On Writing Well

On Writing Well

I wrote in my recent blog, "What's In Your
Basement?" about some college papers I found. Before that, I had posted one of
the best papers I wrote in school, named, "The Prayer Garden". Writing it
changed me; the work I put into it forged my professor's lessons in my brain.
She gave me an A+ and marked the paper with comments that actually honored me.
It gave me reason to believe I could really be
something.

I lamented that I only
had the electronic copy, but later I found the original paper with all of my
professor's marks on it. Better yet, I found the first version of it that I had
written at the beginning of the class. Between these two stories, I had grown
from a talented kid with good grammar into a competent writer who knew how to
work. Those papers were the treasures I had found in my basement and I was so
excited about. I left a teaser at the end of my last post with a promise to show
something better — my professor's writing. They were just a teacher's
markups, but I can see her quality in them. I hope you do,
too.

Below are my scans from my
first essay and the rewrite that earned my A+. [The web page may not show them
at full resolution, but you can usually right-click (or control-click) and select "View Image" to see them
at full scale. They will be much easier to read that
way.]

I found the two papers when
I was looking one of my favourite textbooks, "On Writing Well" by an author
named Zinsser. It was the textbook for my composition practicuum and had some
lessons in it I would like to read again. I still have not found the book, but I
can share a few things from it and my
professor.

I mentioned Dr. Nancy
Pope in my last entry. The red markups on my papers are hers. In the first
version of my paper she gave me a generous B. Her criticisms were as gentle as
she could make them but they hit home. She did a marvelous teaching job just
with her comments; both compliments and criticisms were honest, accurate, and
concise. It made me trust her opinions right from the
start.

Here is my first version,
from the beginning of the class. If you compare the first two paragraphs of both
versions you will see how different the style and mood is. Dr. Pope kindly
called my opening, "Rather strained," but to many it seems smart-alecky or even
angry. She met each of us in her office for a personal discussion of each paper
and leave us with a list of items we needed to correct. In my meeting with her I
had to agree that I was trying to show off and that I came across as arrogant,
but I was still a little disappointed that she did not notice that I was trying
to mimic the style of Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy.




I
also had to defend my statement about what Southern Baptists taught, explaining
that I did not want to speak for other groups and did not mean to imply that
only Southern Baptists believed God to be omnipresent. My defense was valid, but
the problem was that it left too many assumptions up to the reader and simply
became a distraction.

Here
is the ending of my first paper. You can read the entire criticism. When I first
read it I felt proud that she recognized my technical skill yet shamed at how I
had taken my spiritual experience and shredded it with my arrogance. She was
right on target when she called my first page flippant and crude.




I
find the last comment, that I needed to control my desire to show off all my
talents in two pages, particularly interesting because I recently bought Nellie
McKay's album "Get Away from Me" and found that she has received the same
criticism.

Dr.
Pope knew what she was doing when she made me rewrite my first essay. It was
more than an opportunity to practise and demonstrate my new skills, and more
than an exercise in serious rewriting. It forced me to criticize my own work and
abandon my delusions of greatness, and then it proved that I had actually
learned something about writing. Here are partial scans of my rewrite along with
some of my own commentary. The complete essay is in my earlier blog, "The
Garden."


"Much
more useful opening" — I had a much better start on my rewrite. When you
compare these two paragraphs to the first version, you are looking at the result
of a lot of cutting and soul-searching. This version was much harder to write
than the first. The story I wanted to tell was very important to me and I was
determined to tell it right. The first thing I did was get honest with myself.
Being brutally honest with myself let me remove pretense and strip off layers of
pride until I could see exactly what I was trying to say. In the process I had
to delete so much that it hurt, removing even my most clever lines, but it was
worth it. The new version quickly gets to the point without wasting words and
feels much more mature. I think it is even more
kind.

Dr. Pope pushed hard for us
to learn kindness as writers. Kindness required respect. Being clever, dancing
around the topic, and trying to talk above my readers simply insulted and
frustrated them. That lesson was a hard one to
swallow.






Notice how little she
marked on this second page. And, please do not strain your eyes trying to read
it — you can find the whole paper in an earlier
blog.





Here is the end of the
paper and a big pot of gold. I tried very hard to please and impress Dr. Pope,
but I never thought it possible to get the response she gave. I felt like I had
just been given the Pulitzer
Prize.

