Writing Demystified
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Mind mapping is an excellent prewriting technique for everyone, but especially for those more visually inclined. It can be used for a specific topic, for a general idea, or to simply generate ideas. You can fill your mind map with color, pictures and words, and “brainstorm” without talking to anyone, using your own experience, memory and thoughts on any issue.
As with all prewriting techniques, the most important thing is not to censor yourself. It is not good to cross out ideas, stop yourself from putting them on the map, or pause while writing because you think your ideas do not belong with your topic. The whole point of prewriting is to generate ideas. Later, you can pick and choose which ideas you want to use.
Below is an example of how it might go. Yours might have more artful and detailed drawings on it (I’m not very visually artistic).
Ponder This
“You, man must write exactly as everything rushes into your head and AT ONCE. The pain of writing is just that...”
––Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), letter to Neal Cassidy 6 October, 1950
Mind-Mapping
Education has become so complicated. Every day students are dropping out of school, and many who stay in school are feeling trapped, jailed, and bored. It’s easy to say it’s all the teachers’ fault; the truth is it’s much more complicated than that. Sure, there are some teachers who probably shouldn’t be teaching. Perhaps they are far more interested in the idea of summers off and a steady paycheck. Anyone who has ever taught (especially in public schools) knows there are many easier ways to make money. I have seen teachers hang on to the career when they clearly are not happy or successful, but for the most part, the system weeds them out—it’s just too damn exhausting to teach if you don’t have some desire to do something great.
Still, even under the best of circumstances a good teacher’s job is difficult. So many students, individual personalities with individual problems and needs converging in one room and expecting guidance, love, support, and an education can be an energy zapping experience. Add to it the government’s idea of “no child left behind,” which seems to translate in practicality to “every child trained for mediocrity”; and you have a recipe for chaos. With the emphasis and reward to teachers and educators placed solely on standardized test performance, there is no longer room for creativity and imagination in the classroom. Instead, teachers in fear for their raises, teach and drill for a test to be taken once (hopefully) in a person’s life. Forget theory and abstract concepts that could be translated into a real skill in the real world. In Texas, it’s all about the TAKS.
When I was a kid I had some wonderful and some not-so-wonderful teachers. All of them had some creative activities they brought to the classroom. In third grade I was humiliated in front of the class, being made to stand there with my chewing gum on the end of my nose. I’m still not sure what lesson that taught me, other than swallow gum quickly when in fear of being caught by some adult who thinks gum chewing is unruly. As a freshman in high school I was set on fire by Mr. Jensen, who posted all students who received a 100% on his tests on the board in the front of the class. It was an honor I strove for, and achieved, on more than one occasion. This was a man who loved math and believed it had value. He set me so on fire for mathematics I sailed through trigonometry by the time I was a junior in high school, and I started college as a math major. Go figure.
Education is about growth. Personal, intellectual, emotional and spiritual. Yes, I said it. Spiritual. I’m not advocating religion-specific training; I’m simply stating what I know from experience to be a fact: our spirits guide us, and leaving a connection to other people, the planet, and some sort of grand force completely out of education is a mistake. There are ways to talk about a higher power without forcing a specific religion down anyone’s throat.
Who has made the values we adopt as “teaching methods”? Who decides what’s right and wrong in education? What we have is clearly not working. Every twelve weeks I see a new batch of (mostly under 24 yrs old) students and it astonishes me how little they received from their high school education. Who shall we blame? Students? Teachers? Culture? Society? It has been my experience blame doesn’t help to solve any problems. How about we simply use our common sense and experience to fix what we can? And…stop letting unscrupulous conmen (and women) steal the money we should be devoting to education. It is, after all, our future.
My Journal Entry
As with word association, you see I have not censored myself here. I have posted this journal entry exactly as it flowed from my mind and through my fingers, without modifying it in the slightest. As we move on to the next step, you can see how I will modify, add to, and change this to make it into a stronger, more powerful piece of writing.
With the mind map you can often get a lot of writing on a single topic. Sometimes I find I have more than one essay to be written from a single mind map. “Sure,” you say, “that’s you, you’re a writer, you like this pain.” Ok, maybe I do. But, that doesn’t mean I’m any better at it than you are. What I am is more practiced.
Every prewriting technique is about getting your thoughts on paper. If you can get them out, you can make them great. The first step in any journey is always the hardest. Once you are in motion, the laws take over. A body in motion does tend to stay in motion. You know it’s true.
Ponder This
Here is a lifehacker review of some different mindmapping applications for computers and/or handheld devices...so you can get your ideas down on the go. Which you can always do if you carry some paper and a pen with you.
Additional resources describing mindmapping and its uses can be found on these websites:
"One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now."
"The human head is bigger than the globe. It conceives itself as containing more. It can think and rethink itself and ourselves from any desired point outside the gravitational pull of the earth. It starts by writing one thing and later reads itself as something else. The human head is monstrous."
---Günter Grass
"If you want your writing to be taken seriously, don't marry and have kids, and above all, don't die. But if you have to die, commi t suicide. They approve of that."
"Let's face it, writing is hell."