I really enjoyed this article by Chanporry Rith (who apparently designed Gmail for iOS) that I found via macademic.org about the how important it is to simply produce when we are trying to be creative. Rith recounts the following story from Art and Fear:
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot”albeit a perfect one”to get an “A”.
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work”and learning from their mistakes”the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
I have been going over this story in my mind, thinking about the “Advanced Grammar and Composition Course” that I will be teaching this coming fall, and asking myself: How much writing is the equivalent of 50 pounds of clay pots? I have thought about a semester total of words, a weekly, bi-weekly, or even daily blog post. I’ve thought about letting students write for the beginning of the semester work on free writing and moving toward more structure as the semester moves on. I’m not sure where it all will go, but I’m confident it will be an adventure.
So what do you think? How much is 50 pounds of writing?