In Which We Meet Our Hero

Being a high school English teacher, one lesson that I am forced to reteach every few weeks is the definition of a thesis statement. My students inevitably forget between each essay, so I find myself saying at the start of each writing assignment: "A thesis statement is the main idea of your essay. You need to let your readers know what they should expect from the rest of the paper. Why are you writing the paper? What are the major topics that you'll be covering? Your audience should know the answers to these questions before they continue on to your second paragraph." This is good advice to budding writers, many of whom struggle with focus and organization in their writing.

Beginning this blog, I felt a need to provide answers to these very questions with my first post. Why is this blog here? What will this blogger be writing about? There's so much junk out there on the internet I could be looking at to better waste my time, why should I waste my time reading this?

This blog is a place for me to write. Sound simple enough? I like the idea of journaling, of writing down my thoughts and ideas. I even love actual physical journals. Beautiful and unused Moleskines lie around my apartment becoming unhealthy in their slothlike existence. Here's the thing about writing in those wonderful books: I don't write all that much by hand. Actually, I write much slower and much less legibly with a pen. There's no chance to do a quick search of a journal to find something I vaguely remember writing months ago. There's nobody reading my journal, which gives me no incentive to make my written reflection coherent, polished, or entertaining. While I'm not sure that this is a blog that will be of particular interest to others, it certainly serves my own purposes well.

Okay, so I'm just here to write. But what will I be writing about? In the fall, I'll be starting a MA in Literature program at UMSL. This means that I intend to take my reading and writing to the next level. Because of that, I need someplace to simply write. Write. About anything. To be a better writer (a personal goal)I need to write more. I intend to write for at least 30 minutes per day about anything that comes to mind. Some days, I'll write about something I heard on the radio. Other days, I'll write about interesting conversations I had with my students. This summer, I'll probably write an awful lot about seasonal vegetables and walks in the Botanical Gardens.

Primarily, though, this will be a blog about books. The title of this blog is actually a quote from Richard Burton. He's an actor I remember fondly from movies viewed in various high school classes (Anne of A Thousand Days in World History and Taming of the Shrew in English Lit). My favorite project of his is the BBC recording of Dylan Thomas' enchanting radio play, Under Milk Wood (I have an MP3 of it, should you like a listen). The quote has a lot of truth to it. This May will be the first in five years where I will not be moving to a new place. Moving is a painful process that I look forward to not taking part in anytime soon. The only fun part of that process? Unpacking boxes of books. I am the sort of person who doesn't like having lots of "stuff," but I love having so many books. Taking stacks of them out of boxes and shelving them in alphabetical order immediately turns a structure full of blank walls into a home.

Since I'm starting grad school soon, my current project is to fill in my reading gaps. I've been on a real contemporary fiction kick lately, and been very much enjoying it. Highlights have included Atwood's Blind Assassin, McCarthy's The Road, and MacLeod's Island. However, now it's time to start jumping into classic literature that I've missed out on over the years. Faulkner, Hemingway, Melville, O'Connor, Marquez, Dostoevsky,and Dickens, here I come! I'll be reflecting about my reading often. I won't take it personally if you find those bits boring, I just need to get back into the habit of writing about what I read. Feel free to skip those bits.

In The Maltese Falcon, the notoriously plump and appropriately named Mr. Gutman tells the hero Sam Spade, "I like talking to a man who likes to talk." This will be the writings of a man who likes to write. Feel free to drop in. Don't worry, one way I hope to improve my writing in the coming months is to be more economical with my writing.