ENGL 307

     Normally, I really don’t like having to write blogs in my classes. It’s either too much work because we have to update it like every day, or it doesn’t seem to serve any real purpose. This blog, however, was actually really exciting to write. Since I already have one, it was fun getting to choose a different theme from my other one and to see how well that one was accepted. I also enjoyed having other people comment on certain aspects of it, because I began to understand the point of the whole thing - to allow others to see my work. That is an empowering feeling, when your peers are commenting about something you wrote, and having the blog up, in some cases, makes it that much easier.

     I feel like, in this class more than any other, my thoughts about writing in general have evolved, and having this space allows me to explore that on the spur of the moment (hypothetically, anyway). At least, it will now that I have a spare minute to think about it. I feel like I can work through my thoughts with this and come to an actual conclusion, as opposed to a spitting out the first thing that pops into my head because I need to have an answer right now! kind of thing. (See, I also get to play around with grammar and punctuation and no one can stop me. Hah!)

     On a more serious note, I’m glad that I can let people get to know me through my writing here, because I think that my writing expresses a different side of myself than I normally do in person. As for making it work better, I don’t really know how you could do that. Maybe have a little more interaction between blogs, like have a partner whose blog you have to comment on once every two or three weeks? I’m trying to keep in mind how much students have to do and how much time they feel that they can spend on something like this. Other than that, it’s been real, and I hope to continue updating this summer. Stay tuned!

     So, I know that this is due at 11, but I like to give myself a little pressure to work under. Besides, reading everyone’s blogs was too much fun for me - I had to go back and look at them again this morning and pick out my favorite ones. It’s really cool seeing how much time some people put into these things. Stephanie’s and Lauren’s, for example, were awesome because of all the stuff they put in there. Not just their writings, either. The templates and layouts were very cool, and it’s obvious that they took a lot of time and had fun with this.

      That’s not to say that other people didn’t take time on them - everyone did. But some put other writings on their blogs, and it’s cool to see what they wrote about. For those that didn’t (and I’m one of them), it’s still really interesting to see what kind of theme they picked, because I really feel that that may say something about them, especially the people who picked the same themes, like Kerri and Ashley M. Brandon’s theme really caught my attention because it was so drastic. The fire is actually a really powerful symbol of the writing process for me, and it’s really fun to see that someone incorporated it. I would have, but it wouldn’t mesh well with the whole peaceful elves thing I’ve got going here.

     I think, though, that having access to others blogs was the most valuable to me because I got to read all the papers throughout the semester, even if I didn’t get to see them in workshops. Even if I did get to see the draft, the final paper was so different from the draft that I was amazed at where it could, and did, go in some cases. Joey’s and Dave’s papers were certainly among the highlights of the ones I read, and without the blogs, I definitely wouldn’t have gotten the chance to, so it that way it helped, too.

     On the whole, I think that this experience was very helpful to some. Even though it wasn’t to others (Kristin), I think that it gave them insight into what kind of writers they are, even if it is simply a preference for pen and paper over computers. For me… but you’ll read about that in my other post.

The Burning Question: What to Teach

            As a prospective English teacher, what to teach in the English classroom is a question that I have been grappling with a lot this semester. It’s especially hard on teachers now, my Education professor keeps reminding me, because students have a much shorter attention span than they used to, and they aren’t as excited about learning as we were when we were students. So our focus in that class involves finding ways to keep them engaged and entertained. Since when is school supposed to be for entertainment purposes? It certainly wasn’t a requirement at my high school.

            This question then takes on a new dimension in an English classroom, because there are certain things that must be taught to meet the state requirements, and many of them are not all that exciting. I mean, really, how are you supposed to make diagramming sentences exciting? The real point, though, is to ask who really cares about sentence diagramming anyway. Shouldn’t we be teaching students things to help them in the real world? I mean, isn’t that the whole point of academic discourse? It seems that that idea is what the academic community keeps telling us – that’s why we keep studying these inane rules. But when are people going to spend time diagramming a sentence in real life? I don’t take time out of writing a paper to make sure all the parts are in the correct order; I don’t know anyone who does. But then what’s the point of teaching things that students won’t actually use?

            Of course students need to be able to communicate their ideas effectively, and to get them to that point requires some mechanics and grammar. But should we be harping so much on “correct” academic language? This is the same question that Peter Elbow tackles with a resounding ‘no’ in his Writing Without Teachers. It’s important that people know how to discuss ideas in an academic setting and conduct themselves professionally, but by eliminating the use of words like “I” and “we” from a student’s writing vocabulary, we are cutting them off from themselves and their personal responses, which inform every decision a student makes about a text.

