Writing the Chicago Crawl

Most people I know hate teaching comp classes, but as a 'creative writer' I find that it keeps my head straight as far as the so-called writing basics go; it also helps stave off any incipient existential angst when my own writing may not be going so well, by simply forcing me to address rudimentary issues in a manner that makes them clear to my students, therefore getting me to be actively engaged in thinking about writing, while not thinking about my writing. For the semester that just ended, my 101 class focused by design largely on language issues, reading essays by Anne Lamott, Malcolm X, Brent Staples, Amy Tan, Richard Rodriguez, and Marjorie Agosín, but as I was reading through William Stafford's Writing the Australian Crawl, I found numerous essays that would also tie appropriately into the arc of the class.

I finally settled on “A Way of Writing.” Stafford begins, “A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them” (17). This is, of course, an important philosophy for neophyte academic writers, poets, fiction writers and essayists too. He stresses the importance of receptivity while writing, as well as a willingness to fail: “most of what I write, like most of what I say in casual conversation, will not amount to much” (19). Once any writer realizes this, and sees that the most important thing is writing itself, again, as a process, they have leaped an important hurdle. Stafford ends this essay on what he calls the “process-rather-than-substance view of writing” with a final dual reflection:

1. Writers may not be special—sensitive or talented in any usual sense. They are simply engaged in sustained use of a language skill we all have. Their “creations” come about through confident reliance on stray impulses that will, with trust, find occasional patterns that are satisfying.
2. But writing itself is one of the great, free human activities. There is scope for individuality, and elation, and discovery, in writing. For the person who follows with trust and forgiveness what occurs to him, the world remains ready and deep, an inexhaustible environment, with the combined vividness of an actuality and flexibility of a dream. Working back and forth between experience and thought, writers have more than space and time can offer. They have the whole unexplored realm of human vision. (20)

I like “the world remains ready and deep, an inexhaustible environment, with the combined vividness of an actuality and flexibility of a dream.” Many times writers feel compelled to take sides, either planting their feet in the realm of the real, or letting their heads float into the clouds. When either commitment works, on an personal level, and we see it reflected, alive and vibrant in their work, the writer doesn't need any excuses—the work speaks for itself. But those instances may be rarer than the true believers would choose to admit. Picking a style, and sticking with it is, in some ways, like a marriage; but promises made at the altar need to adapt to changes as the couple grows as individuals. Before too long, the writer is letting style drive the bus, and not the other way around. Stafford's reflection allows for a “your-shit-does-stink” authenticity alongside the promise of deeper or more arcane knowledge.