Prospecting for gems in a prospect for my prospectus project

This particular project has been challenging in unique ways. In my own masochistic fashion, I decided to select a restaurant training manual as my non-fiction work for the proposal. I like works that I can approach, enjoy, relate to, and delve into without feeling like a victim in a dentist's office. Reading other training manuals was like pulling teeth, page by page without Novocaine. Do these people realize how violently disgusting they have made their prose? Stereo instructions poorly translated from Chinese would have been preferable to these books. In any case, the research is now behind me. ON TO THE DRAFT!

Oh wait. I finished the draft. The rough draft, even with word 2003's recalcitrant behavior, is done and posted. And there was much rejoicing, yay.

I did not enjoy writing about myself in the 3rd person, but I did enjoy the hell out of bashing those instruments of torture those other authors called training manuals. Tonight's rant is for those of us who consider ourselves writers... save your sanity. Make sure you write in a vein that you deeply enjoy. Forcing out a work on something you may like but in a style you resist is like drinking a gallon of liquid Drano; it hurts a lot and leaves you feeling hollow inside.

Indecent proposing

Our discussion last class regarding publishers and books has left me with a wide vacant chasm inside. Do we, as writers, really stare into the faces of the stone-faced gorgons of the publishing companies with any shred of hope? I have worked for years in the writing center environment and found the soul of the pen slowly draining away to its LCD arch-nemesis. Dust gathers atop old books while new ones are shelved in a digital storeroom for half the price and one-tenth the royalties.

I am a writer; I am an endangered species being hunted to extinction while no child will be left behind. NO SURVIVORS! Sometimes a light shines in the darkness, and occasionally, it is not an oncoming train. I have seen one or two writers emerge each semester. Not some aspirant e.e.cummings or Tolstoy or Cyber-Shakespeare, but some fresh new mind with a new perspective and desire to create worlds in words.

During those rare jewels in existence, I fight the overwhelming urge to weep and mourn a fate that has not transpired. The end of literate learning. Try as we might, good writers, our very existence is challenged by a world of efficiency, scientific dominion, and the bigger-better-faster-upgraded-supersmart word processing program that turns our craft into a binary sequence. Rise above and write.

A rhetorical analysis and a dash of short story

The assignments have blended together in a wash of misused time and procrastination. I have embarked on a journey of pointless wastes of time and consumption of beer to return hungover and wiser.

The rhetorical analysis was almost fun. The article I chose was annoying; the voice of the writer was angry and arrogant, and the selected questions delved deeply into his message to unveil a happy-go-lucky streak of argumentation. Huzzah.

The short story I am writing for the next assignment has proven to be quite challenging but absolutely hilarious. Flannery O'connor is some fun readin; I am enjoying emulating her style and parodying one of her great works. She'd probably laugh and chalk it up to some kid borrowing her crutches for a couple minutes. Thank you Flannery. I am glad I had this chance to slap the grandmother around; I have been waiting a few years to do it.

Once upon a time, I thought I could make a living writing fiction. The truth arrived through the end of two very inspirational people in my life. My grandmothers passed away last year around this time. They both wanted me to teach. So do I.

Rhet-OH-ric

Once upon a rhetorical situation, there was this actor who took action by claiming that some warrant needed to be qualified by data. Rhetoric. Yeah. I have read many things about rhetoric: some current, some outdated, some revamped over and over, some lingering like the smell of something in the trash can, and some things that stick with you like too many beers or fattening snacks.

“Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.” Plato.

“On the third Tuesday of every September, floodgates are opened in a tall building on the East River in New York and a Niagara of rhetoric gushes forth for three months.” Anthony Parsons.

Rhetoric has been described as persuasion, fluff, mind control, excrement, and sugarcoated lies. Truthfully, rhetoric is a tool like anything else. It is a means to reach an agreement when the facts are just not enough to show your side of things. When someone knows how to put words, thoughts, and feelings together in such a way that people are moved to believe them, to accept them, and to follow them, those people are often labeled as liars, con artists, lawyers, or the worst of all great leaders. We are inundated with rhetoric all the time with only one goal, to convince us how awesome, beautiful, sexy, smart, healthy, or safe we would be when we buy the next new special THING; do we outcry against those advertising giants who have found the way to make us into rats in a cage with a feeder bar pushing away for another pellet? If the rhetoric of Nike, Cheez-its, or Nissan is acceptable, then why do we say someone who seeks to lead us in office and try and improve our status is using “rhetoric” and is thus evil? No, that last comment is not to single out any leader but to emphasize ALL of them. We are creatures of language and passions; we should not defame those who use it to inspire those passions and move us.