            Speaking from experience, in high school, I didn’t feel that I could put my own responses to the things I was reading into my papers. In some sense, yes, we did get a say in what we wanted to talk about, but we had to turn in our thesis statements before the papers were due to our teachers for approval. There are two glaring problems in this for me. The first is that if you have to get approval, you will stifle your voice and manipulate your ideas until you find something that is acceptable to the teacher. I don’t think that students can really learn to express themselves that way – it’s like intense self-editing, which Elbow is not a fan of. He feels that you must write junk in order to get at the brilliant conclusions, and I agree. When I write papers I tend to have to sort through my ideas as I write, and then come back and change my thesis to support the claims I make at the end of the paper. It gives me an outlet to get all my thoughts and ideas on the page, and I feel like that’s important for writers, especially beginning writers, to have. So to have to turn in a thesis statement makes the writer feel pressured to keep that thesis, even if the ideas that formed it change, and that doesn’t seem conducive to teaching writing. I understand that the teacher is trying to make sure that the students are actually thinking about their papers in advance and starting them early, I just feel that it should be made clear, very early, that the thesis statements they turn in can be, and probably will be, changed as they progress with their papers.

            The other problem I have with that situation is that, again, my ideas are constantly changing, so I don’t feel that I would be giving an accurate representation if I were to turn in a thesis early. Also, in some cases, I did feel bound to it because there wasn’t enough time to get the second or sometimes third thesis approved by my teacher before writing. I really feel that once is enough, if you are going to require them to turn in their theses. I think that students should be able to come to the teacher if they have questions, but to make it mandatory for every new thesis to be approved by the teacher takes away from the actual writing of the paper. By doing this, we would allow students more freedom to write about what they wished, giving more of a chance for their voice to get into the text, and for them to enjoy the experience even more.

            Elbow really seems to sense a disturbance in the field at this point as he examines the writer’s response to a text as a reader, as often occurs in peer editing, a time honored tradition in many writing classes. Each participant in a text (the reader and the writer) feels that he or she has control over the text as they experience it, according to Elbow. They may experience it centuries apart (some of my favorite books were written in the 1700’s). The important aspect, however, is that each believes that his or her experience is correct, that it is the only way it could possibly be experienced. The reader, he points out, has the view that the author’s intent doesn’t have any affect whatsoever on the text, while the writer feels that the reader should respect his intentions enough to try to find them. The question, then, for Elbow as well as for us, is how do we unite these two? How do we make them not exclusive?

            As teachers of English, part of our responsibilities lie in helping students learn how to read and write coherently. In classrooms today, that most commonly takes on the form of the five paragraph essay. By the time students graduate from high school, they are so entrenched in that writing form that they have to be taught how to think in other ways again. This sort of defeats the point of higher/further education, then, since it seems as if we’re almost going backwards. Thus we need to find other ways of teaching writing, ways that do not box students into one form of writing.

            That’s not to say that the five-paragraph essay is a bad thing to teach, it just shouldn’t be the only thing we teach. We should introduce young writers to many different approaches to writing – that way they won’t feel so overwhelmed when they experience a different form of writing. Elbow establishes one approach that I think it is important for budding writers to become acquainted with in his idea of freewriting. He tells young writers to write anything that comes to mind – the important thing is to keep writing. This will enable them to find the “pearls” in their writing, but to get to them the student has to sort through all the crap that’s in his or her head. Writing it down allows him/her to do just that. Elbow tells us that most of what we write in these freewrites will be crap and will need to be discarded. But it is worth it to find that one excellent statement or thought, that one “pearl”.

            In Writing without Teachers, where he explains freewriting, Elbow also stresses the fact that the writer must be willing to discard the junk that comes out of this method. Writers, and I’m no exception, become attached to their writings very easily, and it feels like a personal attack when someone criticizes it. Elbow makes it clear that to find the “pearls” in freewriting you must be willing to sacrifice the clams that don’t hold anything. This is hard for beginning writers to comprehend, and if teachers introduced this idea earlier in school, it may not be as difficult for students to take constructive criticism from their peers.

