Pause, and then write

Happy New Year!

The sun is shining as I write this and I am about to go for a walk with a neighbour. Although the paths are muddy and the breeze chilly it will be the loveliest thing. Sometimes walking feels a bit like writing. Yesterday, despite the sunshine, it took me an age to get out on the road. I suddenly found a number of small jobs that had to be done before I could go out. I prevaricated about gloves and hats. I sat by my muddy boots for quite some time, simply staring into space. And then I was out in the lanes, startled by the yellow of a dandelion, happy to see the blush of mauve in the sky, sitting for a while on one of the benches John has made in the woodland, glad to gaze at the circle of hazels. And, today, how much pleasure there is to be had in walking with a friend.

And so it is with many things. We put off the moment, whether it is the plunge into a pool, the first strides of a run, the rolling out of a yoga mat. Afterwards when we have walked or run or made friends with downward dog, we feel good. Writing can make us feel well. It is good for the mind and spirit and the imaginative life. If you are reading this, you probably know that already. You may have been given, or gifted yourself, a new notebook for the new year. Hurrah! But let’s be realistic, and kind to ourselves. At this time of year we are bombarded with exhortations and advice towards the new  person we are going to be in 2022.The stakes are too high! I have a number of notebooks that I began with a flourish on the first day of several Januaries and they remain  unfilled. Once I had missed a day, or two, somehow I couldn’t go back to it. It is even worse if you have a diary where blank, dated pages serve as reminders of your failure to write on Tuesday and Saturday. It’s already past the first few days of the new year, so let’s start with the kind of cheap notebook that Natalie Goldberg recommends. It is spiral bound, may have a cartoon character on the front and is not so fat it can’t, realistically, be filled in a month.

Filling a notebook a month, getting the words on the page is what Natalie Goldberg recommends. It is our daily jog, our morning flow. Some people write morning pages: twenty minutes of non-stop writing with no expectation, even, that you will read back what you have written. Some people make a date to write with a friend. This is low stakes writing. There is no need to worry about the Great British novel just now. Tjis is just about words on the page.

In last Sunday’s Observer Magazine (2.1.2022) Michael Rosen wrote about the importance of play in his life, of playing with words and, as he learned when his son died, how writing things down helps him to confront the sadness:

… penning a poem about sadness or a sense of loss can leave you feeling better as well. It helps, laying things down on paper. I call it “unfolding”.

Everyone can do this, it doesn’t take expertise. Think of it as doodling with words.

There’s a tyranny to education: learning to write frees you, but we’re restricted by being taught that formal sentences are all that’s worthwhile. Instead, scribble down fragments – think up half-lines mixed with song lyrics, lines from films, things people say. Don’t overthink it - it’s like talking with your pen. This process is a liberation for the mind.

I am thinking that you know all this. And you know how, not only the commitment to the formal sentence, but the requirement to write at particular times and in ways that are defined by others often dominates how children write in schools. For many, it is the only way they experience writing. The young people we teach experience sadness, too. They have complicated lives. They worry about things. Are you able to squeeze five or ten minutes of free writing, playful writing, into their school day?  In schools that I know where there are regular opportunities for free writing, young people like writing, often love writing. And they learn, also, the ways in which writing can be their own, that writing can make you feel better.

So I send you the very best of wishes for the year ahead. Write often. Write for your own reasons.  Be playful and tender. Allow the writing to bring you back to yourself. I hope, also,  that you are able to find the space where children may write for their own purposes and that they learn what a good thing that is.

How about a five minute free write every day? Start with this month’s thirty writing prompts to break into the page, along with an idea from David Morley.

Love Writing

There’s no shortage of advice for writers from writers.

In interviews, blogs and newspaper articles we are able to learn from the published and the prize-winning. Sit down, stand up, write propped up in bed, we hear.

• Craft sentence by sentence (Andrew Cowan).

• Get the words down fast and then revise (Stephen King)

• Write what you know (Geraldine Brooks amongst many).

• Forget the boring old dictum "write about what you know". Instead, seek out an unknown yet knowable area of experience that's going to enhance your understanding of the world and write about that. (Rose Tremain).

We will take the advice that suits us. But what might we take and apply to our teaching?

I have begun thinking about this more deeply. Most writers are addressing an adult audience, most of whom want to be published. However, each one of us is a writer. Each person we teach should learn how writing works for them. I have been sifting through all this counsel to find the ideas that will inform our practice. We probably don’t need to take up Hilary Mantel’s  suggestion that we find ourselves an accountant. Anne Enright’s recommendation of whiskey alongside all her other advice might be an interesting addition to the Year 10 classroom but …

• Be kind to yourself, say Roddy Doyle and Kate DiCamillo, as do many other writers in their different ways.

• Love what you do, says Jeannette Winterson.

• Have fun, says Anne Enright.

Initially, I discounted this advice as irrelevant to the task of teaching writing. The current National Curriculum is unlikely to have much truck with such sentiments as being kind or loving what you do. As for having fun - please be serious. There are criteria to be met. I thought again.

Seriously.

Seriously, having fun, being kind to ourselves, loving what we do, sit at the centre of the writing workshop. We have become dominated by a curriculum overloaded with content and anxious about skills. On-line answers to remote learning emphasise rules and routines. A friend of mine lamented the impossibility of keeping her son focused on the deathly slow progress of a PowerPoint presentation for writing. Yet when she abandoned the prescribed course and went for a walk, weaving writing into the activity, the roles were reversed, her son calling her to wait, while he completed his task. 

Let us begin with our writers, whether adult or child. Place them at the centre of our teaching. Writing springs from safe spaces, mutual encouragement, universal celebrations.

When we find the ways in which we love writing, our writing grows. Let us be kind to ourselves and to each other. 

Happy new year!