{"id":3471,"date":"2015-10-14T08:01:34","date_gmt":"2015-10-14T15:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/on-writing-writing-and-reading\/"},"modified":"2015-10-14T08:01:34","modified_gmt":"2015-10-14T15:01:34","slug":"on-writing-writing-and-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/life\/on-writing-writing-and-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"On Writing: Writing and Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wanderer, there is no path.
<\/em>The path is made by walking.
<\/em>By walking you make the path,
<\/em>And turning and looking back
<\/em>You see a path you will never walk again.
<\/em>Wanderer, there is no path,
<\/em>Only your wake upon the sea.
<\/em>\u2014Antonio Machado, from \u201cCampos de Castilla,\u201d1912<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been writing this column every other week for a little more than a year now. When I started, I really did not think I had this much to say. And in fact, I didn\u2019t. As Machado says, the path is made by walking, or in this case, writing. But walking is a good metaphor. This column is a way of wandering, meandering around town, running into readers along the way like the friends you bump into at Fred\u2019s.<\/p>\n

And my editor has let me wander around pretty freely in this \u201cOn Writing\u201d column. But there\u2019s a thread running through all of these pieces, believe it or not, a thread that may become apparent only in the unraveling. So let\u2019s meander a bit and see what unravels.<\/p>\n

I think that the job of writing is to make us better people\u2014not better automatons, but better human beings, and not in some simplistic moralistic sense. Writing should make us more thoughtful (in all senses of that word) and more engaged with each other and engaged more immediately. Immediate: maybe that\u2019s the impossible task we ask of writing, that this MEDIUM become somehow less MEDIATE and establish between the writer and the reader a direct and palpable connection.<\/p>\n

From this perspective, all writing is epistolary, letters we write each other, no matter what we write. Even when you\u2019re writing in your journal, you\u2019re writing yourself down, opening yourself out onto the page, not just committing your thoughts to a medium but chasing some kind of immediacy.<\/p>\n

The only thing I learned from my college writing professor, a Marxist, was this: the best writing is when you stick your neck out. An existentialist would want to finish that sentence: the best writing is when you stick your neck out into the world.<\/p>\n

In the college writing class I\u2019m teaching now, one student did indeed stick his neck out and intentionally ignored my instructions for an essay assignment. Not the wisest thing to do, ignoring the prof\u2019s instructions. I had given students specific directions about how to write the first paragraph, directions that were meant to help them get over that abominable practice they learn in high school of beginning an essay with a generalization.<\/p>\n

At first glance, I saw only that this student had ignored my specific directions to focus on the literary work we were writing about. Instead he chose to introduce his essay another way, and although it was definitely not what I had asked for, after reading his paragraph again I had to admit that it was a pretty good introduction to his essay after all.<\/p>\n

When I\u2019m writing I have to remember to not let myself get in the way (and I do have a knack for getting in my own way). And when I\u2019m teaching I have to remember to tell students too: don\u2019t let me get in your way; don\u2019t let anything or anyone\u2014your ego included\u2014get in between you and your reader. Writing to make that connection is going to take all the resources you can find\u2014your experience and knowledge, your spirit and curiosity, your sense of humor, your fear and trembling, your library and Google, and, yes, even your iPhone\u2014everything you\u2019ve got, all of it. And if you have any wisdom, that would be nice too.<\/p>\n

Everything else is just bad faith, somebody else\u2019s ideas about what to write and how to write it. Even at work: I know that sometimes, between the bosses and the boilerplate, good writing can be hard to get to, but I\u2019m pretty sure the boss will like it if you can show her a better way to do things, a clearer way to write the things you have to write. Good writing is conscientious. The best writing is conscientious objection.<\/p>\n

As in most things worth the wanting, that may take a little courage, but that\u2019s okay: there\u2019s strength in numbers. We think of writing as something we do alone at our desks, but it just seems that way. You\u2019re already in my mind when I\u2019m writing, the one I\u2019m writing to. And if I\u2019m sticking my neck out, then we\u2019re both in trouble, you and me, because now these words are going to be in both our heads. Writing and reading, we\u2019re in this writing thing together. Whether you know it or not, I\u2019m sticking your neck out too.<\/p>\n

This trying to write, to write well, to write better\u2014I think of it the way I think of Michelle and me: it\u2019s like this great love we\u2019re not at all capable of, not even aware is possible, until we risk it. It\u2019s the path we make only in the wandering, the path you and I are on right now, right this minute\u2014you and me, walking each other out into the world.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s right here between us, reader. My words are in your hands.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2022 Jim Hale can be reached at www.jimhalewriting.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wanderer, there is no path.The path is made by walking.By walking you make the path,And turning and looking backYou see a path you will never walk again.Wanderer, there is no path,Only your wake upon the sea.\u2014Antonio Machado, from \u201cCampos de Castilla,\u201d1912 I\u2019ve been writing this column every other week for a little more than a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-3471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3471"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=3471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}