Casting Out Into the Dark

So I teach writing. I never thought I would, because I have little to no idea of how I do what I do, be it good writing or bad writing. I just have no idea.

I sit down and write. One sentence comes from nowhere  - 

"The dragon spoke to me and I understood perfectly."

- and I start there. 

I have no idea what is going to happen. Honestly, I have no idea what's even happening when I write the sentence, where it comes from, why I had that thought on my mind to begin with. The entire process is an incredible mystery to me. Always has been.

But anyway, so I teach, and I have no idea if I'm doing any good. I think about it all the time. I teach three or so classes a semester online in the MFA program at Concordia University, St. Paul. I love doing it, I just don't know how much I'm helping the students. I'm a "professor" (I've mentioned many times that I'm just Shel, but it must be a requirement to call us professors) and I'm supposed to have pinpricks of knowledge at the very least to share. Mostly I find myself simply writing in their evaluations that this is good or this could use work, but I have no at all how to break down the process.

There are times the students know more about this breaking down of the process than I do. It's not really all that difficult to do. My process is so haphazard from the outside my suggestions are usually too broad (i.e. make everything you write as memorable as possible). But how does that happen? What are the steps to making the work memorable? Well, my answer is usually, "Remember that the way you see the world will always be entirely unique because no one has had your exact memories. Only you. It doesn't get more original than that."

But what is that teaching them?

I want to tell them to keep their thoughts under constant observation, keep complete concentration. And when something pops up like, "The dragon spoke to me and I understood perfectly," be ready to write that down and start running as hard as they can. Just keep running forward, word after word, and take the risk that what you're writing might not be any good, but it's by god going to come from a magical place, not from an overwrought and overanalyzed prison cell of the heart.

But mostly they only seem to care about grades and due dates and assignment lengths. Though it's possible one of my students might read this post, I have to say that that kind of thing drives me absolutely fucking crazy. I don't want those students thinking about anything except how can I express what's in my heart? Everything else, everything else, is secondary. I won't accept any other way of seeing it. 

Stubborn? Maybe. Idealistic? Maybe. It's possible I'm undermining the structure of our craft, but I doubt I'm doing anything on that level. I want to figure out how to teach passion, ways to set your heart on fire.

It's not asking much, right?