother or someone they loved deeply. For theatrics, I sometimes asked students to share those names. Mom, Mommy, Mommy Dearest.

“Ok,” I said. “You know what to do - stomp on those papers!” Almost always the students hesitated, looked up, offered furtive glances around the room, occasionally someone remarked, and then slowly the students dropped the slips of paper onto the floor and half-hearted stepping, not stomping, ensued.

Then we started talking. “Why did it matter?” I asked. “It’s just a word.”

To most of the students (the vast majority over the years, I imagine), my antics put me in the category of loopy English professor, another talking head trying to convince non-believers of the merits of what I did - the teaching of writing. But to some, maybe only one in a class if I was lucky, what I did helped them connect with something that simply made sense in their eighteen-year-old minds.

Words have power. Writing matters. Writing enables us to express our thoughts and ideas, and it helps us understand ourselves, our lives, and our world. Writing allows us to make connections, to organize our thinking and to sort the fact from the fancy. Writing creates a record that lasts. Writing is empowering in that it enables us to communicate with others. If writing didn’t matter, then we might as well be stomping on our mothers.

Why Blog?

I have never been a dedicated blogger, never had my own blog, and never blogged on any kind of regular basis. But that’s all going to change. Starting now. Call this a new year’s resolution. Up to now, the biggest challenge was not so much a focus for my blog, but, rather, a title for my blog. I knew I wanted to blog about writing, but every title I came up with was taken, even the one I was most partial to: Just Another Writing Blog. After all, a quick Google search will yield a gazillion blogs about writing. Wow, I thought, how was I going to come up with a unique title? Then it hit me: WOW! W. O. W. Writing on writing. Talk about serendipity. Wow!

For years while teaching creative writing, I required students to keep a journal to warehouse their ideas for stories and poems and essays. Each week they dutifully composed entries and several times during the semester, I collected and read the journals. The problem I saw, year after year, was that the entries, even for the better students, became lackluster, perfunctory. They were recorded for the sake of recording them. I have long ago abandoned writing regularly in a journal for the same basic reason—no real audience. The words lived and died within the covers of the journal, forever private.

Blogging has changed all that. No longer are one’s words left in the proverbial writer’s drawer. For better or for worse, anyone’s words can join the wonderful cacophony of other voices in the bloggersphere. The potential for a readership exists with others who have similar interests, and even though we writers still write alone, we can all easily become part of a larger community and perhaps find greater purpose in what we put down in words.