I have so much reading to do and so much writing to do, I can’t even tell you.

It isn’t just the semester work, it is my final project. I have five or six books so far in my possession that I need to read for my final project. I am guessing I will have at least ten books, in addition to articles to read.

It isn’t just the material to create the story, what I am trying to say – it is the research method on how I am going to tell it. I don’t know all the research methods as of yet, let alone the research method I am going to use. I am just at the beginning.

I need to be a big sponge and take to the pen.

So, in order to do this and to dive into my studies, I think, no, I know I need to put myself on some sort of schedule, including a summer schedule and have deliberate reading and writing goals.

But, given that, I love what I am reading. My focus is disability rhetoric. It is ways in which we use words that pertain to the body, how they affect the body not only in our own relation but how the world at large does.

It has to do with disability studies but rhetoric (in its many definitions and explanations) – it is ways in which we use our words to “better understand and negotiate the ways in which discourse represents and impacts the experience of disability. ” – Dolmage.

How we say our words in tone, how we use them in delivery, creates meaning. In order to undo negative meaning-making we go back, untie, release to step forward. Words hold energy that can get inside of you and stay there; we have to be mindful.

This semester is going to get deep as well, and I have to trust myself in my writing process. I don’t even know what that is. I think it is turning off the “thinking” part of your brain and just write.

This week we had to write two stories, just short stories. One we remember quite well, and one we don’t remember quite as well. When we get together in our groups, the people will pick which they think you remember most and remember less. Tricky hey.

I sat down and literally stories, many stories started coming. The problem is to write ONE. Shut off the rest. I start and decide, “I don’t like this one.” Then I start another, “That annoys me.” I wrote two. I like one more than the other. Knowing me, I will write another.

But the biggest thing, you don’t want to write like you are forcing it or trying too hard. If you are – stop.  Just stop. Just stop.

I don’t like to force points, or stories, or characters. I feel as if the writing should speak for itself. I don’t like a person pointing at something, “See here.” It is insulting to the reader. You decide.

It is like talking down to children, or thinking children aren’t as smart as they are. Give your readers credit for having their own brains.

I must work and I may have said very little here, so best to cut out. I liked this –

“Every work of literature has both a situation and a story. The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say.

In a poem called “In the Waiting Room” Elizabeth Bishop describes herself at the age of seven, during First World War, sitting in a dentist’s office, turning the pages of National Geographic, listening to the muted cries of pain her timid aunt utters from within. That’s the situation. The story is a child’s first experience of isolation: her own, her aunt’s, and that of the world.”

– Vivian Gornick

And,

Creative work bridges time and because
the energy of art is not time-bound. – Jeannette Winterson

Much love. Please take care of you, and be kind to you, and you, and you and you.

Work Cited:

Disability Rhetoric – Jay Dolmage
The Situation and the Story – the art of personal narrative – Vivian Gornick
Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? – Jeanette Winterson