Dangerous Pedagogy: Preoccupied Prewriting (part 3): “Ugh! Taxes!”
This post is part of the Dangerous Pedagogy Series. Links below.
While writing may be the application of the seat of one’s pants to the seat of a chair, especially for us pantsers, I find that some of my best writing happens not when I set my mind to the task of writing, but when my mind wanders away from some other miserable task I’ve set out to do.
Take, for example, The Ballad of Workstudy Seth.
In 2009, I headed into Spring Break with all the best intentions of catching up on a pile of grading and, as always, my taxes. What better time could there be for these activities but when I finally had a long string of unbroken, uninterrupted time to just concentrate and chop some wood. Only, as usual, I found just the opposite to be true. The moment I set my mind to either of these daunting and distasteful tasks — at least to my spring break mind — it would run to the window and say, “Look how much fun everyone is having out there in the sun.” So what did I do? What else would a procrastinator — no, procreatinator do, I Tweeted.
@markcmarino: What if I had a workstudy student who ran my social media?
And no sooner did I write that Tweet, then I wrote a few more:
@markcmarino just hired me as his “social networking” assisstant, sez all i have to do is twitter, facebook, & bookmarx. its a resume builder, seth
@markcmarino sez i can call him coach, he calls me seth youtube. my names seth yoo. he seems to think he invented that joke, best not pop that bubble
@markcmarino haz not made real clear my job duties, but sez i might have to give up some evenings cuz he thinks its better to update late at night (sy)
And Seth Yoo, aka Workstudy Seth, was born.
As Spring Break wounds it sway, Workstudy Seth went on the Spring Break that I had to skip. On his way to Cabo, with many other USC students, however, Seth found himself distracted by an attractive young woman who led him all the way to the Grand Canyon where she was joining with a luddite cult in throwing their technology into the chasm. Complications follow.
Now, I spent a fair amount of my time chastising myself for Tweeting away when I could be getting some important work done. Why couldn’t I just get my mind to do what it was supposed to do? The answer inspired this next version of Preoccupied Prewriting.
See, writing or rather our writing powers are not machines to be turned on and off, nor are they servants to be ordered about (not that we should treat servants that way, pace Downton Abbey staff). Writing is more like a cat, that comes and goes as it pleases, or volunteer flowers that popup unbidden. That’s not to say we can’t force it to happen. We have cat carriers when the cat needs to go to the vet, and many a fine writer has planted and cultivated rows of necessary or desired crops. But sometimes we get the cat to pad over and nuzzle our cozy socks, by looking away from it.
Now, this isn’t the pickup artist guide to seducing your muse. But it is a reality check. Rather than treating our writing process as something that is broken, or something that needs to be broken, like a wild horse, or wild cat (if I’m going to stay at least a little consistent), why don’t we honor the catness of the cat.
The Exercise: Preoccupied Writing III
In the previous Preoccupied Prewriting, you tried to do some mundane task to see what ideas came to you. But often ideas come to use while we’re avoiding other work. In fact, I get more writing ideas when I’m sitting down to do a task I don’t want to do than when I sit down just to work on writing. So let’s see if we can harness that.
After looking over [some essay prompt], sit down to do some task you really don’t want to do. This could be a chore, such as cleaning; a challenge, like doing squats or pushups; or homework for another class, such as accounting. The important thing is that it be an activity you just don’t feel like doing right now.
Then, let as you embark on that work, let your mind wander back over to the prewriting for the netprov. See what ideas come to you. As you feel like you are running out of ideas, bring yourself back to that tedious work you were trying to avoid.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Post any reflections on how it all went here.
Reactions
Here are some samples of student experiences, and feedback.
Activities: working out, learning new software, cleaning room, taking notes, cleaning the carpet.
a student who tried learning a new piece of software:
“There is still so much to learn, but like with any new skill, by starting I’m miles ahead of where I was before. There’s a high pressure to succeed and not looks stupid. By trying to learn something new the most difficult part is often getting over this fear of not already knowing or being able to achieve at a high standard. This fear fuels procrastination for writing and everything else in school.”
a realization about writing as escape:
“And while it definitely gave me new ideas in regards to my blog — such as taking time to write a post about the historical contexts of the educational systems of certain countries and comparing and contrasting our modern day institutions — it was also a good reminder of the fact that I really need these blog posts to fit my original goal and serve as a form of escapism from my other work. I don’t need to feel the same crushing weight to perform when I can just let myself enjoy the exploration process of my topic.”
Coda
Oh, and Workstudy Seth. Though I thought I was wasting time, others found it inspiring, most importantly my writing partner of 10 years, Rob Wittig, with whom I’ve gone on to develop a new form of writing for procreatinators like me, called netprov, and we engage in it especially when we ought to be doing other things, like taxes!
If you try any of these activities in or out of your classes, let me know how they go!
