Most people won't see that it's a bedroom, for example, if there isn't a bed in it.
Teaching feels like an exercise in this theory, sometimes. Unless you can show them the thing, then it doesn't exist and won't probably make its way into their essays or writing projects or skills sets, in general. And, like all learning and teaching give-and-takes, some rooms are easier to fill than others.
This morning, when my first-year writing class met in peer review workshops for the first time, I found myself trying to explain how essays that are highly-personal in nature can also have a more universal appeal. We had read Michael Chabon's Secret Skin a few days before, a reflection on childhood and super heroes and the stuff that actually ends up making us who we are. But as an example text, it hadn't really helped the students figure out how they were going to make their personal reflections matter to, well, anyone else.
It started creeping in as a general concern. And then, all I could see were kitchen sinks piling up where a headboard should be.
Before class was over and our working groups broke for the day, I threw out the planned homework assignment for something different: to find some piece of writing that appeals to them, for whatever reason. I am hoping that a group discussion of their pieces and trying to isolate the personal and the universal appeal will help them understand the concept more clearly.
I posted my own response to their discussion board, partly as example text and partly to test my own notions and meditations on the subject.
I was thinking about your topic, after leaving class this afternoon. And I was trying desperately hard to come up with a topic or an essay or something to illustrate our point: writing that is both personal, but that reaches out in some way to a wider audience.
My friend Margaret Roach is a master gardener, and I read the posts that she writes for her website, A Way to Garden, almost every day. I am not an avid gardener, although I would like to be. There is just something so beautiful about the way that Margaret writes about gardening and her love of it and her philosophy on life that I really enjoy. It appeals to me, even though I am not a gardener, and I don't intend to use any of her tips or hints or reminders, because there is something inherently more within the stories that she tells -- about living a fulfilled life -- than just when to plant your onion bulbs.
Here is an example of what I mean, "Birthday Tradition: An Old Essay from the Old Gal," which is about death and life and getting older and feeling, as Margaret so wonderfully puts it, like "I need more time." The piece is about Margaret and her real birthday and getting older and reflections on her thoughts earlier in life, but she has included universal questions that might appeal to any of us who have these same kinds of questions.
Similarly, I often read the food blog, Orangette, written by Seattle based foodie and writer, Molly Wizenberg. In the three or four years that I have been a reader, I have never attempted to make one of Wizenberg's recipes. Although beautifully written and almost always food themed, I do not visit Orangette for tips on how to make leeks into soup or how to bake a cake. I mostly go there and read her posts, because I appreciate the way she tells such personal stories using food and memories and language. The appeal of her posts is that they sometimes make you want to bake a cake and hug your loved ones and write a memoir, all at the same time.
If anything, I hope it puts the kitchen sinks back where they belong.
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