Say what you mean--

and mean what you say...

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in
perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

― Kurt Vonnegut

One of the great ironies of education is the HUGE emphasis that is put on the writing of essays--as if life without essays is unthinkable. And it actually is unthinkable as long as we live in a world of thinkers.

Yet we (us teachers) rarely assign “essay reading” to our students; instead, we have them read great poetry, and great short stories and great books--“the good stuff “that will help nurture the love for great literature... but essays? No way. Too boring. Too opinionated. Too whatever. Show me a good one that some disenchanted teenager will read and enjoy, and I’ll show you a...

Making an Essay Out of a Journal Entry...

When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.

—George Orwell

      Somebody once told me that you can't make chicken salad out of chicken manure. I agree, but not wholeheartedly, for many times I find myself crafting essays out of even my most pitiful journal entries--probably because my journal is like a messy bedroom: I know what's in there, but sometimes it is hard-to-find what I need when I need it. My thoughts are scattered like dirty socks. My best ideas are somewhere under the bed, and that nifty scene about courage in the face of adversity is probably in the wash already.

But no worries, for like my bedroom--my journal is mine. Somehow I will find my best ideas, my way-cool phrasings--and even whole paragraphs that I can wear to school and call my essay.

Your Own Garden

(and the extended classroom)

“You can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.”

― Jodi Picoult

     Where does the classroom end? If it ends in school, it dies. All we learn and practice and work to do in school fades into some blurry memory of possibilities lost in the irretrievable cloud of unknowing, We have abnegated hope and make little of our lives. We need to live out a new paradigm of learning—to extend the classroom and make our lives universes of learning, to actually, deeply and truly expand above and beyond murky and distant horizons, and to grow when and where we grow best, and that, I can say with confidence, is rarely accomplished in the confines of the classroom.

The Courageous Writer

Time is but the stream I go fishing in...

–Henry David Thoreau, Walden
 

     Writing well requires a writer to write with courage, confidence and honesty. Your journal is your place to live fully within yourself as a real and committed writer who practices these ideals. Journal writing is simply a way to give form and substance to your inner thoughts. It is simply a way for you to be completely you—not an expectation driven by academic expectations directed and choreographed by me.