["Beautiful!
I kept meaning to mark up the 3rd-7th paragraphs, as I had the first 2, with all
my appreciation of their style and content, but I kept re-reading them my pen
suspended in the air — a greater compliment!
A+"]

My friend Will said, "It just
doesn't get any better than that," and that I ought to frame it. I think I
will.

Your Fortune - June 30, 2007

"Your Fortune" - June 30, 2007

Today we went to the New Saint Louis Wok — the place where the owner always asks about "the young man that was with you" every time he is not with us. When he is with us, he orders a crab rangoon appetizer and usually eats all six. Today he shared them with us. He barely ate anything because he has been nervous about his first airplane trip to San Jose, tomorrow. This will be a week at a national Mennonite conference and he has been excited about it all week. He even wanted us to go out to eat somewhere special before he left. That is Arlando, by the way. We had a nice dinner and afterward I collected the fortunes from the cookies.

"The respect of influential people will soon be yours."

That was my fortune. I believe Arlando will be an influential person and I do have his respect. Many others fall in that list. Some are just starting out, some have a long reputation. I am tempted to drop names but I will save that for the 6 Degrees of Separation game.

"You are romantic and adventurous."
I got that one last year and it is my favorite. I usually do not think of myself that way, but it is true. The romance part some of you know, though it has been a while since I expressed myself that way. I think it still shows up in my letters, though not like when I used to leave notes for Cathy. [Sounds like I have some catching up to do]. The adventure part is not as obvious, but over the years I have become risk-tolerant. I think hanging around Cathy did that. I will do something that is very difficult and not let the prospect of failure stop me. It is still hard to take risks, but I have a track record for it. For instance, I quit a stable job and took a $10,000 pay cut so I could teach High School math. I ride public transportation and talk to strangers. I have taken on many challenging projects in my career. I went to grad school. Cathy and I went to Alabama on a wing and a prayer, with no jobs, a little money, and a lot of hope.

"You shouldn't overspend at the moment. Frugality is important."
That was Cathy's. It was oddly appropriate for the day because we had gone to Sears in the morning looking at HDTVs. It was a lark, totally unplanned. I asked her, "Why now?" and she said, "Because we can." We did not buy anything. Maybe we will buy some college classes, instead. That sort of thing is why our TV is 15 years old.

"Now is a good time for a new collection or hobby."
That was Arlando's. His response was simple, "I already have a new hobby. My hobby is girls." Yes, it is. You should see the vanity photos he has for his Facebook page. He says it is harder to meet girls since he quit football. I know I should not expect it to be otherwise, but I am disappointed that by the twenty-first century we have not grown past such foolishness. I am also disappointed that we have squandered our time making SUVs and wars instead of healing people and reducing our impact on the planet. We have had such a failure of imagination.

"People willingly believe what they wish."
I have been carrying that one around for some time. It reminds me to ask myself, "What do you get from believing that?"

They are just random fortunes inside of mediocre cookies, but they sure can make you think. They should bring them before the meal to serve as conversation starters.

Shalom, all,
Ron

Space is just an hour's drive away -- straight up.

Today at 2:06pm Eastern and 1:06pm Central (USA) will be the Summer Solstice; the Sun at its highest and Spring becomes Summer. Enjoy the longest day of the year!

The Prayer Garden

The Prayer Garden

Here Come the Planes

 

Entry for May 21, 2007

"Here Come the Planes"

Abstract: In the 1980s, Laurie Anderson made this remarkable song about our military-industrial complex and the U.S. government's use of force. The music is a bit challenging but the words are telling. I have included sections of the song O Superman throughout this weblog. Her line "Here come the planes" is quite ironic. My part of the web log tells about my experiences on 9/11/2001.


O Superman (Laurie Anderson)
…
Hello? Is anybody home? Well, you don't know me,
but I know you.
And I've got a message to give to you.
Here come the planes.
…

I sat on the stool watching my students quietly doing work, and answering some questions. It was a quiet sunny morning and this was my Library Class. They were so quiet and orderly (and disengaged) that I called them my Library class. I was teaching 'Practical Math' at Riverview Gardens High School; my students were juniors and seniors picking up some easy math credit. An announcement came over the intercom while I was talking. I was annoyed (there are so many interruptions to teaching) but had to respect the announcements. We became silent and listened for the message to repeat. It was saying something about the U.S. being under attack. The first building had been hit, maybe the second. Neither had gone down yet, I think. In the five remaining minutes left of class time, we all sat still, stunned. That was where I was on September 11, 2001.

