Writing Is Not Running

Natalie Goldburg claims that writing is similar to running, but no, it actually isn’t. If it is, I never done either of these tasks. For me to never of wrote, would make this paper non-existent, and I run here and there to get out consolidated energy and thoughts out. You aren’t taught to run; you just jump into it, and maybe if you're smart about it, you stretch before you hit the track.

Craig Vetter reminds us that before college our experience with writing was widgets, devices to make life easier, and screws. All and all, it was simple. The teachers gave us too much structure and focused upon the grammar. Don’t get me wrong, knowing structures, like grammar, is important, but, once I know them, I know them. As Matthew Cote captures it, teachers gave us a formula; we had to have an opening, a body, and a conclusion paragraph in every essay. But while Cote argues this way is easier than jumping in with nothing, I argue that it is harder. In a way, we are both right. For many, being given a template of what to do is security. It was having one foot in front of the other, something most people never questioned. Fill it out and copy it to a paper with some verbs in between. For me, walking the way we knew it wasn’t cutting it. I preferred an on-the-edge, free-falling version, where I decided where I wanted my feet to be. I didn’t think like a structured organization, I thought about what to include, and then began writing. On days I would follow the guide, I ended up adding or secluding ideas from the original idea, and subconsciously changing the order in the ways that flowed better. If running was a sport to be taught, teachers would give you the method to use that lets you run the best and the fastest. Only if school was like that.

The other day I was on the phone with my friend Ryan. We were talking about school, and he observed that high school was just repeating everything that he had learned in middle school. Though I never thought about this, I realized how right he was. In my high school English class, instead of learning how to write, we were learning nouns. This was a repetition of what we did years before. Goldberg reports that the more you run, the better you get at it, which I cannot deny. But with writing, you get better at the way you are taught to write, not at writing in general. The difference between the two is that if you were taught to write the wrong way, that is the way you are taught to tackle it.

Sheeza Chaudry also advocates that we were ill prepared coming to college. She calls out the teachers, saying they should have prepared us for what’s next, for what’s actually next, and should have had more knowledge about this. They should have taught us subjects that we need, from finances to English. Now, we have no clue what to do for these subjects. What would our grades be like on the next essay if we weren’t taught a new way of writing by our teachers? Why didn’t they help us out in this sense a lot earlier? If I didn’t have a class like Writing 1 or a curriculum like the one set up for us right now, what would I do for the next essay I’d have to write? Fail? And the terrifying part was that it wasn’t just me who didn’t know how to write at a college standard. It was almost everyone.

Imagine being taught to run the wrong way? Wait—no—running comes naturally. Though I didn’t know how to run when I came out of the womb, I didn’t sit in a class when I was three being told, “Hey, look at this. I’m going to teach you how to run!” No, I got up on my two feet and figured it out.

Also, I wasn’t told, “Hey, you need to change—” honestly anything about running. Writing is a more complicated process. According to Tompkins, Daly argues that peer review is like bread dough. I agree, if the quote more referred to the making of bread dough versus the bread dough itself. First, I would pound upon it in hopes to get a better understanding or product. Then, I would flatten it down to make the dough the thinnest it could become, or the simplest. Next, I would then reform it, by handing it back to the author and letting them shape the dough again. One does not correctly shape bread dough alone; others are needed, unlike running.

Goldberg asserts that no one wants to start running, or writing, and in a way it’s true. I never know where to start the conversation in an essay, but I wouldn’t say that I would never start it if I didn’t need to. It compares with running, because I don’t know where to run, but once I begin, I’m going down a street leading to the middle of nowhere. It’s endless. I don’t need to know where I want to go, I just need to take a turn and see where exactly it leads me. When my legs can no longer carry me is when I’m done, kind of like writing. Whereas, if there are no more words that I can place to a page cohesively, I am done. In both cases, the after pain is a painful disease to seize; the aching pain in the legs that lasts for the next few days or the aching fingers as you look over the work you finally get to call done. It's not really done though, since it’s never that simple.

When you run, you get that reward that yes, you actually ran that far. That adrenaline rush that you want to do more, but there’s no end product. When you run, all you have is your personal satisfaction that yes, you did this. When you write, you have the proof. You have something that you want to scream out to the world over and over again. In my experience, when I was done writing something, I wanted other people to read it instantly.

Making bread dough never feels like bread dough, but instead, like as Vetter puts it, a blood sport; but if this was true, the importance of revision will never seem worth it. Teachers looked at grammar instead of content. Hence, slightly being my fault, I can’t out right complain, but I do claim that it is unfair to not look at the other half too. Josiery Lara notates that the material we are learning (they say, I say) now is already having a significant impact upon the writing that we are taking part of. To say this though is just proof of that ideal that looking at what you wrote and having the response that, “Hey, this isn’t half bad” is there, and is an experience that will never be succeeded by running.

In running, I can run with a group of people, but in the end, I’m the only one that can put in the work. Writing is not a sport that is meant to be individual; it's an interconnected web, with peers, and with teachers. When I run, I have nothing to show, I have no physical proof, no after-product to look at, to admire.