Nuts & Bolts

May 3, 2008

My youngest son, 10-years-old, was nominated by his teacher to attend a "young writers" conference, which was from 8:30 to noon today. I went with him, or rather, I chauffeured him there.

I think he enjoyed it. Mostly I sat in the waiting area with my iPod, listened to music and made it through an issue of Time  Magazine.

But in the middle of all this they had a little talk aimed at parents, "Teaching Your Child To Read Like A Writer."

I kept wanting to interrupt her. She was fine, an academic, clearly, probably with at least an MA or PhD in literacy education. I kept wanting to add things to what she said. At the end, she asked for questions, and I raised my hand and said, "Just so you know where I'm coming from, I'm a writer, editor and novelist. It's what I do for a living. I would recommend two things: First, you mentioned how the this author used a long sentence followed by sentence fragments. (And then she babbled on about 'implied prepositions' or some nonsense that annoyed me no end). I would suggest that when your child is reading something and you see the author does certain things like that, ask your kid why they think the author did that. Because the author is trying to achieve certain effects and simply by asking why they think the writer did that, they'll learn something."

The other thing, I added, "Was if there's one thing you can do to help your kid's writing, is to suggest they start killing adverbs, that instead of saying, 'he ran fast' or 'he ran quickly,' that your kid think of good verbs to use, like, 'he raced' or 'he sprinted' or 'he rushed.' And if they can get into that habit, their writing will improve a lot."

Then I shut up, because it wasn't my lecture to give.

But afterwards a couple women stopped me and said, "Thanks for that. We got more out of what you said than in the whole talk. She was talking at 50,000 feet in the sky and you just gave two things to actually do."

I thanked them, chatted for a minute, but I also suggested that if their kids were already writing, my philosophy is to pretty  much praise them and stay out of their way. If your kids are actually reading and writing on their own, don't turn it into another aspect of school and start criticizing it. 

Anyway, I reflected that there were a couple things going on here for me. One is that I'm not much of a theoretician. I wasn't in science and I wasn't in music and I sure as hell aren't one in writing. When I worked in cytogenetics, I didn't really want to know all the theories behind chromosome spreading, I just wanted to know how to do it. (And ironically, the journal I edit has an article in the upcoming issue where a lab spent a couple years in talks with the company that manufactures the glass microscope slides chromosomes are spread on and why in the late-90s so many labs had problems getting their chromosomes to spread...)

I'm pretty much like that as a writer. I want to know what works, not so much why. I do understand that if you have a long, run-on sentence followed by a fragment, for instance:

The moon was high in the inky sky, the wolf moon I guess they call it, though why I don't know, perhaps because it connects to werewolves, which was not a happy thought for me, having gotten lost in the woods and now sitting and shivering under the spreading branches of an oak tree.

Leaves crunched.

I understand, really, what's going on there. I do. But it's easier to show someone a passage like that and ask, "What does this do here?"

That's kind of my problem with upper-level educators. Academics in general, and believe me, I can be pretty damned academic myself, but all too often academics get all tangled up in theory, having the belief that if you know the theory, putting things into practice is no problem. (They just don't actually seem to do so very often, and often ineffectively, in my opinion. Probably because, in my opinion, there is a big difference between theory and practice).

I'm reminded of a friend of mine who runs his own media research company. He used to work for Leo Burnett, the Chicago ad agency that handles accounts for little-known companies like Coca Cola and McDonalds and Kellogg's, and then he went to a private firm, then he went to General Motors, and now he runs his own company. While at GM, he went back to school to get his MBA and took grad level courses in media research.

"How was it?" I asked.

He said, "There's good stuff there, but it's unrealistic. The professor didn't have a clue what the timeframes and problems are in the real world. He was talking about projects that ran on for months and I had to raise my hand and say, 'Usually you have 2 weeks, if that.'"

I'm not always sure all practical people such as myself are always good teachers, though. Sometimes they can be. There are certainly high-level professional musicians that don't make for great teachers and I imagine it's the same with writers. "Those who can't do, teach," is something of a joke and an insult, but sometimes it's true. And vice versa, I would add.

I don't know much about teaching writing to kids. But I know a lot about writing. So sometimes you look at what people are saying when they're teaching kids and think, "What are you, a moron?" She also had reading lists and I wanted to choke her. That subject came up quick: Any book lists for boys? I got to throw out a couple names on that one.

Oh well, what're ya gonna do?

Cheers,

Mark Terry