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Wednesday, February 7, 2007

I love teaching

I love that moment in class when a light goes off for a student or when someone tells me that her writing is going in a completely different direction than she expected. I love being a part of that discovery. (And yes, I do realize that I sound like a sap.)

Yesterday we read “Mother Love” from Andrea Buchanan’s Mother Shock, and “Memory and Imagination” from Patricia Hampl’s I Could Tell You Stories. I almost always use Hampl’s essay to kick off creative nonfiction classes because it gets students thinking about what memoir is, and makes them realize that, as memoirists, we don’t “write about what (we) know, but in order to find out what (we) know.”

One of the most important things I hope my students get from this essay is that a careful first draft is a failed first draft. In a first draft, “the piece hasn’t yet found its subject.” You should write from your heart without censoring, then go back and figure out what you're trying to say, what the piece is really about.

One thing that I didn’t anticipate was how nicely Hampl’s and Buchanan’s pieces went together. I picked Buchanan’s piece as a way to start dialogue about motherhood models and this idea of “mother love” (and because I really like her writing, of course). But it turns out that the way Buchanan looks back on her early months of mothering in this essay perfectly mirrors the way Hampl talks about first drafts. At first, Buchanan worries that her daughter isn’t really connecting with her. (And in the midst of those first months of crying and burping and changing diapers, who doesn’t worry about this?) But it’s only when Buchanan looks back on videos of those early months that she finally can see how attached her daughter really was to her, “how clearly (she) was her whole world.”

You need to be able to look back in this same way on your writing. When you’re writing a first draft, you don’t know if it’s any good. (At least I don’t.) You’re in the middle of it, and it feels like a mess (just as the early months of parenthood do). Then, when you look back on it, you can see what really exists there—you can see what your piece is really about. (Or in Buchanan’s case, she could see her child’s intense connection to her.)

I just love when two pieces of writing talk to each other. All I have to do in these situations is eavesdrop.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great blog!

And now you have me curious to read "Mother Shock" by Buchanan. I love the title.

Anonymous said...

As a student and fan--so glad you're doing this. This way, if I get stuck in the snow and can't make it to class, I can still get my Kate fix! Oh dear... do I sound obsessed? Promise no stalking!

Anonymous said...

I like the idea that my years of writing first drafts are preparing me for parenthood. The only drawback seems to be that I can't toss the kid out and start over again if it isn't working.

Anonymous said...

Hi Kate, it's great to see you out in the blogosphere! I'm looking forward to reading more!

kate hopper said...

So glad you guys are reading this. And Bryan, if you need to drop a kid at my house someday, I'll give you a break.

Anonymous said...

As someone who is working on a first draft of her novel (and is terrified of it), thank you! I think about the parallels between mothering and writing all of the time, but that one escaped me. So thank you.

BTW, I'm in Minneapolis too! :)