Join us this upcoming Monday, October 28th and meet Stephen Kinzer, Author of “The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and Their Secret World War.”
Click here to listen to his recent interview with NPR and don’t forget to RSVP to emily.brees@scranton.edu to reserve a spot! The event will be held at Brennan Hall in the Rose Room, 5th Floor.
For more information on Schemel Forum events, click here.
Last week, I was standing in my kitchen with the setting sun streaming through the windows, my hands wrinkled from twenty-minutes of washing dishes, and tears pouring from my cheeks and plunking down into the dishwater like rain.I was crying, really crying.I’m not talking about the silent whimpers that trickle from me while watching Titanic for the third time, I’m talking about genuine sobs; the kind that originates in the center of you and pull your heart out of your chest on their way up.
What was it that had me so upset?Revision.You see, weeks earlier I had sent my book off to my agent, confident that I had revised it for the last time.And I really, really thought I had.I spent weeks deleting, rewriting, and reshaping my book.I worked hard.I (sort of) neglected my children, missed a few meals, lived under piles of laundry, and fell completely behind on Boardwalk Empire.But when all was said and done, it was worth the sacrifice.I nailed it.I was in the clear.Publication was just around the corner, I was sure of it.
Then, on an ordinary Monday evening, the familiar DING! I’ve assigned to my agent’s email address yanked me from the dinner table and I dove for my phone.
I expected to read: I love it!I’m taking it out tomorrow to publishers.I love you!You are so talented, and you have great eyes.
Instead, I got: We are so close! But…
I was shattered.I stood in my kitchen with my hands in that soapy water and I just sobbed.Not because I had to rewrite the book again, but because I felt like a failure.As a writer, my very existence hangs on my ability to write and to sell this novel.I’ve dedicated my education to it, spent the better part of my daughter’s lives writing it, and promised my husband that our sacrifices would all be worth it.Now, I had nothing.No publication.No reward. Just that “but…”I hated that but.
Two days later in the Writing Center, I consulted with a student who had written a marvelous paper of which she was very proud.She beamed as she read it out loud and she had every right to swell with pride.The introduction was strong, the argument supported, and the organization was clear.But something was off.When I read the paper as a whole, it didn’t address the assignment.I chose my words carefully, as I always do with students.I asked her to interpret the assignment her instructor had given the class.I then asked her to tell me how her paper aligned with those instructions.She hesitated.She searched the paper. She looked at the ceiling.She scratched an imaginary itch on her left ear.“It doesn’t,” she said softly, “it doesn’t.”She was visibly shaken.She was defeated.It was as if she was the one with the tears in the dishwater and I was the big “but.”
As I explained the assignment and how she could address some of the larger issues, I was careful to point out all of the things she did well.This is a good paper, I assured her.You are a good writer.And I wasn’t lying.She was, by all accounts, a very talented student.She simply missed the mark on this assignment.She aimed left when the bull’s-eye was right.This misinterpretation of her assignment was not an indication of her abilities as a student.Just like my inability to properly construct a convincing arc for my protagonist’s best friend was not an indicator of my talent.We just needed to revise, to reshape, and to try again.The student left with tear-streaked cheeks and a much-improved paper, I’m sure of it.And that night I went home and began working on revision number 13,886 of my novel.
Revision does not equal failure.Revision is growth.I never understood those words more than when I became a novelist.My book has come so far from when I wrote the first draft.It’s a different book entirely.And with each draft, I learn and grow as a writer.I am more proud of my book today that I have ever been of anything.I pass this message along to my students, and it is a philosophy we hold dear in the Writing Center: The first draft is the creating, the shaping, and the imagining. The revision is where the real writing happens.
Bring us your creation. Call the Writing Center today at: 570-941-6147 or writing-center@scranton.edu
Trains magazine ranks The General as one of the 10 best train movies of all time. Buster Keaton’s extraordinary stunt work and the use of Civil War-era trains make this film a classic.
Don’t let the train leave the station without you! Join us for the International Film Series’ free presentation of The General at 7:00 p.m. Friday October 18th in Room 305 of the Weinberg Memorial Library.
This screening is being held in conjunction with the Lackawanna County Library System’s Scranton Reads program and is open to the public.
Please email sharon.finnerty@scranton.edu for reservations.
The Schemel Forum will host Dr. David Myers, Professor of Jewish History, UCLA on Friday, October 18th for a World Affairs Luncheon at Noon.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to explore the current state of affairs in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship as well as a discussion of the events in Syria.
Heritage Room, Weinberg Memorial Library, 5th Floor
The Library will be hosting its biannual Game Night on October 24 at 8pm in the Heritage Room. This semester it will be Comic Con themed, wear your favorite costume and enter to win a prize! We will have Rock Band, Just Dance, Super Smash Brothers, and more! The student Game Club will be sharing some of their favorite games with us as well. We’ll have pizza, snacks, and soda too!