            However, it is great to sit here and spout off all these new theories and talk about what would be ideal to teach in English classrooms and all, but what are we supposed to do about the problem now? Practically speaking, I’m going to need a job once I graduate from here, and while I’d love to teach students about writing with voice and how to avoid the five-paragraph essay format, I also have to remember that to teach in Virginia schools you have to cater to the SOL’s. In addition to that, you are constantly being observed by other teachers, principals, and other school personnel to make sure that you are following curriculum guidelines. They do give teachers a little leeway, but you always have to keep these guidelines in the back of your mind. Of course, I could always say that I want to be a college professor and that way bypass all of the SOL’s, but then we come to the problem that, when students get to college, they will not be prepared to write in any other way than strict, academic discourse. I’d love to change that, but how do we go about it?

            Once I get tenure at whatever school I’m working for, I may be allowed to experiment a little bit and bring in other forms of writing. Until then, though, what am I supposed to do? Teach a system that I don’t agree with and hope that students will challenge me? They won’t, because it’s become engrained by now. On the other hand, they have to learn it: it’s in the SOL’s. Can we change the SOL’s? I think we can, but it will take time, and I’ll be teaching students in two years.

            Even if I could teach writing with voice, I don’t know if I’d want to until it became an established practice. Students use the writing skills they gain in English classes to write papers in other subjects as well. Some of those subjects, such as the sciences, require writing that is precise and detached, which is what the students are learning in classes today. I’d be nervous about teaching students to put themselves into their writing when they are going to be shot down and get poor marks for doing that in another class. Most students take what writing form they learn in English class and use it in other classes. This is especially true with younger students, and if we teach writing with voice, they may get the idea that all writing should have themselves in it, which might not be appropriate in a science setting. I don’t know if I think that’s an entirely bad thing, but I know that teachers in other disciplines will. Ideally, they would realize that there are times to write with voice and times where it would not be appropriate. However, I don’t know that they could, or that we should even expect them to. I don’t know if that would be fair.

            I’m especially sympathetic to this last problem because that is what I have been experiencing this past semester. True, college professors are a little bit more lax than high school and middle school teachers, but even some teachers here, like Margaret’s business professor, do not think that the author has any place in his/her text. It’s really frustrating because I like experimenting with voice, and I know that some teachers will mark me down if I do.

            More and more throughout this class, I have begun to see the value of allowing yourself to come through your words. The reader is more inclined to listen to what you have to say if he/she feels like you are talking to him/her. That’s what writing with voice is. Maybe it isn’t proper for every subject in the real world, but it is for some. Why cut your students off from themselves instead of allowing them to engage fully in the subject matter they are writing about? This is my real problem with education in English classrooms today, but until voice becomes a part of the curriculum, I don’t see how it can be fixed. For now, I suppose that I’ll have to swallow my annoyance and teach what the SOL’s dictate. However, I intend to put my own spin on some things, and sneak in freewriting whenever I can to help students prepare for reality.

      According to Miller, the writer finds different aspects of him or herself through writing about different things. She talks about how she doesn’t have a set “writing process”, but how it changes with every project. I can definitely find myself sympathizing with her on that front, because mine does the same thing. There are days when I can sit down and churn out a three page paper without prior thought in two hours. Then there are other times when I have to write the entire thing out by hand before typing a word (like my 32 page first experiment with writing a short story). To Miller, it’s exciting to let the words on the page flow out and shape the person that you are portraying yourself to be, as opposed to crafting the words to suit a predetermined image of yourself.

        In response to Bazerman’s “spot”, the whole premise of Miller’s argument is that the “spot” is changing every time you set a pen to paper. You come at each work with different experiences and different ideas about what you want to write about and how you want to deliver your point. I find myself engaging Miller’s ideas much more readily than I did Bazerman’s, simply because I can identify with them. I do that, and it’s encouraging to see that published writers do, too.

       First of all, I was slightly confused about one thing: is his “Bartholomy” the same as our Bartholomae? Just a little thing. Maybe there are different accepted spellings. Anyway, Hashimoto seems to deal most closely with Elbow’s work, so I guess that’s as good a work to compare his to as any. Hashimoto seems to, despite his protests at the end, have a real problem with Elbow’s concern with voice, and he questions most frequently its use in academic writing. I have to agree with Hashimoto that, in the academic community today, there is not much room for what Elbow refers to as an author’s voice to really come through. But isn’t that more the fault of the academic community? It seems to me that Hashimoto, by publishing this article,  is chowing himself to be resistant to change more than anything else.

         He does bring up some good questions with regards to Elbow’s work, but much as he claims Elbow does, he dismisses them out of hand, by telling us that Elbow does the same instead of truly engaging Elbow’s work in the question. That is a weakness in his argument for me, because if you’re going to criticize what someone else is doing, you really shouldn’t do the same thing as the person you’re criticizing.

