The Friendly City Reading Series

The Friendly City Reading Series offered us an opportunity to hear excerpts from Mary Beth Keane and Gina Welch, two published authors, as well as there perspectives on the pieces they wrote and the process they underwent.
For the first section of each author’s speaking point they read a piece from their book—Mary read about an Irish immigrant family and Gina read about her undercover experience within the Evangelical Church. While they were both compelling pieces I was particularly drawn to Gina’s story of her concealed identity within the evangelical church in which she, an atheist, played role as a faithful believer as she studied the inner workings of evangelicals. This idea of hoodwinking a group of people into thinking that you are one of them, I would have thought, would have been outcast as immoral or at the least as not a ‘good’ task to undertake. But in the name of publishing…
It wasn’t until they both took the stage at the end to answer questions that the topic turned to pertinent issues to our class discussions. The writing process they had taken was tremendous—both had tons and tons of notes and recordings throughout a year’s or more worth of work. What I found particularly stunning was the fact that Mary had, at one point, thrown away a month’s worth of writing. The dedication to revision and process is apparent and we could all only hope to have the courage to start over or revise a direction taken in our own writings. I think that technology in general and the word processor specifically allow for this process of editing and revision (especially to the extent of throwing out months of work) a little easier to swallow.
Another topic of interest was a question posed for them both that asked, how has writing this book changed the way that you teach writing in your classrooms? Gina’s response was the only one I can recall in which she talked about how she focused her students on an eye for detail in their writing. Because of the constant editor’s marks she put an importance on her students to always be checking for clarification and elaboration of remarks. This is helpful and seems akin to the ‘felt sense’ that we had discussed from earlier that guides our writing and pushes us in the right direction.