Writing Purposes

I feel as if I am learning two somewhat opposing ways to teach writing. One is to teach writing for a specific purpose in a specific way. The other is to teach writing for the reward of writing itself, a somewhat cathartic experience. Our class is reading two very different books about these views. One is by Regie Routman called Writing Essentials. The other, by Anne Lamott, is Bird by Bird. Now, I think one can tell by the titles themselves which one is conventional and which one is not. I admit, I tend to be a conservative and go more with the conventional text, such as teaching the actual skills of writing, but I have bitten my tongue and resolved to find some gems of worth in the other, and I think I have found some.

Lamott is admittedly a bit crude for my taste, but I do agree with her that good writing should be “about telling the truth” (p. 3). Sometimes I think she could use a bit more reserve in her descriptive powers, but I have to admit agreeing with her about her characters. Sometimes it is best to not save them but let them suffer the consequences. Her story about a “frazzled, defeated wife of an alcoholic man who kept passing out on the front lawn in the middle of one night,” was one such example. The wife kept dragging him in each morning before dawn to avoid the neighbor’s view until finally an old black woman from the South advised her saying, “Honey? Leave him lay where Jesus flang him” (p. 46). That was inspirational.