         I do think that voice may be being impeded in the academic community, and I felt that first hand in high school and for the first couple years of college. However, after becoming acquainted with Elbow and his theories this semester, I have begun to notice that little snippets of my own voice come into my academic papers and there has not been a problem with that so far. In fact, I feel much more connected to the class and the subject than I would have a year ago. The real problem in the writing community as of now is that we have to distinguish between academic writing and “writing with voice”. Why can’t they be one and the same? Hashimoto argues that they must be, that voice doesn’t seem to have a place in academic or historic writing. My question is, why? I know that Elbow would disagree with it, and to an extent, I do to. You should put yourself into your paper: that is what makes it unique. Certainly, there are limitations you must follow, but even if you get a brief glimpse of your voice into your work, that’s better than nothing, right?

         I hate hospitals. No, I mean I really, really hate them. It isn’t the lack of good, original decoration, although that’s certainly lacking. And it isn’t the smell, even though I could do without that, too. It’s the knowledge that, when you’re there, it’s because you or someone you know is in pain. I get really uncomfortable in those situations. If I’m the one in pain, then it’s obvious why I’m uncomfortable. If someone I know is in pain, sometimes that’s even worse, because all I can do is sit around in this ugly waiting room and stare at the wall. Looking around me right now, there are probably a lot of people in pain. And, watching them, I realize that I can never, ever complain about being in pain again. So I’m hoping, with this new idea that Elbow proposes about freewriting, I won’t have to when I write papers.

            I bet you’re wondering what this rambling has to do with writing. Absolutely nothing; and that’s the point. One of the biggest problems I’ve always had with writing papers is that I always seem to have so many ideas, and they may not be related to my topic, but I want to get them in anyway, because I feel that they are perhaps the most insightful things I have to say. So I stick them in there. Then I get the papers back, and these fun, exciting insights are circled in red and there’s a note in the corner saying ‘not on topic’ or ‘good; but how does it relate to your thesis?’ Most of the time, it doesn’t, but it just doesn’t seem right to leave it out, probably because it struck me so strongly when I wrote it. Usually, these are things that I’ve never even considered before, so I want to keep them in because they still excite me, even if the rest of my paper doesn’t.

            I used to talk to my mother about this habit, because she’s an English teacher, and she dutifully read each paper with a critical eye. She often told me, “That’s really insightful. Why don’t you restructure your paper around that point?” This really frustrated me, because I didn’t have time to do the research necessary to restructure the whole paper, or there wasn’t any information on the topic that I just inserted as a side note. So it just stayed there, stuck in the middle.

         Ever since high school, I’ve been wondering what to do about this problem. I can’t decide to stop having these random insights. I’ve tried, but my brain won’t stop wandering off. This especially happens when I don’t like what I’m writing about and want to make it more interesting. I make connections, sometimes even unconsciously, between what I’m writing about and what I’ve recently read or watched, or even what I’d rather be writing about. And I can’t turn it off! I don’t know how.

           For instance, last semester I wrote a paper about the uses of trees in the writings of my favorite author, J.R.R. Tolkien (I admit it, I’m a nerd). By the end of the first week of writing, I absolutely hated trees (almost as much as I hate hospitals; not quite, but close). So I didn’t look at it at all for another week. The day before it was due, I went back over it to check for any errors in grammar, spelling, etc. that needed to be fixed. In the meantime, I was reading fanfiction (again, huge dork!) online because I wanted to be thinking about something other than my topic. This was probably not the most helpful thing to do at the time, but there you go. Anyway, as I was on the last page of my fanfiction story, I noticed a link at the bottom of the page about Treebeard, one of the characters I was talking about in my paper, and clicked on it, out of sheer boredom, if you want to know the truth. This took me to a website dedicated to a statue that was being built in England for Tolkien of Treebeard, with each on it leaf costing about ₤2000. This had absolutely nothing to do with the point of my paper, which was to prove the similarity between Norse mythology and Tolkien’s mythology, but it was cool stuff, and it was about trees. So I wrote a little paragraph at the end of the paper hedging something about how resonant trees must have been in Tolkien’s writing (it wasn’t a statue of an elf or hobbit, after all) and called it a conclusion. I did well enough on the paper, but my professor noted that the statue had nothing to do with my point. Oops.

