This was a difficult essay because I chose very personal source material. I wanted to share something but at first tried to hide it in a more diplomatic veneer. The question I started with was what caused me to join the Mormons? I mean, in retrospect it was nuts, but at the time it seemed like any other Christian Church. Until they tell you there is always a Prophet in the Church with God on speed dial. The Pope is much more down to Earth than that and he HAS the message from God kind of credibility.
Anyway, I started it from an informational point of view with a deep agenda poking it's head out. I just wanted to express my frustration without insulting anyone or writing something offensive without citation of fact to lend substance. I didn't want to attack anybody but everytime I put the hands on auto-pilot a warning sheathed in a grand and informative dismissal of entire faith based communities came out in glaringly combative tones. I had to keep trying. I have that pound my head against the wall to get into the next room instead of opening the door next to me kind of stubborness. This felt like a big stretch to try and fit into the mold of the sample cause essays but I tried.
Then someone made me think about this:
Luke 6:45 A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.
I had to try and write the truth about what happened to me inside the confines of the assignment. I didn't want my reader to just scan past the dry and sterile information and then flush the intellectual toilet. I did it all in two or three marathon sessions of about three or four hours a piece. Some of the phrases came from scraps of paper I wrote on at work and still more of them were cobbled together lying in bed in the morning watching my son transfixed by the Wonder Pets. It is becoming obvious to me that writing is more construction than anything else. Like building a Liberty ship. You create prefabricated bits with care and attention to detail and then assemble them in the right order and hope it floats. To carry the metaphor further one also hopes the Germans don't sink it either. Too far? I don't think so, anyway. I wrote more truth into the the outro than I was really aware. My life since that horrid experience has become a tree bearing the greatest fruits a man can labor to attain, love, a healthy marriage, a rekindled relationship with my family and new family in Maine that now calls me their own. Tasty, crisp, and ripe but still not complete without peanut butter.
2 comments:
I haven't read either version though fully and probably won't tonight, but I did want to do a meta-meta-graf right away.
This is obviously an assignment you've assigned yourself and need to write for reasons outside of a grade and outside of my 101 goals, boundaries, and guidelines. That makes me happy, on the one hand; someone with something to say. On the other, I feel queasy: no assignment of mine, except the isearch perhaps, is worth double digit numbers of hours of your time.
But since it's a self-assignment, I relax.
Reading about your wrestling with the topic and the writing makes me happy--writing is wrestling often, especially with topics as personal and as difficult as this one. So, that's a metaphor that works for me. Carpentry, cobbling together prefab bits and pieces can certainly be what writing feels like, and good writing can come from it. Cobbling bits and pieces is not the same as writing to a formula, which doesn't tend to lead to very good writing.
But writing doesn't have to feel like a craft; there are times when the writer, even the writer of expository prose, will soar into art--and as you can see from the word 'soar,' I've left carpentry metaphors far behind and below.
As for content, offensiveness, and so on, your only worry should be that too heavy a self-censorship will inhibit your thinking and imagination. Don't worry about offending me--with luck, I'll be the kind of teacher who will never directly reveal my pushable buttons (maybe you'll notice some obliquely), and even if you wrote something I objected to personally, my professionalism ought to protect you from ever finding that out.
It's the writing I'll be talking and caring about, not the best way to Heaven.
'through fully' makes more sense than 'though fully'!
Post a Comment