![]() ![]() I’ve facilitated and attended dozens of writing marathons and also studied and written about the technique in depth, so I was invited to the retreat as guest speaker on a panel about marathon pedagogy. Louth piloted the first “New Orleans-style” writing marathon in 1994, and the idea has since spread across the country, with marathons practiced now in at least 100 National Writing Project sites, in classrooms and writing groups, at literary festivals and youth camps. Themed “ Finding Your Muse in New Orleans” and hosted by the Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project of Southeastern Louisiana University, this retreat was the fullest expression, to date, of the writing marathon technique developed by Richard Louth, Professor of and English and SLWP Director at SLU, over several years following the first one in 1994. ![]() This past summer, though, was the first time I ever contemplated the relationship between marathons and muses, particularly in terms of what this relationship might mean for writing pedagogy. I’ve seen them provide the motivation and sense of agency that helps struggling writers find their voice and helps good writers expand their gifts. I’ve been using writing marathons as a pedagogical tool for about eight years, in high school and college composition classrooms as well as with graduate students and practicing teachers. Rather than waiting for muses to appear through magic, chance, or divine intervention, I’ve found that finding one’s muse is a process that can actually be facilitated and taught. All good writing draws its power from story, craft, and insight-elements most traditionally associated with the metaphor for creative inspiration we call “the muse.” All of us know, however, that the best nonfiction writing-composition, rhetoric, creative writing, critical writing-transcends formula. With so much focus in high schools now on testing and on the scores generated by writing assessments, especially with the formulaic, survivalist kinds of writing that proliferate, many students come to our college composition classrooms believing that nonfiction writing is a sterile landscape ruled by clear thesis statements, strong topic sentences, and supporting detail. Given the current educational climate, however, in which we teachers and our students must exist, one might argue that nonfiction writers need muses most of all. Conventional wisdom would have us believe that poets and novelists are the only kinds of writers who have muses-or need them. ![]()
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