            Anyway, after that I take this class, and run across Peter Elbow’s book, and I don’t know what to think. On the one hand, the freewriting makes things so much easier because I feel like I can rattle off whatever’s in my head and won’t automatically fail. On the other hand though, I have to consider this type of writing and its relation to my other classes. I feel like I can’t write this way in classes that don’t use Elbow as a guide, because after I turn it in, the teacher will look at me and ask, “What is this?” I’m not sure I’d be able to tell them, yet. Not until I understand it more myself. So what do I do? It seems to me, right now, that I have to write in one way for this class, and in another way for all my other classes, since they require the ‘academic voice’ that Elbow talks about. But doesn’t that defeat the purpose? I mean, aren’t we supposed to be finding an easier, more engaging way to write that won’t put people to sleep? After this semester, it’s likely that I will never be able to use Elbow’s type of writing in “real” papers, papers I turn in for a grade, ever again. Even though I find myself liking his way of writing, this doesn’t help me like academic writing any more.

            Elbow’s whole theory seems to be about finding your true voice, which the academic community has stifled for years. I get that, I really do. But if all I’m doing once I leave this class is going right back to the old way, didn’t I miss something? Won’t my “real” voice just be stifled, perhaps even more violently or aggressively as I proceed into the real world? It doesn’t do me any good to find my true voice by the end of this class and then never be able to use it again. At least, it seems that way to me. At the same time, though, with academic expectations the way that they are, can I do anything different? I need good grades in those classes to graduate, but I can’t get good grades writing the kind of paper Elbow advises. And how would my future employers react if I turned in this kind of writing as a professional? I can’t imagine that they would take me very seriously, no matter what my background. They’ll feel like they have to get to me quickly, shut down the rebellion, before anyone else starts getting funny ideas. Either that, or I’ll get fired. And I really don’t want that to be my first permanent job experience, getting fired because I can’t write “properly”. I’m an English major, for crying out loud! I’m supposed to be able to write well. That’s what we do.

         What I’m mainly coming around to, I guess, is the question of what good does it do to find my voice, if I am only going to stifle it starting at 9:51 AM? It’s a relief to be more personal and more relaxed, but it’s going to be that much harder to come back from it after this class is said and done. After all, as an English major, I’m going to have to write a lot of papers, especially if I go to grad school. Elbow seems to be telling me to follow his advice, but I don’t think that he considers that, at the same time I’m writing this, I may be working on another, ‘academic voiced’ piece. How do I keep the two styles from interfering with one another? I can tell you right now that my academic voice is not my real voice, not after all these years.

         I don’t have an answer to this question, yet. I’m still working on it. It’s likely that this type of writing will start to affect the other papers I write, and even though that will make my papers more applicable to me, I’m not sure that all my teachers will appreciate that. And I’m not even sure I can blame them. I know that they are trying to make sure that we understand the rules of organized, professional writing, and right now, that is what we’re getting in schools. Elbow’s is a new approach to writing, and teachers are probably not all that sure what to do with it. Until it becomes the norm, I think teachers are afraid, at least in high school, to teach it because they don’t want to have their students unprepared for what they will find outside the school’s walls. In addition to that, they care about their jobs as much as any sane person, and would, I assume, like to keep them for a while. If they were observed teaching Elbow’s method instead of the “formal” or “academic” writing method, how long do you think they’d keep their jobs? Not very long, I’d imagine.

            Most of my former writing teachers would be nervous right now if I were telling them what I’m writing here: the thesis of this whole paper is in the paragraph above the previous one. That’s the way I write papers. I have to sort through all of the information and actually see it in front of me before I realize what I really feel that I want to write about. Thus, it takes me twice as long to finish a paper as those who start with and maintain a clear thesis for the paper. I don’t know if I’m eclectic like that, or if I just have issues, but it does mean that I have a very different writing process than most people. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, necessarily. In fact, in this class, it may even help me. If it does, so much the better; it’s the other classes I’m worried about now.

“Around the Corner There May Wait/ A New Road or a Secret Gate”:

Entering the Gate through the Written Word

                  “’In truth,’ said Athos, ‘Aramis is right – I will warn them.’           

                ‘What the devil are you going about?’ cried D’Artagnan, ‘you will be shot!’           

                 But Athos took no heed of his advice; and, mounting on the breach, with his musket in one hand and his hat in the other:           

                ‘Gentlemen,’ said he, addressing the soldiers and the pioneers, who, astonished at his appearance, stopped fifty paces from the bastion, and bowing courteously to them; ‘gentlemen, a few friends and myself are about to breakfast in this bastion. Now, you know nothing is more disagreeable than being disturbed when one is at breakfast. We request you, then, if you really have business here, to wait till we have finished our repast, or to come again a short time hence; unless, which would be far better, you form the salutary resolution to quit the side of the rebels, and come and drink with us to the health of the king of France.’           