Enough soapbox chatter. I’m done.

The life of a writer

Out of the many testimonials we read from the Writing Life, Muriel Sparks spoke out with the strongest words for me. I enjoyed how she said she couldn't reread her past works because they each captured who she was at the moment she wrote it, someone she is not anymore. The point of her missive was that past all the rejection slips and egregiously painful works, we are storytellers in one form or another, speaking our stories from a demesne within our beings. It is the calling of a writer.

We all fantasize about that perfect job. We all crave that one place we could go day after day and do our work feeling like a little kid about to run into a playground while still getting paid for it. The Writing Life selection for last week seemed to touch on elements of the real tooth-grinding, white knuckled work it takes to clear the cacophony of ideas from the head of a writer onto paper. We scream when a plot won't twist to the music of the dialogue; we bellow in frustration when that setting won't pan out to a beautiful view of the last funeral of a withering family line. Our eyes are on a page, a screen, or a notebook; our hearts are in the words. I didn't ask to become a writer in this life, but the stories have my mind hostage. God bless the ditch-diggers!!!

Nerd-gasms

It was late afternoon as I made my way to the third floor of the library. I sat near the center of the room at a table that was just as excited to see me as I was to be there. Searchengines and research...all old hat and tiresome. Cheryl Stiles was excited for us to be there and as she started up the title page for the citation software she briefly mentioned what it can do. At that moment, the cruel visceral wrath of fate jarred the neurons in my jaw, lips, and vocal cords to produce a series of sounds and enunciation that would echo through the rest of Cheryl's presentation:"I resist any computer aid to writing a citation because of where I work." Following that moment, Cheryl made it clear to incorporate that sentiment into her presentation with one quip after another meant to jibe at my distaste. Singled out? Not possible. I think she was standing on the grassy knoll. Her presentation was effective, entertaining, albeit painfully so, and informative. I was so pleased to discover the films on demand aspect of GALILEO. I left that room quickly, nursing the wounds of every dart thrown.

We reconvened in the bowels of the library, a dark demesne buried under tons of concrete, brick, steel, and books. The dark shadowy halls echoed the quiet, yet bemused, feel of every step. As I approached the Rare Book Room, I noted the often closed door standing gaping wide like the open arms of an old familiar friend waiting for an embrace. The dark wood-paneled walls stood in silent affirmation of the dignity and pride placed into each and every inch of the room. Miss Impey-Imes bubbled with excitement as she practically exploded into her presentation. She described each book, each piece of history, and each story locked in the walls and tomes with a zeal found in a 4-year old looking to share a new world with those around them. We began to share her awe, excitement, and delight as the rare tomes passed from hand to hand. The ancient pages showing the wear and tear of time and loving care. I held the beauty of writing in many glorious stages of our human history. Multiple Nerd-gasms.

Questions, answers, and a mental appendectomy

How shall I start thee, let me count the ways. I have spent considerable time reading, rereading, perusing, defining, elaborating, and editing the interview handed down to me by the great muse of interrogation. My friend was very helpful in her responses and quite humorous. I don't expect a Pulitzer for this interview, but I feel it will be insightful to those who seek to publish in local news.
I have spent a little time thinking about the Prose readings in contrast to some readings for other courses: Plato, Cicero, Quintilian, Ramus, and Castiglione to name a few. It is interesting to see the overlap between rhetorical tropes from various dead guys come forward in Prose's examination of style. What does this mean for my aspiring career as a teacher? I feel privileged to be able to share these elements of style and graceful methods of writing with future impressionable (warp-able) young minds. For what is composition without a sense of composing with grace? It is an empty declaration of motives without persuasion, coherence, or voice. Somehow, my readings keep bringing me back to some of the first essays I read about education and composition by Adrienne Rich, Susan Griffin, Richard Rodriguez, and Paolo Freire. Even Janet Burroway's textbook Writing Fiction found its way off my shelf and into my lap one morning after reading for my PRWR6300 course. These connections to be drawn seem to form a web that slowly complicates itself into a latticework of indecipherable complexity that, according to Derrida, could take hundreds of years to unravel.