The Multigenre Paper: Other Ways of Thinking and Knowing

During the first semester of our Senior year as undergrads, Jamie and I were in the English department's introductory creative writing class. Do you remember that action Jamie? At least for myself, I was there for no other reason than because it was one of the last of what I perceived at the time to be totally bullshit pre-requisites for the English Ed. program. I can recall my bitching (after all, I'm a professional at it) like it was yesterday. "Why the hell do we have to take this? I have no interest in teaching creative writing! This feels absolutely useless to me! Isn't creative writing more or less useless anyways?" Just like the teacher in the above cartoon, I perceived no actual / "real" purpose for learning, practicing, and enjoying creative writing. At least from my perspective as a smug, 22 year old punk who already thought I was an "expert" in expository from my work as a then Undergraduate Writing consultant at the Center for Writing, I perceived no value in creative writing as a human being or future teacher. To be completely honest, until finishing Romano's Blending Genre, Altering Style: Writing Multi Genre Papers, I continued to maintain this attitude as I progressed in my expository experience as a now Graduate vs. Undergraduate Writing Consultant. As I finished and began to think about Roman's work with the multigenre paper, my smugness and perception of myself as a sort of "expert" with writing was confronted and perhaps more accurately shattered. Although I owe a great deal to what I have learned, and am of course still learning, in my past and current role at the Center for Writing, I realize that I'm not quite the expert I imagined myself to be. Although I have had, and continue to gain, much experience with expository writing, Romano has shown me that the expository is not the only, let alone even the best, way of constructing, constructing, and demonstrating meaning and knowledge. As I sit here, I wish I had a time machine to go back to Creative Writing 1001, shake myself awake, slap myself in the face, and tell myself to shut the hell up and instead listen as some of this stuff will be extremely important in the future. Knutson, it looks like you and I have work to do. Where do you think we can get ourselves a flux capacitor?

Near the beginning of his work, Romano points out the distinction between paradigmatic thinking / knowing and narrative thinking / knowing as he juxtaposes the encyclopedia entry of "Count" William Basie with the Brathwaite poem about the same musician. While the encyclopedia entry is concerned with constructing thought / knowledge via reportage, facts, analysis, chronology, and logic, the poem is concerned with constructing thought / knowledge via visceral senses as afforded by stories, poetry, drama, art, and motion (18-22). Although Romano acknowledges the importance of both paradigmatic AND narrative ways of thinking / knowing
depending on the writer's purpose, audience, and so on, he argues that there is a NEED for narrative as:

"Genres of narrative thinking require writers to be concrete and precise. They can't just tell in abstract language. They must show. They must make their topics palpable. They must penetrate. And that is what multigenre papers enable their authors to do" (26).

In other words, there are more than just facts to knowing and understanding. There is feeling. There is actually experiencing the piece. And, as Romano implies, incorporating narrative WITH, and after getting all fired up about his book I might even argue MORE than, paradigmatic information will lead to the greatest, richest, most "human" understandings as possible.

Now, although Romano's book introduced a new and exhilarating way of viewing my future career that has been previously unrealized, as well as made me extremely eager to teach multigenre writing and even try it myself (perhaps for the final project), I have a number of extremely fierce concerns and questions…

-Q1: As I talked about above, I feel as though I've been "stuck" in expository / paradigmatic mode with considering writing in my educational development thus far. In addition to only being able to count on one hand how many non-expository / creative pieces I've worked with in the Center for Writing, I've pretty much ignorantly shunned getting anywhere close to learning anything about creative writing since. To be honest, both the definitions and deeper purposes regarding some of the creative writing golden nuggets that Romano suggests in his book such as repends where brand new to me, never having heard of, let alone used myself, before. To put it simply, whereas I feel as though I know a ton about paradigmatic / expository writing, I feel as though I don't know a thing (outside of what I just learned from Romano's book), about creative writing.

• How can I possibly teach such writing if I know so little about it? If I have such little experience writing narrative myself? If I am such a "newcomer" to studying, learning, let alone actually using creative writing?
  
• If I hope to teach and use multigenre papers, how can I possibly learn and gain the experience I need with both the discipline, as well as actually writing creatively myself?
  

But, then again, perhaps this will be an advantage as neither myself nor my students will be the "expert." Instead, we will be forced to explore the multigenre paper truly collaboratively and learn from each other. I'm sure Paulo Freire would give me a high five, but the discussion of both teachers and students as co-learners will have to wait for another time…

-Q2: Again, although Romano sparked a passion for the multi genre paper within me, I am very concerned about how the process of writing the multigenre paper prepares students for higher academia where they are so heavily assessed on their expository writing. Although I don't agree with it, it feels as though just like I was, and probably still am, "stuck" on paradigmatic / expository writing, higher academia is as well.

• Will the process of writing the multigenre paper teach students the skills they will need to be successful outside of my classroom in higher academia where paradigmatic / expository writing is frequently accepted as the "only" way of knowing?
  
• If not inherent to the multigenre paper, could I figure out a way to still use it, but teach these skills?
  
• Do I need to be explicit about this and not keep any secrets with my students? (e.g. explicitly sharing with them the state of higher academia and where the multigenre paper "fits")?
  

Overall, Romano's book was an extremely interesting, as well as humbling read. In addition to giving me the opportunity to explore the multigenre paper and its possibilities, I understand that I am not quite the expert that I imagined myself to be. Although generating its own amount of worry, I feel that this was important lesson to learn. After all, as we have discussed across our classes, we are always "unfinished" as both teachers and human beings. Romano's read showed me that I am extremely unfinished, too.

Useful Resource:

http://www.wordle.net/

"Wordle is a toy for generating 'word clouds' from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text" (Wordle.net).

-This resource could be used in the reading and / or writing processes to import electronic texts and / or student papers into to perhaps uncover prominent ideas, themes, topics, vocabulary, and so on.

-Reading process. Potential tool to "frame" text:

• Uncover / explore most prominent potentially unknown / difficult to understand vocabulary before teaching.
  
• Uncover most prominent ideas, themes, and topics.
  

-Writing process:

• Students could import their own texts to explore the most prominent ideas, themes, topics, and vocabulary operating in their papers.
  
• Students / teachers could import free-writes and other pre-writing text (either individual students or the entire class at once depending on the circumstance) to generate ideas, themes, and topics.