An Illinois Sampler: Teaching and Research on the Prairie

Five Things Only I Care About Carol Spindel Department of English Thanks to my students’ essays, I understand how playing the villain in a video game can mitigate the boredom of a summer job in a warehouse (while stacking boxes, you dream up ways to take other players hostage) and the way to use a cell phone to avoid someone you encounter while walking to class (pretend your mother is calling). My students’ writing has given me insights into what it’s like when your father is laid off from his corporate job or your mother suffers from a chronic illness. And then there is courtship: how Facebook makes a long-distance flirtation seem like the real thing; how a severe allergy to peanuts complicates a first kiss; how easy it is to think you’re in love with a hallmate who dishes up gourmet microwave cuisine at four a.m. Students in my nonfiction writing classes have plenty of experiences to turn into personal essays, and their observations about coming of age in our society are often incisive and insightful. But before they can turn their lives into literature, they have to learn to pick out, from their multitudes of ideas, observations, and experiences, what they want to write about. Howto -write books often talk about finding one’s voice, but far more important, it seems to me, is finding one’s subject. For twenty years I have taught writing classes at the University of Illinois in creative nonfiction and the personal essay. These classes are part workshop, part seminar, and part obstacle course. Gathered around a large table, we write together, listen to new work, and provide suggestions and encouragement like other creative writing workshops. As in other seminars, we read contemporary nonfiction to find models of good writing.The obstacle course is a series of writing exercises and revisions. I impose word limits, steer students toward concreteness and specificity, and nudge them away from the clichéd, the abstract, and the general. They write their way through these challenges to become stronger writers and to receive credit for the class. The freedom to write about any subject can be exhilarating, but the possibilities can also be overwhelming. So we start from scratch. The first writing exercises we do together are intended to identify our passions, obsessions , and obscure little corners of expertise, to name and narrow our inquiries, to put a finger on what mystifies, fascinates, astonishes us. My students and I swing our flashlights wildly into the dark, hunting for things that gleam back at us. Our blunt instrument for this purpose is the List of Five. We aim for five entries on each list. Five Things Only I Care About. Five Questions I Keep Asking. Five Things about Our Society that Drive Me Crazy. Five Conversations that Changed My Mind. Five Moments that Made Me Realize Life Isn’t Fair. Five Small Things I Am Expert At. Although this sounds simple, it goes to the very heart of the writing life. You can start with the generic, What is my subject? but then you have to ask the more specific question, Of my many various and possible subjects , which one is suitable, workable for a short essay? At first, students often choose something like their evolving religious identity or a lifelong relationship with a best friend. These topics are doomed to fail. Their size makes them unwieldy. It’s like trying to stuff a room-sized canvas tarp into a small duffle bag. They are also too mundane. Everyone loves friendship. If my student writers want to convey something fresh about friendship or religious identity, they have to focus on one little paint-splattered section of that canvas tarp. If they can do justice to one corner, their writing about the fragment will illuminate the whole. In her book, The Writing Life, Annie Dillard says, “People love pretty much the same things best. A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.” Annie Dillard goes on: “Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you.There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to...