This is one of my favorite “rules.” When I’m struggling or in doubt, I remember to think of what I’m doing as an experiment.
Case in point: For the last novel I’m teaching in my British Literature class, I decided we needed reading quizzes to keep the students honest. Earlier in the semester, I could tell that they weren’t doing their reading for Beowulf, so I knew we needed reading quizzes for our study of Frankenstein, otherwise they’d blow it off too.
I could come up with reading questions, but the difficulty with any class in which there are multiple sections AND students have a tendency to be absent (in general) (and especially when they know there’s going to be a quiz) is that I need to make multiple quizzes to avoid the plague of cheating. This means coming up sometimes with an A, B, and C quiz (and even a D quiz at times). That’s a lot of reading questions!
I have done one-question quizzes in the past to solve this issue, and three-question quizzes, etc. But it still fell to me to make multiples and that meant more work, and I’m just not as interested in making more work for myself simply to stop students from sloughing off their work.
So I experimented.
This time around, for Frankenstein, I wanted a way to ensure they did the reading–and read carefully–while also not putting a burden on myself.
Enter the “word map” quizzes.
I pick a word or phrase that has relevance to the chapter and then students have to make one of those word map/mind map spider-webby, bubble-connected thingies with all the things from the chapter that relate to that word or phrase. For nearly every chapter or group of chapters, I can think of several words/phrases that have relevance, so that solves the “multiple quizzes” problem, and this form of quiz rewards students for careful reading: I let them use their books with their annotations to do the quiz. Instead of punishing students for not reading, I reward students FOR reading and taking careful notes.
It’s not even really a quiz in that sense, but a way for them to find one of the main ideas of the text and relate as much of the text as they can to that idea. It’s a good activity for preparing them to discuss the chapter, and it’s easy for me both to create (just pick a word/phrase that goes with the chapter) and to grade.
It was an experiment–one I wasn’t sure would work–and I tried it anyway. The worst that would happen was that it flopped and I had to try something new.
But it worked, and now we have a tool that helps all of us get more out of the text than we had previously.
Students are often surprised when I do different things year-to-year. But this is because I don’t want to my classes to become rote or stale. Yes, I keep certain lessons and texts because they continue to work, year after year, but I don’t keep everything the same. I add new writing experiences or new texts or new ways of presenting information or new activities. I try something, reflect on it, maybe try it again with some tweaks, and keep iterating until it either works or until I let it go and try something else.
What’s funny about all this is that I can experiment in the classroom–and not get too upset when an experiment falls flat–but when it comes to my creative work, I often get a bit more cautious. I want to experiment in my writing, but when it comes time to experiment, I worry. Maybe my creative work matters more (to me)? Maybe I’m worried about rejection? Maybe I’m not sure whether my experiments will work or not? (Which is kind of a stupid worry because it wouldn’t be an experiment if you KNEW it was going to work…)
When I experiment in the classroom, I get almost immediate feedback from the students. I can tell when something works, when it partially works, or when it fails. I can then adjust or try something new.
But with my writing, I don’t always get that immediate feedback. How do I know if an experiment was successful or not? How do I know if I’m banging my head against the wall or doing something that surprises and delights?
I tend to be overly critical of my creative work; I’m not always the best judge of my experiments. I suppose this is why writers like Dean Wesley Smith adhere so closely to Heinlein’s rules. Another “Rule 4” in fact: “You must put it on the market.”
We can’t judge whether our creative experiments work. So we must release them and let the audience decide.
Sr. Corita’s Rule 4 doesn’t say anything about judging your experiments. Even putting one’s work out into the world is an experiment if we take Rule 4 literally: “Consider EVERYTHING an experiment.” Sharing my work is an experiment. Making my work is an experiment. Doing something else, trying a new way or the old way but differently: all are experiments.
The Rule doesn’t care about success or failure. Experimentation is an action not an evaluation.
This week, in my writing time, I tried to experiment not just with what I was writing, but with the process itself. I decided to let my whims direct me. If I felt like working on my solo RPG campaign, I did. I made some NPCs and did a little world-building, and then I decided, purely by instinct and desire, to start a short story using the prompt from this Lunar Awards Prompt Quest. Then I let myself shift to jotting down a few stray ideas for my NCL novel. Then I worked on a blog post.
Instead of trying to control my creative output, I let my Creative Voice go wherever it wanted. I found myself energized, excited, and strangely productive. I wrote a lot of words, felt connected to all my ideas and projects, and most importantly, had a lot of fun.
My experiment was to let go of what I thought I was “supposed” to do during my writing time, and instead did what felt good and was fun.
Could this be interpreted as being “undisciplined”? (I’m already looking ahead to the next Rule…)
Maybe.
But it felt less like lack of discipline and more like an embrace of the playful spirit. I let go of “shoulds” and focused instead on “wants.” It turns out, I WANT to make creative stuff and write lots of words when I abandon what I “should do” in favor of what feels fun in the moment. I didn’t waste time on the internet. I didn’t procrastinate. Instead, I followed my interests and created work in several different projects. And each of those projects fed into the other.
I allowed myself that same experimental freedom for this post too. I didn’t know I was going to write all this. Instead, I felt like now would be a good time to jot down some thoughts about Rule 4, and before I knew it, I had written 1,000-plus words. I let my inner creative desires guide me. I let the spirit of experimentation take charge. I didn’t know where this post was going to go (and maybe for the reader it’s a disorganized mess), but I let myself go there and see what would happen.
