Writing Marathon
Louisiana site director Richard Louth describes the magic, and anxiety, of leading a writing marathon. While revealing that “things do go wrong,” he admits surprising success and offers tips for conducting a marathon, writing prompts, and excerpts of participants’ writing.
Café du Monde and the click and clanging of the glasses and silverware. One of the few places where they greet you with a glass of water.”
—Trish Benit, 2001
The yak of a saxophone drifts into the Café du Monde, mixing with the beat of ceiling fans and the smell of hot, powdered beignets. Across the street, two children tap-dance for quarters while a third spins a bicycle wheel on his head, the spokes a gray halo in the humid air. A horse-drawn carriage clops by St. Louis Cathedral while a mime dressed as Uncle Sam freezes in midstride outside the café window. Inside, teachers gingerly sip café au lait, knock excess sugar off their beignets, and stare at the world outside. Despite their good spirits, I see anxiety in their expressions. “What are we doing here?” they seem to ask.
Usually by 10 a.m., members of our Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project (SLWP) summer institute are comfortably enclosed in a room on the other side of the swamps. And we have already finished journal writing, someone has shared the log, and one nervous summer fellow is launching into a ninety-minute teaching demonstration.
But today we are embracing the unfamiliar in our surroundings, and ourselves, through a field trip we call the New Orleans Writing Marathon.
In the Beginning: Natalie Goldberg’s Marathon
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Our first writing marathon took place on much more familiar soil in 1992, when one summer institute participant, Melanie Plesh, introduced us to her practice of journaling with students and to Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. During her teaching demonstration, the other institute participants sat around one table and wrote for hours in response to Melanie’s prompts, which differ significantly from Goldberg’s (see below). Here is Goldberg’s advice about writing during the marathon:
Everyone in the group agrees to commit himself or herself for the full time. Then we make up a schedule. For example, a ten-minute writing session, another ten-minute session, a fifteen-minute session, two twenty-minute sessions, and then we finish with a half-hour round of writing. So for the first session, we all write for ten minutes and then go around the room and read what we’ve written with no comments by anyone. . . . A pause naturally happens after each reader, but we do not say “That was great” or even “I know what you mean.” There is no good or bad, no praise or criticism. We read what we have written and go on to the next person. . . . What usually happens is you stop thinking: you write; you become less and less self-conscious. Everyone is in the same boat, and because no comments are made, you feel freer and freer to write anything you want. (150)
This is the theory behind our marathoning, and the first week of every institute, we still “marathon” this way because we value the intensity of the writing experience and the sense of community it produces. But in 1994, we discovered how the marathon could be transformed into a different dish altogether when we added a cup of Louisiana spices to the roux.
The First New Orleans Marathon
The first New Orleans Writing Marathon was not for an institute but for a conference of about a hundred teacher-consultants from across the state. Asked to lead an afternoon of writing activities for the statewide Louisiana Writing Project’s Festival of Writers, I wanted to do a marathon based on our site’s approach but knew that there were too many people to make it work. I knew also that after a morning of workshops, teachers would rather be on the streets of the French Quarter than writing in a hotel conference room, and that they would crave a chance to chat over an oyster po’boy washed down by a Dixie beer at least as much as the opportunity to write. The solution was to form small writing groups and release them to the streets where Faulkner wrote his first novel, Tennessee Williams set A Streetcar Named Desire, and Andrei Codrescu insists The Muse is Always Half-Dressed.
Immediately, there were practical questions. Who should be in each group? Where should each group go? What would convince them to come back? Also, as both the city and the marathon experience were new to most participants, how could they be prepared for each?
Fearing mass confusion, groups too large, individuals left out, and people getting lost, I had collected the names of all participants beforehand and on file cards created groups with designated itineraries. However, at the last minute, instinct told me to have faith in my audience, to scrap these plans, and to ask everyone to determine their own groups and paths. All they received was a simple handout explaining Goldberg’s advice about responding, a map, and a list of restaurants, coffeehouses, and bars. In addition, I recommended that they limit groups to four or five people so as not to disrupt any establishment they entered, that they try to pick a new spot to write each hour, and that they return by 5 p.m. I concluded with three final pieces of advice that I still give to marathoners:
- If you go into a restaurant or bar, be sure to order something.
