Confidence and Reflection

Reading through recent blog posts of yours, I'm noticing a trend of questions about ability. Can I do this job? What if I don't know this? What can I do in this situation? Is there any way to really prepare for all these situations? Those are all good questions, and, in truth, I do think you should all be nervous. That's a sign that you care. I think most good performers, in any field, still get a little nervous about their work. It means you're engaged with it, wanting it to be the best it can be.
The catch, of course, is to balance the worry with enough confidence that you can do the job and do it productively for the writers you work with. You need to be able to reflect and critique yourself without that leading to inactivity. And that is a tough balance. You need to be in the moment, offering an honest response to the writer, but there is also the small window you leave open to watch yourself as you work, being able to shift direction as necessary during a session. And there's the larger window that opens up after a session, when you evaluate your conversation and think about what you can learn towards next time. We continue reflective work throughout your time in the Center. We observe each other; we tape our own sessions; you have sessions with me; you have sessions with each other. We're like writing center sharks; if we stop moving, we die. Hmmm, now sharks can be our new mascot.
Again, all this is a lot to ask. But, work worth doing is rarely easy.

Words, words, words

"Eager--and doomed--as words are to serve you, they want to do so in lively, dashing, dancing, swooping, curving, crossing, flapping capacities, in sense and harmony with one another. Each time a word shows its face, to countenance its fellows, new possibilities reveal themselves. Language lives, breathes, moves with you . . ." -Karen Elizabeth Gordon

Every word is a choice. That's the beauty of writing, I believe. We have a choice for every single word we put down on the page. Not a right/wrong choice, but a choice of possibilities. For each word that appears, that shows its face, we have certain other words that can follow. Each step in a sentence takes us a little further into the cave and we have to figure out which path is possible. Then again, we can always back up and start again.

I hope you're enjoying the reading so far. She certainly has fun with the language (perhaps overly so at times), and she does offer up the basic points that we want to have down for thinking about (and talking about) language use.

Looking forward to our talk on Tuesday. (Do grammar quizzes help at all in retaining information?)