                ‘Take care, Athos!’ cried D’Artagnan; ‘don’t you see they are preparing to fire?’           

               ‘Yes, yes,’ said Athos; ‘but they are only bourgeois – very bad marksmen, and who will be sure not to hit me.’           

               In fact, at the same instant, four shots were fired, and the balls were flattened against the wall around Athos, but not one hit him.           

             Four shots—“

            A paper slammed hard onto the desk in front of me and I jumped as if it were one of the musketeers’ gunshots.

            Blinking, I looked up to see the very unhappy face of my math teacher looking down at me. “Hi, Mrs. Hassenzadeh,” I said, innocently. I glanced down at her hand that kept the paper pinned to my book, then back up into her face, which now had one eyebrow raised quizzically.

            Shaking her head, Mrs. Hassenzadeh sighed and then replied, “Put it away.” Then she walked off down the row and continued handing out the worksheets.

            Making a face, I reluctantly closed Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers and, with one last wistful look, slipped it into my backpack before turning my attention to the math problems which I hated, even then.

            This was a very familiar scene for me, growing up. In math class, in Bio and Physics, sometimes even in Latin when I had finished my assignment early or I was at a really good part in the book; I would always be reading. Eventually, I became known as the girl with her face permanently buried in a book. Not that I saw that as a bad thing, mind you. I was different, and I accepted that.

            The Three Musketeers was one of the few books I reacted to this way. The prose was absolutely magical, and I thought that was the way all books were supposed to be. I was in seventh grade, and this was really the first experience I had ever had with a writer with such a command of language. I finished the book around Christmas time and decided that I wanted to try my own hand at writing, to give stories to my family members for Christmas. I figured that they would appreciate that more than any store bought gift, though I didn’t, at the time, understand why. They I saw the movie version of Dumas’ sequel, The Man in the Iron Mask, and I was really annoyed with the whole thing. So I wrote a short chapter of my own sequel to The Three Musketeers, and I gave a copy to my aunts for Christmas. One sat down right away to read it, because she had read the book and wanted to see what I came up with. One of the passages read:

             “As soon as the Gascon started to sway, the shorter of the two men at the window rushed over to him and walked him back over to the pallet. The taller man added more straw to that which had already been piled atop the cot, and then aided his companion in assisting the Captain. D’Artagnan sat wearily on the pallet, and the shorter man from the window dropped into a crouch in front of him. The Captain gradually raised his eyes to meet those of the man who knelt before him, and the moment he did, words failed him momentarily, for he was gazing into the eyes of his dearest friend, Athos, the Comte de la Fére. Startled, he swiftly glanced at the man standing beside him and his eyes widened in recognition ass Philippe’s face became focused. ‘Yes, my friend, we are your abductors, and we do not intend to free you for some time.’ D’Artagnan jerked his head over to his friend, and smiled uneasily. ‘Make no mistake, dear friend, I am quite serious. Do not delude yourself with beliefs that I will send you back to Louis simply because you expect the king may be a bit anxious for your return. I want to assure myself that you are in good health and will remain so under our understanding monarch.”

              It is so, so hard not to go about correcting this now, because I see how absolutely ridiculous it is. No one said anything about this at the time, of course. In fact, the aunt who read it right away came up to me later on in the party and told me that the prose sounded exactly as if Dumas had written it and that she was very impressed. I hadn’t consciously done it, but my syntax was very similar to Dumas’. I was so proud of what had written, that I immediately decided, then and there, that I wanted to be an author. 

              Looking back, I think I wrote this way because Dumas’ work had touched something in me so deeply, and I wanted to show others just how much. It was almost ingrained in me, because I liked it so much; I internalized the thought that this was what writing was supposed to be. I still can’t pinpoint what this quality is. It’s just something about Dumas’ prose that consistently captivates me, no matter how old I get and how many times I read his works. But it certainly wasn’t a conscious “imitation”, as Corbett would call it. I thought it wasn’t right unless it looked like a published author’s work.

            I recognized that this was a quality unique to Dumas’ writing over the years as well. No book I’ve read since, with few exceptions, has touched me this much. At least, it hasn’t to the extent where it affects my writing. The exceptions have mostly been texts of Dumas himself: Twenty Years After, The Viscomte de Bragellonne, and The Count of Monte Cristo. The Count of Monte Cristo is by far my favorite of this batch, and I noticed the same phenomenon occurring when I read this as had occurred when I first read The Three Musketeers. I got frustrated with the movie versions (which always leave so much out) and I started to write a few scenes, which I am far too embarrassed of to put in here.

