Writing about writing

We've reached another rough patch of the year. Believe it or not, academic libraries do get busy in the summer. But it's not the way it is busy during the school year, this is when we do projects that we can't do when students are here. 

Between attempting to juggle projects and now the additional work of being the interim co-director of the library, I've struggled to stay interested and involved with my writing projects. I'm feeling very much at capacity. However, the various projects I have (and now some new ideas!) are bumping around in the back of my head and I'm considering how they'll fit in the format of a blog post, with such a heavy emphasis on my opinion/experience integrated with research.

So, today, I'm thinking a little more about what this writing will be about. How will it fit in with my "professional" writing - about libraries, what about my personal journaling? Or is it some type of an effort to bring together a bit of everything - to work through my experiences in life and add in the research I've done related to gender studies. I feel a need to write about some of the bigotry I see in contemporary pop culture, and of course I see that all through the lens of my experience and interests. 

I realize that many of the non-fiction writing I read is in this vein. Anne Helen Peterson, Rebecca Solnit, and Roxane Gay; contemporary writers thinking about how our lived experiences are intersecting with the outside world. I'm not claiming this is anything new, but I'm finding it interesting to realize how much this has influenced my perspective on content. 

While I've been writing this and navigating a few supervisory type conversations, I've been thinking about libraries and racism. And how they're built for white people. This came up in a conversation about the Writing Center and making it more accessible for BIPOC folks. This stigma of accessing services is of course familiar and aligned with the research for libraries too. And that makes me wonder whether our architects have looked at newly constructed libraries at HBCUs, and I wonder if I can find any examples. I also want to make sure that we're doing better/our best to reach out to the cultural orgs directly. I feel a little bad that even the Provost was like, have Amy do it (instead of the project coordinator who is a woman of color - I believe she identifies as Black). And of course, this makes me consider a future paper with the Director of the Writing Center about all of this. 

I've also been thinking about the movie CODA and my identity as a CODA. It's rather unfortunate, ableist, and privileged to think that many people hailed CODA as a movie about/for the Deaf community. I still haven't went back to see how Deaf folks felt about it. I can't even remember whether my parents saw it. But now that it was brought back to my attention, I think it also needs to be addressed. Yes, it was incredibly good to see representation of one of my lesser identities on the big screen, handled fairly well. And I think the Deaf actors/characters were portrayed well (I would need to re-watch to see if there was anything problematic I can spot). But in the end, it's rather wild to think that this movie that is ostensibly about hearing people, but happens to include Deaf people, is celebrated as a "Deaf movie." Of course, I'm going to mostly chalk this up to people being completely clueless about what CODA means, but it's not that hard to do a quick search about a phrase/acronym like that. 

It's always funny to me how much writing will pull out thoughts and new ideas. I'm never surprised by this, but I still fight it tooth and nail!

What do we do when we are overwhelmed?

 I am feeling very stuck. A lot has happened in the world and in my personal life over the last week. Each week feels like more heavy things to deal with. Many of us are still dealing with the repercussions of the pandemic as well as new and different experiences for our work and educational spaces, supporting our families and friends, and/or reeling from traumatic government-level decisions - from war in Ukraine to the dismantling of bodily autonomy, human rights, and voting rights. 

While working on researching for my next essay, I am feeling distracted and scatterbrained more than usual. In my writing accountability group, I was challenged to use this space and try to write about this example of writer's block and mental capacity. Unsurprisingly, this felt like the right move, to take some space here to consider my writing processes and at the same time work through my feelings. 

I'm struggling to start each paragraph, not because I have nothing more to say, but because I have too many things and can't get them all out at once. Most of the writing I do outside of this space is fairly rigorous and academic. I take a lot of time with planning, researching, editing, and rewriting. On the other hand, this blog space is often closer to a brain dump and I enjoy both ways that I approach writing. 

I'm involved with two book discussion groups right now on campus. In one, we're reading Linguistic Justice by Dr. April Baker-Bell. The other group is reading The Trees by Percival Everett. Each discussion is organized and mostly comprised of a slightly different group of people, Linguistic Justice is predominantly faculty and we're considering how we can teach better and differently and staff council organized the reading of The Trees. The Trees is confrontational, challenging, and a bit spooky. It takes place in modern America and deals with race, class, and history through the telling of a complex (and possibly supernatural) murder mystery. In each discussion, I've needed to attempt to limit the references I'm making about the other book, only because while there is some overlap, each discussion has slightly different attendees. I'm getting so much fulfillment about these conversations because it's giving me space to process the synthesis and connections I'm making between books, teaching, work, life, and more. 

I've never considered myself a writer, I often mention that it's like pulling teeth for me. Except in journaling situations like this. I'm a reader, through and through. In my academic writing, I'm happy to gather information, read, annotate, and begin the necessary synthesis, but when it comes to writing, I balk. I wonder if a part of that is feeling too restricted. The voice of academic writing is comfortable and familiar for me to read (generally), but it's not how I write. When I write, I want feelings and emotions, action, and personality. Of course, as I'm wrapping this up, I want to pull some of these feelings together to tie them to BOTH of the books referenced above. In Linguistic Justice and The Trees, there is overt and subtle commentary on the supposed neutrality of academic writing. In Linguistic Justice, this is about policing language as an aspect of racism. In The Trees, it's similar, but also adds a layer of Black folks struggling for recognition and validation. My immediate reaction to these ideas was to consider how patriarchy exerts itself as the language of logic - women (women's language, feminized language, and the other) all write with emotion. In my efforts to pull down hierarchy, this dichotomy of logic over emotion is a personal battle to me. 

My writing peers also pointed out some of the differences in style, tone, and subject matter for the writing projects I described to them. I'm hoping to be able to use the play of emotion, opinion, anecdotes and research and data to best make my thoughts clear. In a place with fewer hierarchies, we wouldn't need to choose between logic and emotion. We could use both together to express our ideas without needing to hold back. I am looking forward to leaning into these challenges.

Bringing this back 12 years later

What does it mean when a blog has gone silent for 12 years and suddenly comes back to life? It probably means an academic is trying to work through some writing and projects. I'm trying my hardest to not hide the older posts - I just finished grad school for the first time and trying to use writing to parse through all of the new things I was learning about. 

I'm hoping to use this space for a few projects, the main one will most likely be cultural commentary - specifically through the lens of intersectional feminism with a strong anti-racist leaning. I'm all over the place with my interests currently. I'll probably cover topics like pop culture, politics, environmental racism and climate change, and maybe some reviews or reflections of books I'm currently reading. I don't know where this will go or if I'll be able to maintain it, but here we go!