- If anyone asks, tell them you are a writer.
- Keep in mind that you are doing this for yourself and for nobody else.
Simple enough, but I worried how many would feel offended that their activity hadn’t been more structured and if groups would visit places where they were uncomfortable. How many would be lost to shopping, muggings, or inebriation? Miraculously, everyone returned, and when they did, they were somehow different. An excitement filled the room, a common bond that came from this strange experience. They wanted to read, even though it was time for dinner, or to tell stories of people they’d seen and places they’d been. Some talked of seeing things they had never seen before, while others talked only about another’s writing. A few even went to their rooms to revise so that they could read more polished pieces at breakfast the next day. This, when the pleasures of New Orleans were on the other side of the hotel door.
Institute Marathons
After two successful festival marathons, taking a summer institute on a New Orleans Writing Marathon seemed natural. Because our institute lives an hour from the city, some adjustments had to be made, but over the last six years, the New Orleans Writing Marathon has become a tradition at our site. We arrange car pools the day before and ask everyone to meet at the Café du Monde, a familiar landmark, by 10 a.m. After we assemble, we usually hear the previous day’s log, and then we split into small, usually unplanned, groups. One of the unexpected thrills of the marathon is ending up in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar partners. At the end of the day, groups convene at a pub to touch base and read before beating the rush hour traffic home. Some years, fellows have stayed overnight, dining at Galatoire’s and dancing to zydeco music at Mid City Rock and Bowl. Fellows are encouraged to bring friends and relatives who want to write, and often we are also joined by former fellows, nearby writing projects, or special guests such as Kim Stafford, director of the Oregon Writing Project at Lewis and Clark College who has a special interest in writing about place. In 2001, writers from the Live Oak Writing Project came from Mississippi to join us for their first marathon.
I Am a Writer
How many of us, as teachers, can live the writer’s life? For me, the writing marathon was my first taste of what it would really feel like to be a writer. It was the very first moment I ever thought, `Damn, I am a writer.’”
—Beth Calloway, 1996
Before we begin a marathon, I ask each participant to turn to another and say, “I am a writer.” If asked to identify themselves that day, I tell them to reply, “I’m a writer.” Why? Because most summer fellows identify themselves as teachers, not writers, and for a marathon to succeed, participants must think of themselves in a new way. The marathon introduces its participants to an unfamiliar world, and the first step is to forget the familiar identities that often get us through the rest of the year. I have discovered that thinking of yourself as a writer not only affects you but also others, and that it can open many doors. During my second festival marathon, my group crossed the Mississippi River on a ferry and looked for a place to write along the levee, but cold February winds forced us to seek shelter. We approached a restaurant perched on a bend in the river only to have a waiter tell us they were closed. However, when he asked us what we were doing there, and we replied, “We are writers looking for a place to write,” his demeanor suddenly changed. “In that case, come in by the fire,” he said. We wrote that afternoon in overstuffed chairs by a cozy window overlooking the river, sipping hot coffee that he brought us.
This kind of thing happens again and again, and not just in New Orleans. Sherry Swain, director of the Mississippi Writing/Thinking Institute, tells the following story about a group doing a marathon on a Mississippi college campus:
The most interesting story for me came from the group that began by asking a construction crew at the stadium (always the stadium is being spiffed up!) whether they might enter to sit on the fifty-yard line.
“No, I don’t have the authority to let you in,” the foreman said.
But then they said, “WE’RE WRITERS!”
And he said, “Well then, come on in. There’s an open gate around the corner.”
Similar stories abound—marathoners admitted to a private garden in Arkansas, a writing group given a free ride in a Florida trolley, etc. It happens, I think, because writers who believe in themselves tap into an unimaginable power; people sense this, and treat them with the kind of reverence often given to priests.
READ THE REST AT http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/nwp_au/184