At the end of class, some remained. They asked me what I thought was going to happen. "I am afraid," I said, "I am afraid that the nation will go crazy together and we will go to war."

Later that day and the next morning I had the Brats. They were Freshmen, mostly, almost all girls, and they talked over my lectures like they were in the cafeteria. The course was Algebra I, but today the topic was fear. These younger teens needed more hand-holding, and today they were showing me some respect. "No," I said, "They will not attack again like this. The planes are grounded and this is the sort you can only do once," or at least once in a generation, but I did not tell them that. "Yes, Saint Louis has many targets but They do not have the resources or interest in attacking the place where your mother works," I said to one girl. She was honestly afraid that her mother might be killed and she wanted to be with her — at home. I think she was the one that sucked her thumb. I tried to help them put it into perspective. In the 1980s we had our own terror, I told them, every generation has its own terror, this was not new, and life and the country always goes on. I told them they had worse things to worry about than Bin Laden, that in my generation we were very worried about the threat of Nuclear Holocaust. I got blank stares, and someone actually asked what that was.

I was stunned. How could children not know about the danger of nuclear war? Then I realized that they had all grown up after the Berlin Wall went down, after the end of the Cold War. "You know, like in War Games," I said, "How many of you have seen War Games?" Only a few. I had to give them a primer (pronounced with a long i, not like 'primmer' — the root word is Prime, not prim) on it, telling them that before the Wall came down, we had Reagan and he was arming us to the teeth and talking Star Wars (Reagan's imaginary but very expensive missile defense program). Star Wars threatened the balance of power that gave us our only real protection: Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).

Nuclear war was the topic of many movies. Some tried to show what a nuclear holocaust would be like but most focused on how easily one could start. My high school peers worried along with me whether Saint Louis, with its heavy arms industry, would be a target. Yet, there were enough missiles to kill every city, so it was a moot point. We feared that a nuclear holocaust was just one itchy trigger finger away. It might all end tomorrow and the only ones left would be the cockroaches. Prince's "1999" became a smash hit.

Around the world there were protests against the nuclear arms buildup, but it seemed to me that the movie War Games made the first real change. It provided a clear argument against MAD that my generation understood, and it gave us an alternative: "The only way to win is not to play." Then there was Reagan's START treaty, Gorbachev, and George H. W. Bush, and then the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Some of my students were amazed, some had glassed-over eyes, and some really got it. The thing is, I told them, we still are under threat of a nuclear holocaust and it is just a matter of will that keeps us from a total annihilation that will make the 9-11 attacks almost trivial.

And I said: OK. Who is this really? And the voice said:
This is the hand, the hand that takes. This is the
hand, the hand that takes.
This is the hand, the hand that takes.
Here come the planes.
They're American planes. Made in America.
Smoking or non-smoking?
And the voice said: Neither snow nor rain nor gloom
of night shall stay these couriers from the swift
completion of their appointed rounds.

Other classes asked me what I thought was going to happen and I repeated, "I am afraid. I am afraid that the nation will go crazy together and we will go to war. It does not matter who with, but we will not be satisfied until we have shed blood." I said that I expected us to take on Afghanistan and that it might not be so bad if we destroyed the Taliban. Bush and the propagandists (aka pundits) had been hinting about going back to finish off Iraq since the previous December, so I said not to be surprised if we took on Iraq, too.

Almost all of the students agreed with me on this one thing: these were criminals, not an army, and we should get the world with us and hunt them down and put them on trial. Almost none of my students wanted war.

In 1990, it was unthinkable that the US would ever start a war. In 2002, we did. We were the benign superpower; now we are Rome.


'Cause when love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi Mom!

So hold me, Mom, in your long arms. So hold me,
Mom, in your long arms.
In your automatic arms. Your electronic arms.
In your arms.
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
Your petrochemical arms. Your military arms.
In your electronic arms.