             However, as time went on I soon realized that something about my writing was awkward when people read it. It was as if there was something wrong, but they didn’t want to tell me what it was. They probably just didn’t want me to stop writing all together, so they didn’t tell me that they thought of what I was doing as plagiarism. I wouldn’t have recognized the word even if they had used it, but I would have known that there was something bad about what I was doing and stopped. So it was a good thing that they didn’t tell me. Instead of stopping, this awkwardness encouraged me to try new tactics, so I steered away from that diction and syntax that I loved so much and experimented with my own, which wasn’t nearly as satisfying.

            I suffered through a few years with this annoyance with my own writing after that Christmas writing, until I discovered J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. Once again, I was unable to separate the book from my hand, and once again, it was his command of language that drew me in as much as the story did.

             “’Go on then!’ said Frodo. ‘What do you know?’

             ‘Too much; too many dark things,’ said Strider grimly. ‘But as for your business—‘He got up and went to the door, opened it quickly and looked out. Then he shut it quietly and sat down again. ‘I have quick ears,’ he went on, lowering his voice, ‘and though I cannot disappear, I have hunted many wild and wary things and I can usually avoid being seen, if I wish. Now, I was behind the hedge this evening on the Road west of Bree, when four hobbits came out of the Downlands. I need not repeat all that they said to old Bombadil or to one another; but one thing interested me. Please remember, said one of them, that the name of Baggins must not be mentioned. I am Mr. Underhill, if any name must be given. That interested me so much that I followed them here. I slipped over the gate just behind them. Maybe Mr. Baggins has an honest reason for leaving his name behind; but if so, I should advise him and his friends to be more careful.” (164)

 I tried not to do it, I really did, but I eventually began to notice that, in my own prose, some of the aspects of Tolkien’s syntax began to appear. This was frustrating, because by now I knew what plagiarism was, but at the same time, it was much more satisfying than my own feeble attempts before now. I was at a loss about what to do, how to make my prose satisfy me, and yet avoid copying the syntax and diction of others. That was when I first discovered fanfiction, a type of story where people write things based on their favorite books, movies, cartoons, etc.

            You see, I was worried about using the names of characters from my favorite books in my own writing, because I felt so connected with them in the stories in which they appear. I experimented for a while with just changing the names, but then I feared that people would recognize them from their characteristics alone. A bit irrational, perhaps, but very real to me. So fanfiction was a god-send for me: I could write about my favorite characters without worrying about getting sued or anything (yes, I thought I would get sued for using their names in my personal writing that no one would important would ever see). That is exactly what I did. I wrote stories about Aragorn and Legolas and Elrond’s twin sons, but I wouldn’t let anyone else see them. They were my private collection, and I kept them very secretive. I would write everything from sequels and prequels of The Lord of the Rings to things not even relating, but using those characters. And in my classes I began to notice that it was easier to write about my own characters because I was also getting out my desire to write about Tolkien’s characters with fanfiction. I actually produced a couple of really good original stories at this point, once I no longer focused on my syntax and let it run its own course, which it eventually did, and soon my writing was my own again, though it still had aspects of Tolkien and Dumas. By doing this, I was letting my own prose develop organically, from direct “imitation” to something else, something unique.

            I didn’t feel the same pull toward fanfiction with Dumas’ characters that I did with Tolkien’s, and I have always wondered why not. I still am not entirely sure. I wrote only a couple of stories about them, as opposed to the twenty plus I have written about Tolkien’s characters. I don’t think it’s only because Tolkien’s characters have a more modern ring, although I’m sure that’s a part of it. Most of what I write about Tolkien takes place before The Lord of the Rings, and involves Aragorn’s childhood. D’Artagnan and Edmond Dantes did not inspire me with the same desire to find out what had happened to them before I was introduced to them. Indeed, completely the opposite: I wanted to find out what happened after I left them. In d’Artagnan’s case, there are six books that tell what happened after The Three Musketeers, and I haven’t read all of them yet. With The Count of Monte Cristo, I don’t feel that I could do the story justice, even though the end of that book really annoys me. So I’ve stayed away from writing about that.

            I still write fanfiction for The Lord of the Rings, but I don’t worry about plagiarism anymore. I never post any of my stories anywhere, and the only person who has read them is my roommate. Even if anyone did, though, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with it, and that empowers me by letting my write what I want when I feel like I can. This excerpt is taken from a fanfiction story that annoyed me, so I borrowed one of the author’s characters, and wrote my own version.

