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changing the ways we write

joni sky's picture

today in our groups, i talked with nketchi and marian about genre and site sits. we all expressed a boredom with the way we write our site sits. last class, the class discussed gary snyder's idea of wild writing, and anne encouraged us all to write more wildly. writing wildly seems like an easy answer to the problem of boring site sits, but i wonder how we can truly write wildly. the site sits that are already up read like my middle school essays. i hate mine. other people's don't please me much either. they are written stiffly and the conclusions drawn are corny. because of this wild writing interests me. but what is wildness? in class on tuesday, we each took a hand at rewriting part of our postings more wildly and i don't know that it helped. even when pursuing a wilder way of writing, we were chasing after a preestablished format and structure. when the entire class choses to write poetically, then the entire class still writes in a boring way. just as with the dull site sit postings we've already written, we were trying to write in a way that would please our peers and our professor. i don't want to see postings full of the same boring poetry. i also wonder, though, how i can open myself up to true wildness. how can i leave behind preconcieved ideas of what my classmates and professor will find creative and smart and good? how can i fully engage with my site through my writing? this week i am asking myself to engage more with the space i'm in and with the writing that i do.