Why I didn't read my homework

Citizen Archivist

I popped over to The Way Of Improvement Leads Home John Fea's blog and that was the most recent link.
My inner archivist  will not be getting anything done now, ironically when I fail all my classes because I didn't do any work tonight, I'll never get a job as an real archivist.

Mondays aren't for blogging silly rabbit!

A few days weeks ago, Alex @ Gradhacker.org (by the way you should check that out) sent me an article to read.
http://utdailybeacon.com/opinion/columns/chaos-theory/2012/jan/20/academia-stronger-new-media/ (By the way you should check that out too) Surprisingly, I didn't get to it right away. Finally today I took a few minutes on my break at work to check it out. I had to laugh! Here I am, trying so hard struggling to tighten my academic writing style, while this girl is trying to loosen up. Is this possible?
I sent her an email and I am going to follow her blog on her journey, and hopefully she'll follow mine when she can as well. I also took a peek in to the blog of the professor who assigned her the blogging assignment, of course I don't have the time I want to read it because I have 3 history classes to read for tomorrow but as soon as I do, I will. Something tells me I'll be tapping him as a resource soon as well.

Off to Medieval times- sadly not the restaurant but the time period both in Europe and the middle east.
In the mean time you check these things out:

http://hystericalhistory.wordpress.com/author/srusse22/

http://chadblack.net/

http://www.gradhacker.org/

Who

I guess since I am trying to learn how to write, I should go back to basics. Who, what, where, why and how.

Who. OK, umm, who...

Who am I writing for?
Who am I writing about?
Who am I trying to convince should believe my version of history is the right version?
Who am I kidding?


The first thing I realized when I tried to write about Ben Franklin is I had no idea how to set the tone of what I wanted to write. Did I want to approach this with the same super causal tone that I write this blog, did I want to try my hand at making it more academic? It’s hard to know just who your audience is. As an undergrad it’s hard to adjust each semester to the expectations of new professors. Even a week in to three different history classes, each one of the three professors has different expectations and will all require me to change the level and tone of my writing. I think this is a common problem many undergrads face. There is no constant expectation. Last semester, I was fortunate enough to have a professor who pushed hard for writing, who expected college level writing. This semester, I am getting “fun” assignments. One class is asking for writing in an academic style for research. Another wants you to present an argument, and yet another is for fun, in the first person to tell a story. It’s hard to determine how to set this tone on your own without being told. That is just simply with in the context of school, when left on my own to write, I really have no clue what my personal style would be. If this blog is any indication it’s amazing I don’t write lolcatz style.

Then comes the topic of who am I writing about. In historic writing you’d think it would be simple. The characters are all laid out for you. It’s like a simple solution to tell the story

 EVENT = PEOPLE + PLACE

OK GO!

I never have to offer writing advice again, I never have to read another book on writing again! It was that simple. Except, who do you include, how much is too little how much is too much. Let’s revisit my Ben fiasco again. When I sat down to write 10 random facts about Ben Franklin, I didn’t know when to stop. I could start talking about his early life, and his family and his parents and that lead me to his parents candle shop, and his early life working with his brother and the Silence Dogood letters and then I started writing too much about his brother. You can see where this is going. In fiction writing you have to create a whole person. The backstory is all yours to build. In historical writing, it’s there. Details and all. Primary documents can be a blessing and a curse. Letters and pictures for example can provide you with so many details of a particular person’s life that you want to include every detail, but you can’t. How do you know what to leave out? How well can you tell a complete history if you leave someone or some event. The smallest detail sometime has the biggest affect. If you remove Ben Franklin’s brother from his life story, you remove a huge part of the story. His brother is where he learned the printing trade. When do you make the judgement call? I don’t think there is a simple formula for this. Much like learning to write for your audience, I think over time you learn. Maybe as each piece of writing evolves you learn. You start off leaving a something out, when you get to a later point you decide you might need to include it, and the opposite also might be true. You write and re read and you realize you’ve included too much. You can leave out telling your reader
 “Halfway to concord” is your favorite of Ben Franklins expressions for being drunk.

Recently when I talked to my history advisor about my issues with writing he gave me some great advice. Don’t try to write someone else’s version of history. Take your research and interpret it for yourself. As long as you can back up your version with research, you aren’t wrong. If you want to say that George Washington wasn’t the first President of the United States, well then go for it, but you better have some amazing sources. It’s a hard idea to grasp. I have the control to interpret history. I am barely  a historian. So who am I trying to convince. Myself most of the time. When I write I realize I have to construct some sort of argument to convince the reader, but it’s not a true argument. My research should speak for itself. While I may not be a good writer I’d like to think I am a good researcher, and I want my writing to reflect that. I want my writing to flow naturally so the argument is hidden in the story. I don’t want the reader to feel like they are being convinced with an argument, but instead finish reading and have a new perspective on the topic.