It’s near midnight on a rooftop in Brooklyn.The air is thick with midsummer heat and cars zipper left to right and right to left across the Williamsburg Bridge directly over my head.I am here visiting my sister who lives about a mile away in Greenpoint.Despite my exhaustion from the near thirty blocks we walked earlier in the day, and the push of my tender heels against my not-yet broken in sandals, I am here with a sweating glass of tap water in my hand, surrounded by my sister’s friends: a mix of Gen X’ers from various backgrounds all seemingly united by a common love for Game of Thrones.I sit apart from the crowd on a hard picnic-style bench and watch the underbellies of the cars above me.Josue, my sister’s friend, wanders over and sits next to me.We know one another tentatively, having met a handful of times, most recently at a reading I gave in Manhattan a few weeks earlier.
“I’m a big fan of your poetry,” Josue says loudly over the hum of the traffic hanging like a hammock over our heads.
“Oh, thanks,” I blush.I’ve never learned to take a compliment.
“No, I mean it,” he says, “Your reading at KGB was great.You were so funny.”
“Oh no,” I say modestly, “they were just a good crowd.”And they were.But you know what?I was good too.It was a great reading, the kind of reading where I had the crowd right there in my hands.They laughed in all of the right places, stayed quiet when I needed them to, and felt sadness in their hearts when the moment called for empathy.For a reader, it doesn’t get any better.For a writer, it doesn’t get any better.
“I could never read like that in front of people,” Josue muses.“How do you pick what you’re going to read?” he asks.
I’ve been asked this question before, as have many of my friends who’ve read their work in public.It’s something not a lot of people understand; our willingness and desire to stand in front of a crowd and share ourselves in a very private and intense way.If you’ve never done it, it’s sometimes hard to comprehend. Therefore, I usually give some kind of generic answer and move on.But Josue is a good guy, and he seems genuinely interested in my process.
“The secret,” I tell him, “is to bring a lot of diverse stuff to read.I read something I think will work, and if it doesn’t, I adjust.”
“So you read the crowd?” he asks.
I take a deep swig of my warm tap water and answer, “Exactly.But it’s more than that.It’s writing with an intended audience in mind.As I’m writing, I can almost imagine the crowd and how they’re going to react to the material.”
“But how do you read the crowd?How do you know?” he presses.
“It’s not an exact science, but I do my best to consider who they are.What age they are, what life experiences they may have had, what stage of life they’re in, stuff like that,” I answer.
Later, after we’ve gone home and I’m staring at the ceiling in my sister’s fourth floor pre-war apartment, I make a connection I have been searching for since I started teaching more than five years ago.As a creative writer, I do exactly what I ask my composition students to do all of the time:I consider my rhetorical situation.I think about my audience, my genre, and my purpose before I write or perform anything.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s taken me a long time and many wrong choices to get to this point.I’ve read spoken-word poetry full of pop culture references to a group of grandmothers at a library.I’ve read about Weight Watchers and baby weight, to rooms full of young, thin, teenagers who stared at me like I had two heads and one of them was on fire.I’ve made those mistakes, the mistakes of a beginning writer, the mistakes of a novice reader.So I adjusted.I changed my process.I learned how to evaluate the audience before I read, but more importantly, before I write.
To me, this is what the Writing Center in the CTLE provides for University of Scranton students:a place to experiment with voice, with genre, with audience, and with purpose. When I hear students reading papers aloud to consultants, I see the connections being made and the transformation taking shape. For all intents and purposes, the Writing Center consultants become those grandmothers sitting in the library, or the young, thin teens staring back. They become the test audience, the safety net, and the student’s soft place to fall.It is my hope that with practice, the students who use the Writing Center on a regular basis will learn to shift their writing to meet the needs of their audience.And that they will begin to build –brick by brick- the bridge between writer and reader, between audience and voice, between genre and purpose, and that their bridge will be as strong and as purposeful as the expansive sky way between Williamsburg and Manhattan lighting up rooftops in Brooklyn.
**The Writing Center is located in the CTLE (Loyola Science Center, room 588). Call today for an appointment: 570-941-6147**
On Sautrday, September 28, the Library Green Team will be participating in National Public Lands Day by helping clean a portion of the Lackawanna River Heritage Trail. We’ll be meeting at the Elm St. Trailhead in South Scranton at 10am. Here is more info from the LHVA:
The Lackawanna Heritage Valley National and State Heritage Area (LHVA) will celebrate National Public Lands Day with a clean-up event on the Scranton section of the Lackawanna River Heritage Trail on Saturday, September 28, 2013. The event will begin at 10:00 a.m. Volunteers are asked to gather at the Elm Street Trailhead by the South Side Shopping Center in South Scranton. Free parking is available. Map to Trailhead
The clean-up effort will focus on water-treating the new fence and cleaning along the trail as well as removing debris from the Lackawanna River. The public, including trail users, students, and service organization members, are invited to volunteer for the event. LHV will provide free gloves, garbage bags, tools, and water for all volunteers.
National Public Lands Day is the nation’s largest, single-day volunteer event for public lands in the United States. Lackawanna Heritage Valley applauds the National Public Lands Day’s mission to preserve and protect America’s natural heritage by participating in this annual day of caring for public lands. National Public Lands Day in the US began in 1994 with three sites and 700 volunteers. Lackawanna Heritage Valley has participated in the event for the past five years.
Join us this upcoming Monday, October 28th and meet Stephen Kinzer, Author of “The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and Their Secret World War.”
