What an interesting conversation over Gladwell's "The Art of Failure"! His terms "choke" and "panic" were useful ways for us to reflect on the strategies that writers use. I was interested in how writing is a slow-burn sort of event: there is no clear win/lose threshold. We often don't know if writing was good (or bad) until we reflect on it -- and as Corey brought up, that's one of the uses of looking back on writing (as we are doing in our portfolio of previous writing). Choking -- thinking too much -- is a perennial threat because we deal with words, the stuff of thought. The opposite -- reverting to thoughtless instinct -- is interesting because sometimes writers seek out the state of "flow" where there is little explicit thinking; other times, it's terrible because it's like trying to start a car on ice: no thinking happening anywhere, like a high-stakes "casual" discussion with the President: words escape us, almost literally.
So how do writers avoid the art of failure? David suggested time spent writing, practice, developing experience to carry us through those blank spots of panic.
Today we're discussing the first section of the Gladwell book, up to page 116 (Outliers). We will look for questions in class on the material, share them, and develop possible answers. We will read well into the second section for Tuesday and do the same, but I'm going to ask you to email me your questions before by Monday.
We will also take a grammar test, located at http://www.kristisiegel.com/grammartest2.html
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