burrowing

I just had a fun little writing assignment, so I thought I'd post it here. The assignment was to choose one of the critical terms in the course textbook and in 350 words or less, dig into it, using any outside references you think support it. I chose "burrowing" and a favorite book from childhood.

Burrowing. Haake describes it as "working your way into the words, like an animal or archaeologist, with dirt under your fingers and a sense of perpetual discovery, and yes, accomplishment" (248). The reference to "animal" reminded me of the opening scene in The Wind in the Willows: "Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing…Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel…working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, 'Up we go! Up we go!' till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight" (9).

In creative writing pedagogy, this is a rosy metaphor for how students and teachers may wish the burrowing process of writing would work – tired of plodding along with what doesn't work or is irritating or stale, finding something new to try out, gathering determination to pursue it, going for it, and being rewarded.

Sometimes, it works just like that, but most of the time, it is harder. There can be as much frustration burrowing into new ways of thinking and writing as there is in wrestling yet again with the old ways. And yet, sometimes, after a trial with new theories and experiences, a writer burrows back to her old ways again, but with new (and sometimes reluctant) eyes.

Consider Mole finding his home again after adventures with Rat: "Home!...his old home that he had hurriedly forsaken and never sought again… Shabby indeed, and small and poorly furnished, and yet his, the home he had made for himself…Mole…related…how this was planned, and how that was thought out, and how this was got…and that was a wonderful find…how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence" (77-92).

Perhaps creative writing pedagogy should also teach revisiting as a form of revising. As we learn and experience more, burrow back into what we learned and experienced before and see the old in new ways.

Haake, Katharine. "Critical Terms for Creative Writers: An Easy Reference Guide." What Our Speech Disrupts. Phoenix: Premium Source Publishing, 2000.

Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 2001.