English 2783
The Art of Fact: Contemporary Literary Journalism
Prompt # 6
23 September 2010
 
  Sharing what we've learned, in various ways
Looking back

I was happy that (eventually) everybody emailed and claimed a reading to report to the rest of us on. I hope everybody was able to find the readings they claimed; I'd advised doing it early in the week in case there were problems. Tonight we'll share and discuss (orally and in writing) what's come out of that exercise so far.

I was less happy that only five people had posted learning journal entries. I think I must not have made as clear as I should have that there was a Prompt #4 on line. In my experience the journal is an especially important way to reflect on what's going on, and taking some time at some point every week is way worth doing. Have a look at the prompt, and at the page I've put up with links to individual blog entries. Reading what other people got out of what's been going on is as good a way as I know to help be aware of stuff you're learning that you might not otherwise have noticed.

In class tonight

I want to take some time to invite people to give us a sort of oral introduction to what you found and, perhaps just as important, how you found it, since in doing this sort of exploration the processes which we we get to things are as important as the things we get to. We'll do that by doing a round or two. I'll ask everybody, first, to tell us how you found what you found -- what problems you encountered and how you solved them; and then to give us a sort of quick "advance organizer" of what you learned, to prepare us for reading.

We'll then spend some time reading. What I want to achieve with this is to give everyone a chance to engage with real readers -- with the folks for whom you're writing, right now. I said in the prompt last week, "bear in mind that you're not a reviewer, but a reporter. A journalist. Your job is to tell the rest of us, as best you can in the time you have, what we need to know about what your source has to teach us about literary journalism. Think of it as an executive summary. You need to decide what's going to be most useful to the rest of the class." It's hard to do that when you're sitting at a keyboard (which is why writing is hard). It's better if you can try things out on readers, and then go back and edit. The best writers I know of are able to do this inside their own heads -- they've developed a sense of what readers are doing, expecting, understanding, looking for, being distracted by -- but most people can't do that without practice. We can learn, though, and most of those writers have learned, by writing things and having them read by real readers (not teachers, and not editors, although they can help, too, especially once you've had more experience).

So here's how we'll do that. We'll simply spend some time reading and responding, in the margins, on the back of pages, whatever -- in ways designed to help the writer make her report more useful, to you and to others. We'll need hard copies -- I'll make some extras.

What you should be trying to do is what a colleague of mine called "readerly responding." It's not like what English teachers (and "peer editors") generally do: mostly pointing out what's wrong, or offering vague praise about what's right. It's not about "correcting." It's what someone who was reporting her reactions to you, in an effort to tell you how your writing was affecting her, would say. It uses the first person ("I'd like to hear more about this"; "I'm confused about what you say here"; "I don't see why you're telling me this"; "who is ___________?"). It's an attempt to record your reactions as you read. Question marks in the margin are okay, but really only if it's really clear what you're confused about. The more explanation you can do, the better.

This isn't, as should go without saying, about evaluation (at least not in the conventional sense). It's about helping the writer make this better -- clearer, fuller, more informative. The reaction you want from the writer is not, "Oh, no, how could I have done that?" but "Oh, I didn't think of that; thank you." Sign your reading. Make a final summary comment if you want.

Depending on how long this takes, we'll aim at everyone reading at least four or five other people's reports (thoroughly, carefully, slowly), and we'll make sure that everyone's report gets read at least four or five times.  If you're the second (or third, or even fourth) reader of a report, feel free to support, or disagree with, comments that have already been made. As you read and comment, bear in mind the issues the prompt invited people to be attending to:
There may be other issues that are important, too. Keep in mind that what you want from this text is a report, you want it to be a document that tells the rest of us what we need to know. We're all going to read all of these as one step in the process of learning as much as we can about what scholars, critics, journalists and others have had to say about "Literary Journalism."

We'll finish with another round. After class (and by tomorrow morning) there'll be another prompt with an assignment for next week.

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