Neutering Creative

I just read the other day that to-do lists aren’t a good idea—something about not prioritizing time, wasting time, focusing on crossing things off more than doing what’s important.  I don’t know.  I guarantee that I was avoiding something when I read that article.  Maybe office hours, or getting a snack for my kids, or grading this shit-ton of essays in front of me.  I didn’t actually read the article.  I skimmed it.  It was bullet-pointed, which was helpful.  Anyway, that was just a roundabout ways of saying that I still write a to-do list every day. I sure as hell was avoiding my to-do list when I was reading that article about not creating to-do lists.

Here’s the to-do list I wrote today:

(10/1)

·          Create

o   Quiz for sentence variety

o   Assignment for Flight character comparison

o   Peer review template for ENGL 2290

o   Discussion board for ENGL 1117

·         Grade

o   Finish 1117 essays

o   0950 papers (DO IT! DO IT!)

·         Other

o   Figure out if you need to stop at TJs

o   Write an essay for Chelsia’s thing

Section #1 is fine, no hiccups and a few new assignments written.  A morning of Shovels and Rope radio on Pandora, a granola bar, some coffee. A colleague and I yell back and forth across the hall, our normal Wednesday routine.  Sometimes he talks about the Kennedy assassination conspiracy.  Sometimes I talk about how I can’t believe anybody still gives a shit about the Kennedy assassination conspiracy.  Then the 0950 papers hit.  I’ve been avoiding them for a week in one fashion or another.  They make an appearance on at least five to-do lists.

Paraphrased Assignment: 

After watching the TED Talk on creativity in schools, respond to the following: Do you believe that your creative side has been nurtured in school?  In what ways do we promote and encourage creativity?  How is creativity discouraged in education?

I have been grading these papers for three hours—three sections of the same course taught back to back to back.  They take a long time to grade. Fragments. Missing articles. Sentence structures that confuse me for days. One student has crossed off the more common “I” form of the pronoun and replaced each one on a worksheet with the “i” variety. Pages and pages. 

   

“i believe yes that there is creativity in school.  my creative was neutered.”

The line rises off the page, out of the madness of crazy syntax. Neutered vs. Nurtured, a few misplaced keystrokes away, the wrong choice on "Spelling Suggestions." It goes on, paragraph after paragraph—neutered creative.  I laugh, call across the hall, yell for anybody who will listen: neutered creative, neutered creativity.  The Chronicle of Higher Education forums come to mind—“Best student sentences, Fall 2014.” It’s an easy mark, a cheap laugh after hours of writing need concrete example here and transition needed and unclear phrasing in the margins. In the margins of this student’s paper, I want to ask, “Did it hurt to get your creative neutered?” But I hold back.

The fact is that I know the answer to the unintentional question posed by this student’s typo. Yeah, it hurts to get your creative neutered. Years after getting out of an MFA program in Idaho, the most creative writing I do on any kind of regular basis is in the responses to my fiction student’s stories.  And I can feel it, the flattening out, the dullness. It’s strange how easily some things fade away, how the crisp edge of words and the charge of language becomes a day filled with tinkering with topic sentences. I have my excuses, and they’re boilerplate: full-time teaching gig, five classes a semester, maybe four preps, a houseful of kids, a hole in the ceiling that needs fixed because a squirrel keeps getting in our attic. But it’s all bullshit.  The squirrel thing probably isn’t bullshit.  That bastard has been tormenting us for months, maybe years.

 I miss the brain-buzz and pure joy of writing the words dust and roadhunt and cloudbank.  I miss how writing those words can make me feel the piece of land that cuts between Minnesota and South Dakota.  

So, to-do lists. I have an extra spot on mine now.

And I can cross off the last thing on today’s list and write tomorrow’s.