Who is hard. Who is complex and is going to take much thought. Writing history involves writing biography. Who is a huge part of history. Without the who, there isn’t much of a story to tell. Learning who to tell the story to, who needs to be in the story and who is really going to believe you in the end is a long struggle, but it’s a key point in learning to write.

No time! Hurry Hurry!!

I am taking 3 history classes this semester, an Italian class and a math class. 18 credits. I can do it, I'm superwoman.
That's not why I sat down to post, I actually don't have time to post, I have to get dinner together and work on homework.

I am a woman on a mission. I am working so hard to create better undergraduate writers. I am so passionate about this. It's so important to me. I have talked to the history department, I have begged them. I have pleaded.

I walk in to one of my history classes. I read the syllabus.


I see our writing assignment.

I want to either cry or vomit.

I am supposed to write from the third person and pretend I am a nurse during the black plague or a pope? Wait WHAT!!!! No!!!! This is the opposite of what we should be doing! I get it. It's a "fun" assignment, to encourage these kids in the survey class to do research, but come on, you're killing me!
I am going to get dinner together and pretend like this didn't happen.

How does this happen

Have you seen that show Hoarders on A&E, that's kind of what my schedule looks like the first week of every semester.
It's not that I want it to, it just happens. It's mostly Phi Alpha Theta and getting used to the new schedule. Especially in the Spring, because it usually falls on the week of my daughters birthday (yesterday)

Don't think I forgot about you little writing blog. I have a million things to say and just as many post it notes with amazing ideas for challenges/topics. I'll be back as soon as recruitment week is over... if I survive.

well...

To say my self imposed assignment was a failure would be an understatement. It ended up looking like this:

The short version of the long story is this:
A drive that should have taken 15 minutes to get to a doctors appointment took an hour an a half and resulted in me screaming in the car "occupy snow plows" and "Brazil,I'm going to grad school in Brazil!!!"
Eating a very large and over sized lunch which ended with an much needed nap. Hence the computer and books and pug in the bed with me. (Don't judge my snooki-esque bed I am originally a long islander)
Waking up to attempt to write and my friend, whom I haven't seen in months ask me to dinner. Using the rational "Ben Franklin would want you to eat $2 taco Tuesdays"  I couldn't resist.

Strangely nothing got done.
Add to all that the impending doom of the start of the upcoming semester, the fact that I am neck deep in Phi Alpha Theta business, I really had no clue what I was thinking. Plus, I am not sure if you are aware how hard it is to dig up 10 facts about someone you know a lot about in one day. It was an unrealistic idea. The good thing that came out of this little failed mission is I learned somethings. What did I learn? You'll have to wait and see, I have to run off to the library now. But rest assured, I'm taking notes and even I am amazed at the things I am learning even in this short amount of time exploring life as a writer. A writer. Me!? Who knew.

Musing over a Muse

“I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was started on a new story and I could not get going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know." So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut the scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.” - Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

That is the quote that inspired this blog. It is how I write. If I can just get that first sentence. That first true sentence, regardless of if I have to rewrite it, or it gets moved to the bottom and becomes the last sentence, once it’s on the screen, it’s there, it’s a start.  That’s todays topic. Inspiration. Where do you find your muse?

Even though I admit I am not a writer, I have a personal blog. I don’t even know how to classify it. It started as a joke.I can update it from my phone and  I will openly admit when I am out with my friends, I drunk dial or drunk text, It was an outlet for my drunk texting. Some how over time it’s evolved in to a place where I put my more personal thoughts.  I am an over analyzer and it is a great place for me to lay things out in print and look them over. Even though it’s public not many people I know in real life follow it and I don’t put any thing too personal on there. I called it “Like the second coming of Hemingway” with the subtitle “I write best when I am drunk, words spill out of my heart.” Like I said, drunken ramblings. Most recently of how much I love my boyfriend. No one wants to read that dribble. My muse is either my heart or the booze, maybe a little of both. Regardless of the muse, the words do come freely, no grammar, no word count, no theme. Just my rambling thoughts. 

This blog comes fairly easy as well, what is my struggle, how am I going to address it? Talk about it. (it’s post 2, I might be getting ahead of myself)  It’s a free flowing format that is similar to what is in my head, I can get the first sentence, and the rest just flows. It’s the struggle in my head only now it's on paper. It’s the questions I need to ask and wish I had someone to ask them to, the things that I wonder if anyone else thinks about.  My muse is my struggle. I don’t know if it’s so much of a muse, as a motivator. 

