{"title":"Scraps and Maps: Handwriting and Drawing as Early-Stage Process Methods for Autobiography","authors":"V. Berry","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2154440","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In teaching autobiography and memoir, I have a particular interest in the introductory and early stages of the writing process, and the kinds of work students do to warm up, to generate ideas, and to begin. These early stages are ones of orientation, in which apprehension and attention is shaped and turned toward particular objects.1 In describing the connections between orientation and phenomenology, Sara Ahmed writes: “It matters how we arrive at the places we do.”2 This statement is also resonant for teaching writing, where the “how” of “how we arrive” can be thought of as the process of writing that teachers guide students through. As with any journey, the departure establishes the direction and the mode of travel. Beginning opens up possibilities, prepares for the “deeper work which comes later.”3 On this journey let’s start slowly, lightly, by picking up a pencil, and a scrap of paper. In the early stages of a class or course I use handwriting, drawing, and mapping by hand, as deliberate methods and strategies. Early-stage processes are usually rendered invisible in a published text, but are vital in establishing the student’s direction in the class or course, their sense of what is possible in their writing, and their mode of embodied writerly attention. This way of working highlights the physical and the embodied aspects of writing, connecting students with a sense of intimacy and gesture, and the affordances of different physical methods of textual production. It centers attention on the body as the source of autobiography, carrying and articulating experiences, and memories. While I focus on “by-hand” methods in this essay, this slow and incidental method of writing---a scrap, a note to self or captured thought, a rough sketch---can also be adapted for students for whom handwriting is not an accessible mode, as an approach that can be brought to work done with digital equivalents. My life writing teaching has been in autobiography and memoir, guiding students in writing their own life stories. For the last fifteen years I have taught creative writing and life writing in university courses for https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2154440","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"6 1","pages":"411 - 418"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2154440","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"Arts and Humanities","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In teaching autobiography and memoir, I have a particular interest in the introductory and early stages of the writing process, and the kinds of work students do to warm up, to generate ideas, and to begin. These early stages are ones of orientation, in which apprehension and attention is shaped and turned toward particular objects.1 In describing the connections between orientation and phenomenology, Sara Ahmed writes: “It matters how we arrive at the places we do.”2 This statement is also resonant for teaching writing, where the “how” of “how we arrive” can be thought of as the process of writing that teachers guide students through. As with any journey, the departure establishes the direction and the mode of travel. Beginning opens up possibilities, prepares for the “deeper work which comes later.”3 On this journey let’s start slowly, lightly, by picking up a pencil, and a scrap of paper. In the early stages of a class or course I use handwriting, drawing, and mapping by hand, as deliberate methods and strategies. Early-stage processes are usually rendered invisible in a published text, but are vital in establishing the student’s direction in the class or course, their sense of what is possible in their writing, and their mode of embodied writerly attention. This way of working highlights the physical and the embodied aspects of writing, connecting students with a sense of intimacy and gesture, and the affordances of different physical methods of textual production. It centers attention on the body as the source of autobiography, carrying and articulating experiences, and memories. While I focus on “by-hand” methods in this essay, this slow and incidental method of writing---a scrap, a note to self or captured thought, a rough sketch---can also be adapted for students for whom handwriting is not an accessible mode, as an approach that can be brought to work done with digital equivalents. My life writing teaching has been in autobiography and memoir, guiding students in writing their own life stories. For the last fifteen years I have taught creative writing and life writing in university courses for https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2154440
期刊介绍:
a /b: Auto/Biography Studies enjoys an international reputation for publishing the highest level of peer-reviewed scholarship in the fields of autobiography, biography, life narrative, and identity studies. a/b draws from a diverse community of global scholars to publish essays that further the scholarly discourse on historic and contemporary auto/biographical narratives. For over thirty years, the journal has pushed ongoing conversations in the field in new directions and charted an innovative path into interdisciplinary and multimodal narrative analysis. The journal accepts submissions of scholarly essays, review essays, and book reviews of critical and theoretical texts as well as proposals for special issues and essay clusters. Submissions are subject to initial appraisal by the editors, and, if found suitable for further consideration, to independent, anonymous peer review.