Writing takes Time; Time takes Writing

I teach a writing class to seventeen-year-old students. As they are handpicked for the course, they tend to be competent writers. Some are very good writers; others have the potential to be professional writers. I am not a professional writer, but I do know a thing or two about the craft of writing. Having been an avid reader most of my life and an English teacher for twenty-three years, I possess some relevant knowledge. Although I am not a fuddy-duddy grammarian, I do respect the conventions of writing and expect others to do so. I have my pet peeves, like the misuse of the appositive or "however;" however, dear reader, I have read Joyce and understand the rules are meant to be broken. The key, however, is knowing the rules. If one breaks the rules willy-nilly, with no conception of precision or accuracy, one is not James Joyce. Nor will one ever be, for that matter. There is only one James Joyce, though there are many imitators. In the email-blog-text age, individuals are taking less responsibility for their writing than they have since Gutenberg. If the medium is the message, the message is often swift, abbreviated and inaccurate. Some writing is meant purely for expedient communication; other writing is intended to last centuries, if not millennia. How would Homer or Shakespeare compose an email? How would Austen or Woolf blog? How would the Bronte sisters text one another across the moors? Would any of these writers embrace the current technologies? What would they think of Kindles? Although I suspect they would be circumspect in their appraisal or criticism, they could not help but be affected profoundly by the rapid innovation we are undergoing. The sea change in publishing, communication and networking is on a scale never witnessed by humanity; it is farther reaching than Gutenberg's press (pictured above) or Bell's telephone. So where does all this put my students? I am not entirely sure, but I am grappling with the issue and keeping them in mind as I continuously reinvent myself as a teacher of English. The implications for our profession are deep and broad; however, they are part of what makes teaching challenging and stimulating.