Sunday, November 05, 2006

Certitude

I shouldn't blame my students for wanting ever more criteria. I explain to them over and over again about hooking in to the larger context, about self-effacement, about satire. But they would please to like a formula.
I do not blame them.
If, I were writing a novel, which I do not claim to be for fear this would amount to something, but were I to were, I would wish to know if page 35 is too soon or too late to have a clue to the puzzle.
I would also wish to know if Adam Gopnik, who wrote I thought quite amazingly about Darwin, was right when he said that story is pushed up seemingly unintended and natural from description. I'd like to describe some pouter pigeons. Who knew they actually pouted?

3 comments:

Dr. Write said...

Hi! Welcome back. I'm glad to hear that you, too, are having problems with students and criteria. Yes, they want a formula. I tell them that there are as many formulas as there are writers. If there was one formula the writing would not be "creative" now would it?
I miss you. Come over for wine, stat.

Nik said...

I will be home in 37 days! Thanks for chiming in on the criteria. We should develop a formula and market it and take over the world....or finally make those millions they promised us in grad school.

Lisa B. said...

I've always thought that the job of teachers in the humanities is basically to deny all comfort and to give no quarter. But that could just be me.