Why I Am Grateful to Jimi Hendrix: Reimagining Descriptive Writing
Perceiving is more than simply observing. It is more than sight. Perceiving is not so objective. When we perceive something, we are seeing it through the lens of ourselves, our understandings, our experiences and our biases. Perception is one of the most critical aspects of writing - writing is the way in which we communicate our perceptions of the world and ourselves. Perception is subjective, individual and the basis for creative endeavors.
When working with my students to develop their creative writing skills, I frequently provide them with images that I ask them to describe. We work on developing the use of precise diction, sensory detail, comparison and meaningful adjectives. This is something I have done for years. In the classroom it took the form of students quietly writing after studying an image. Frequently pausing and considering the image again, before returning to their writing. Erasing. Scratching out. Bitten lips and tapping pencils. And at the end? They shared their writing with peers, identifying the most effective description and working together to help one another improve. It was useful and effective, and entirely lacking in the tension that accompanies real writing.
In a sense, in my original method of developing my students' capacity to craft effective creative writing, they described dispassionately, unconnected to the images in front of them. The description occurred in a vacuum. They saw. They wrote. The did not perceive. Nor did I.
What to do? As I was struggling to identify a way in which to reimagine the process of teaching description, something happened. My students and I analyzed a passage from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. In a particular paragraph, Smith had used a series of adjectives to describe items on a library desk. All of the adjectives were related to order and organization. Neat. Tidy. Precise. Once the adjectives were pulled from the text, written on the board, and confronted us, we began to ascribe various meanings to them. Some felt that they implied that the protagonist longed for order because her life was chaotic. Other students argued that she was a perfectionist by nature, regardless of her family's habits. The adjectives were a gateway to interpretations of the characterization. It was more than just description. It was intentional. There was a pattern.
The next day, I determined that I would see what happened when I forced a conversation about describing with intent during a routine descriptive writing exercise. Projecting an image of Jimi Hendrix, I gave my class time time to craft descriptions independently. I then asked them to identify what they felt were their most effective pieces of description. Having them share what they had chosen from their own writing, we created a web of words and phrases around Jimi. Two patterns began to appear.
Several students described the image with phrases that were soulful but gentle and loving. For these writers, he cradled his guitar like child and had a relaxed stance. The others chose words and phrases that evoked a more militant description, finding power in his stance and stating that he clutched his guitar. The conversation that followed centered on the way in which students had seen the same image in two very different lights. They had perceived the image differently, and their descriptions communicated that fact. We also noted that some words, like passionate, could be applied to either description. The students realized that by choosing and combining certain phrases and words from the board, they could craft two entirely different descriptions.
My students left the class with a new understanding of perception and description, and I walked away with a new understanding of what my students were capable of and what descriptive writing exercises could look like. The tension was there. The writing was stronger. I saw myself differently, as a better, more effective teacher.