Every time I have  to write, I ask my two writer friends for their advice. One who runs several writing workshops in the Milwaukee area and one who is working on a PhD in creative writing. Real writers, not like me. They try and offer advice but much like every other writer I know they are trained to make things up. Tell stories. While I would trust them to fix my grammar, (and one of them probably should) they just  don’t write they way a historian writes. It’s a totally different art form. Recently, one of them suggested I read my favorite author and just write like him. That seems like a good idea but here is the problem. I read primary documents. I can not write like 18th century politicians. I could, but even I wouldn’t want to read it. The other people I like to read are the so called “main stream historical writers” Ellis, McCullough,Goodwin-Morris, Issacson (who by the way I don’t consider a historian, I consider a biographer) Raphael. These great writers who are discredited because they write for the public not for the academic. So? Because they write for the public it doesn’t make them flawed. In my  opinion it makes them better writers. They are doing what I feel needs to be done. They are delivering history to everyone. They are keeping history in the main stream. That being said, a good historical writer needs to be able to write for everyone . Academic, main stream, and research writing for journals. How do you find your favorite researcher? How do you begin to develop your own style of research writing? That’s the big question. I think I could read a dozen journals and never read the same writer twice. 

Tomorrow is Ben Franklins birthday. If there is any subject that I can research for hours and write about for days it’s my Ben. I’ve got enough books with in arms reach to read for a month, so I’ve challenged myself to compose between 10-20 bullet points of facts that I didn’t know before and turn them in to some sort of paper. I can’t believe I am giving myself homework during the winter break.  

I'm not a writer, I am barely a historian...

Bare with me, it’s my first time “writing” but I have to start some where.

UWM is a great school. They offer great resources for undergraduate students when it comes to helping us developing our writing skills, however, I am learning they are not always geared towards history majors.Historical writing is a certain type or writing. It requires taking large amounts of data, processing what is needed for the project you happen to be working on, and then taking that data and turning that data in to something readable. This differs from so many other types of writing because it’s not creative, its a very subjective type of writing. Two people can read the same primary source and take a way a totally different opinion of it. For example, I tend to look at most historical events with a religious tint, half the time without even realizing it. I know others who will spin a feminist view on the same document even if there isn’t a woman mentioned anywhere in it. Factor in the opinion of the professor and you have no clue what grade you are going to get on the paper. It’s hard water to navigate. So where do you start.

I think one of the biggest struggles for me has been to break free from my standard 5 paragraph essay. We all know it. It was pounded in to our heads in high school. It’s gotten my a’s thus far, but I think it’s time for me to abandon my old friend. He’s holding me back. Even if I can manage to stretch it out to 4 pages, they really do start to ramble on and unravel. I don’t know why it’s such a struggle to get away from this, one bit of advice that I received from a friend who runs creative writing workshops was to read my favorite writers to see what they do. Let me tell you, I don’t think I’ve ever read a 5 paragraph book. By anyone. Ever. Non fiction or Fiction.

The other idea that has been pounded in to my head that I can’t seem to get away from is that using “I” is evil. I am sure using “I” every other word is evil. I am sure that I don’t need to say that I believe that I believe that I don’t need to used the word I- see that I am doing here, but there isn’t anything wrong with using I. Surely every once in a while I can say something along the lines of “I intend to prove” But I don’t. I will thesaurus myself in to a frenzy to reword that phrase in to something else. Making myself sound stuffy and pretentious or at the very least crazy. I am going to work on this, as well as breaking out of my 5 paragraph slump.

The biggest thing I was able to take away from East Asian History this semester, besides learning to spell bureaurcracy, was learning to write more. At first when my Professor told me to write more I wanted to scream and yell and say how much more do you want me to write! Then, he gave us the chance to do a re write. When I had to retype out a hand written paper, I laughed at how sad it really was. It was a reality check. I really did need to write more. And when I asked what he meant when he said write more, he said tell me what you know. I said well you know I know about ____ he said it’s a test, how am I supposed to know you know that. That is when it clicked! Had this been multiple choice would I have just left half of the questions blank thinking he knows I know that? No way! So why would I omit half of the information on an essay question? So I learned to include more. Historical writing needs more back story! Of course this leads to the first problem, how much is too much, how do you weed the necessary from the unnecessary. How do you omit the facts that make you giddy happy, but would bore they every day person? How do you make an academic paper that has a word limit, page limit, whatever limit include EVERYTHING but still not run over?

I guess these are the things I hope to figure out. At AHA last weekend I picked up some amazing books on historical writing, Writing History A Guide For Students by William Kelleher Storey andEssaying The Past By Jim Cullen So far this week has been pretty hectic and I’ve only had a chance to glance at them but I am pretty impressed. Hopefully, once I’ve read through them I can go to history department with them and convince the history department and beg them to think about a formal historical writing class! Till the next blog! Hopefully with book reviews.

Speaking of Jim Cullen, Follow his blog, http://amhistnow.blogspot.com/ Maybe, he'll help me get followers too!