Homework
The other day I wrote about toast. About how toast with peanut butter is helping me lose weight and stop eating breakfast at McDonald's every day. This was significant, not because of the topic, but because I was actually writing something.
When I worked at the mall unloading trucks, I was a writer. I would write every day, or almost every day. I wrote about the mall and its people. The Black Friday shoppers, the mall walkers, the Pooper. I would also write movie reviews, book reviews, political commentary, year-end best-of listicles, and whatever else struck my fancy. I was even internet friends with some real writers. Several years ago, one of those internet friends was giving a talk in New York City. I remember thinking, “That guy used to compliment me on my writing. Now he’s giving professional talks and editing a literary website, and I don’t even write anymore. What happened to me?” What happened? I’ll tell you what happened: I became a high school English teacher.
As a teacher, I taught writing, I assigned writing, I graded writing, but other than the occasional Goodreads review, I didn't actually write myself. While the surreality of the suburban American mall was a constant source of inspiration for me, high school was just a place where I went to work. Maybe the amount of time I spent grading writing and figuring out how to teach writing turned me off of writing. Maybe I didn’t feel like I could write about school the way I could about the mall. I was too inexperienced to write critically about teaching or education writ large. And students are just kids; they don’t deserve the same level of scrutiny as the guy who worked at the Verizon cart and would come into our store every day and poop on the bathroom floor. Whatever the reason, becoming a teacher ended my writing life.
There were, however, a couple of moments where the writer within me tried to awake. Twice within my first four years of teaching, I attempted the challenge of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November.
My first attempt was a sci-fi novel about a boy who befriends an alien. The bulk of the novel took place on a cross-country train ride because they had to travel from Delaware and they couldn’t sneak the alien through TSA. Oh, and the alien couldn’t speak, so he communicated with the boy by stabbing a conductive metal rod into the boy’s neck so they could communicate by exchanging brain waves. I gave up after 20,000 words or so.
My second attempt was a pre-apocalyptic fantasy novel called The Breaking. All the characters were named after Dickens characters. The protagonist was a minotaur named Jaggerth. It was just as bad as it sounds. I threw in the towel after maybe 10,000 words. After twice failing to even come close to succeeding at NaNoWriMo, I was done as a writer.
Almost 10 years after I made the transition from mall to school, I decided to get my doctorate. Although my main goal in getting a doctorate was to become a better educator, I was also excited that the coursework would get my writing life back on track. I would have to read. I would have to write. I would become a writer again.
And write I did. Just not well. The reason I’m writing this right now is because I’m teaching a section of the first class I ever took as a doctoral student. The first major assignment is a writing history narrative. I decided I would be a good teacher and model writing by sharing the narrative I wrote for the class way back in 2014. I opened up my Google Drive, found the document, and quickly skimmed through it. It was terrible. Boring, banal, and filled with typos. I decided to rewrite it.
If I were to look back through all the academic writing I did in my doctoral program, I don’t know if there’s any piece of writing that I’m truly proud of, that I wouldn’t want to immediately revise. I’m proud of the research I did, of the presentations I gave at conferences, and of the things I wrote for NCTE, but academic doctoral writing was a struggle for me. Everything took longer than I thought it would, and nothing came out the way I intended it to. I came into the program without any intention or real desire to follow the traditional tenure-track academic path, and my struggles with writing during my coursework confirmed to me that a publish-or-perish life in the academy was not for me.
And when I talk about my struggles with doctoral writing, I don’t just mean writer’s block or struggling to find a proper academic voice and tone. I’m talking about deep, existential struggles that kept me up at night. At one point, when I was struggling with the opening chapters of my dissertation, I got up super early one morning and drafted an email to my chair. In the email, I said I was quitting, that I couldn’t finish my dissertation, that I just wasn’t cut out to be a doctoral scholar. I was ready to give up on years of work. That’s the level of struggle I’m talking about.
After reflecting on the email, and debating whether or not to send it, I decided not to. Not because I suddenly found confidence as a writer, but because I knew it would disappoint everyone on my dissertation committee, and I couldn’t bring myself to do that. I respect them all too much to waste their time and support by quitting. So I deleted the email draft and carried on with my writing. Eventually, with the help of my committee (and after locking myself in a hotel room for a weekend), I was able to finish the revisions my dissertation needed. It was done. I was done. Now let us never speak of it again.
After finishing my dissertation, I had no real desire to write. And I had nothing to force me to try. Fortunately, tiny notebooks came to the rescue.
Part of my job involves classroom walkthroughs and teacher observations. I don’t want to use a laptop to take notes as it makes it look like I’m just sitting there answering emails. I tried to use an iPad, but I didn’t like the feel of “writing” with the Apple pencil. Enter the Field Notes notebook. Fits in my back pocket, doesn’t need to be charged, and I don’t need to sit at a desk to use it. I started doing all my notes for work by hand in a Field Notes journal. Not the exactly type of writing that we think of when we think of the word ‘writing.’ but taking notes by hand did help me value the act of writing again.
Another part of my job is providing professional development for teachers. For one session earlier this year, I made a short video on how to model writing. Inspired by a New York Times student writing contest, I decided to write a 100-word narrative. I took out one of my little notebooks, setup my phone to record, and wrote 100 words about the doctor appointment when I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. A heavy topic for a virtual training, I suppose, but it’s what I needed to write about. And it felt good to write about it. I realized that it was going to be through writing that I would process my diagnosis and the changes it will bring to my life.
Since then, I’ve been writing. I participated in a writing marathon at NCTE in Columbus. I write in a five-year journal every morning and every night. I hand write meal plans and my agenda and my to-do list for the day. And, when the moment strikes me, I write more extensively. Sometimes in a tiny notebook, sometimes on the computer. A Letterboxd review of the Taylor Swift movie. A blog post about my travel anxieties. An ode to toast. I am writing again. Not every day, but often enough. And next month I’ll host a writing marathon for teachers in my district. It took me almost 20 years, but I’m back to where I was when I was working at the mall.
I am a writer.