            “‘Where did you learn to do that?’ Sardyn watched with something akin to awe crossing his face as Ruith retied the bandages on his own arm, effectively staunching the bleeding.

            ‘My ada caught me watching him patch up ‘Ro and ‘Dan one day and—‘Aragorn froze, realizing he had just said ‘ada’, then looked up. He winced at the shocked look on Sardyn’s face and the calculating look of the guard who accompanied his friend.

            ‘Your—your what?’ Sardyn finally managed to choke out, hoping that he hadn’t misheard the other man.

            ‘Yes,’ a familiar voice interjected menacingly from behind. ‘What were you saying, Ruith?’

            As Venetral walked in, Aragorn realized that he was in a no-win situation. The cold undertone in Venetral’s voice told him that the man knew exactly what he had said. So he could lie and be punished for lying, or he could drop the act completely, and… be punished. Either way he’d be tortured, and all because he didn’t know when to hold his tongue. Cursing his negligence, he shrugged and looked up at Venetral, meeting his eyes. ‘Ruith!’ Sardyn hissed, alarmed. What was the man thinking?”

The best part about it is that no one really pays attention to the whole “plagiarism” thing, because it isn’t about publication, it’s about writing what you want to write, and it’s helped me so much.

             Even now, I can tell when my writing has aspects of Tolkien and Dumas, but I try not to shut it out; my take on it, and my additions to it, are what makes it mine. Many authors have the same experience, and they have to figure out how to negotiate their own voice among all the ones they’ve read. The only ones who have really affected my writing are Tolkien and Dumas, though I do enjoy reading works by other writers. It isn’t a genre thing, since both authors write for completely different genres. It just so happens that it was their prose that touched me deeply as I was growing up and it is their prose that continues to inspire me to write. The dream that maybe, someday, I’ll have the effect on someone that these authors had on me is why I love to write. It has the power to touch people, and that brief touch can change a life. Dumas and Tolkien did it for me.

Works Cited

Dumas, Alexandre. Three Novels: The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo,

The Man in the Iron Mask. Ed. Barnes and Noble Publishing, Inc.  New York:

Barnes & Noble Publishing, Inc., 2006.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: 50^th Anniversary Edition. New York: Houghton

Mifflin Company, 2004.

       One of the things that Muckelbauer stresses in this article is the fact that, while imitation and invention seem at odds with one another, they actually intersect in fascinating ways. He claims that the Romantics would try to disregard imitation in their own works, but that invention is, instead of its complete opposite, merely a different form of imitation. He discusses two frameworks for this idea, one of which we have already experiences ourselves. The first, the one we’ve experienced before, is Corbett’s model of imitation, where it can either be something which creates image extensions of ideal truth in the phenomenal world (Plato), a representation of human actions (Aristotle), or simply a rhetorical notion of copying. He then compares this to Terryl L. Givens model of model (object), copy (product), and some relation of likeness between them. This second model is the one he pushes further in the essay. He tells us that it is this relation that is the primary value of imitation.

              He cites the work of various big names in the field to help prove his point (like Corbett and Givens) and he pushes their ideas until they suit his. He also talks about the limits of each model, showing that he is a responsible researcher and giving him a firmer footing in this article. He definately proved himself knowledgable about his subject.

        I understand that the author of this article was trying to make a claim about how much more narcissistic our generation is than previous generations. My question, though, is whether these tests they claim prove that our generation is so much more narcissistic were administered in the same format to people of the previous generation when they were the same age that those being tested now are. It seems to me that younger people are always going to be more narcissitc than older people because as you grow, you learn that the world does not revolve around you, but when you are younger, you may not understand that as well. Another thing that may contribute to the author’s beliefs is that Elbow’s article has, apparently, just begun to take on status in the academic world and people are starting to try and find voice in their writings. Obviously, these quests for voice are going to involve some personalization. I’m not saying that I agree completely with Elbow, becuase I’m not sure that I do. I’m merely trying to play devil’s advocate here.

   Corbett advises copying passages out of texts because it improves your vocabulary and helps you understand different ways that different authors use sentence structure. But I agree with him that staying with one author to long will not help you discover your own voice but will merely teach you ways to imitate that particular author. Such a thing happened to me when I was younger. I had just finished reading Alexandre Dumas’ Twenty Years After, which I loved, and was writing a story for my aunt for Christmas. My aunt later told me how much she enjoyed it, and how similar it was to Dumas’ own writing. Looking back on it now, I realize that since I loved his work so much, I automatically imitated his style, since it was successful with me. This was not a good thing, because instead of finding my own unique style, I was using someone else’s/