Purcell, Book Review

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Book Review

It is to one of Donald Murray's books that many of us beat a hasty retreat during those weeks when our students refuse the invitation to write. There we can recover the reasons for why we chose the career of teaching writing in the first place. Since the late sixties, Murray has drawn us into his classrooms and student conferences to show us how and why the writing process works for students. Through anecdotes of his writing process and those of others, Murray reveals how students at every crossroads of writing can proceed with authority once they possess their own set of tools for brainstorming, focusing, ordering, drafting, and clarifying. His rallying cry of nulla dies sine linea (never a day without a line) is echoed from primary to graduate writing classrooms and takes writing from the sometimes mind-boggling theoretical texts to the everyday lives of students and teachers.

In this latest book, Murray once again invites us to look over his shoulder. This time, we don't see the teacher or himself at work. Fans of Murray should not be fooled by the familiar divisions of this book; while Murray continues to emphasize the writing process, he is speaking not to the teacher or student but rather to the writerly self. Digging deeply into his writing past to reveal his own sources and difficulties in writing, Murray provides readers with a whirlwind tour through his childhood, his days as a soldier and then as a journalist, to the death of his daughter, and presently to his retirement where each morning awaits his lines, his musings, and the necessary interruptions of collaborating with others.

Murray begins this new work by explaining why he writes: "When we write we become visible, we are players in the game of life." Expanding upon the idea of writing as discovering, Murray adds that writing is also defining and therefore controlling one's world. He tells of dictating a column to his wife in the hours before a bypass operation in order "to name and therefore defeat the dragon that waited, snorting flaming bad breath, in the operating room."

Because Murray defines writing as a necessary act, readers will quickly discover that they are labeled as writers as well. Thus once he shoots down the greatest litany of non-writing excuses ever produced by a freshman writing class, Murray gently unfolds his own writing day and reveals how he and others create goals by limiting themselves to tasks that are not insurmountable. Murray admits that in retirement, he spends only the morning hours with pen to paper yet devotes the entire day to thinking and planning for the following writing period.

Despite Murray's enviable schedule, the discussion of why and how he writes is invaluable for writers who find themselves devoting most of their time to the writing of their students instead of their own. Murray asks of his readers what they ask of their students. "Beginning writers," he says, "make the mistake of looking for ideas before beginning to write." Topics he reveals, spring from scraps of thoughts on scraps of paper. As the pieces are connected, the pattern of voice emerges. "Writers," he explains, "discover their emotional relationship to a subject through voice." As subject and voice converge, Murray challenges his readers to look about them for threads that lead to surprising connections. "The commonplace—or two commonplaces rubbed together—reveals what we should explore next in writing."

Murray devotes the remainder of the book to nudging his readers to turn strands of thought into essays, fiction, or poetry. Unlike his earlier books that focus on formal writing as a continued act of discovery, Murray now challenges readers to pay closer attention to their audiences. Much of the discussion centers around point-by-point recaps of his testing drafts of columns, stories, and poems.

Through all the experiments and stories, Murray never hesitates to remind readers that both fear of putting pen to paper and the ongoing discovery through writing are still part of his writing process. In keeping with a Taoist manner, Murray proclaims: "You will always have the blessing, as I have in my seventies, of being a beginning writer." and with that, the call for a line a day becomes more of a cardinal point for teachers of writing. For without accepting the invitation ourselves, we cannot call ourselves writers, nor can we ask it of our students.