It's not enough to have it. You have to use it!

"Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark."— Henri Frederic Amiel

 We're back with Dr. Tom Romano, author of Writing with Passion, who is going to discuss writing in different genres and dealing with "passion depletion."

WP: I understand that students in your classes write in different genres, not only expository essays. What benefit do writers get from exploring other, and perhaps less familiar, forms of writing?

I didn't write a free verse poem until I was 29 years old. That is not going to happen to my students. Writing poems required I be both concise and vivid, that I really work with language to capture an emotion, usually through an experience. Poetry helped me be implicitly emphatic. Writing fiction let me imagine more fully a world I imagined. By inventing characters and putting them in action, I came to understand things about human beings.

My genre of choice, though, is creative nonfiction. I employ the techniques and strategies of imaginative writing in writing about the real stuff of my life. In the English Journal essay I mentioned earlier, readers learn my take on what matters about teaching literature to adolescents, but they learn that through my experience as a reader and adolescent and adult making my way through life.

WP: Can you explain a little about a “multigenre paper”—what it is and what purpose it serves in terms of developing one’s writing ability?

The idea for this paper struck me when I read Michael Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid in 1986--the book was published about 1970. Ondaatje writes about the last two years of The Kid's life, only he doesn't do it through a historical novel or a biography. He writes in multiple genres that move from one to another without traditional transitional devices: poems from multiple points of view, narrative sections, fictional recreations, songs, an interview, monologues.

Multigenre writing requires writers to look at their subject through many different lenses. Each lens requires a different emphasis. I interact with my subject differently when I'm creating an extended dialog between two characters than when I argue a thesis that crystallizes what I've learned from an experience than when I try to capture an emotion in swift poetic images.

Varied lenses lead writers to greater understanding. I also think that writing in different genres generates thought. The more genres writers create, the more genres they think of to write. Writing multigenre papers requires writers to become more, let's say, rhetorically versatile.

WP: What are some indicators that the writer’s work has started to suffer from “passion-depletion”? What are some causes that can negatively affect a writer’s passion for the craft?

I write my share of reports and memos in which you'd think I wouldn't have much passion. What saves me from passion depletion? I love working with language. I love the generative nature of using language. I love playing with words, adding, deleting, rearranging to say something the best I can.

What often happens in whatever I am writing is that the very act of working with the words, drafting and revising and tinkering, let's me learn what I want to say.

What advice do you have for students who find their writing is growing a little stale and formulaic? How can they bring back the passion to their writing?

Read. Read writers you want to write like. Read writing that inspires you. Every year or two, I reread Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Lamott makes me want to tell my own stories, write with humor, and record the ironies I perceive. Carry around 3 x 5 cards or a notebook and record the surprises you encounter. Life is full of writing material.

WP: Writers who write for a living may find it especially difficult to turn off the “work writing” part of their mind when they want to do some creative writing just for their own pleasure. What tips do you have to help them switch gears, so to speak?

Hard for me to answer this, since I don't make my daily bread through writing. I will say this: if you are one who is fulfilled by the act of writing--not just by thinking about writing--you will find a way to get writing done that you want to do. I'm also uneasy with the word "creative." All writing, to an extent, is an act of creativity. Using language is a creative act. My purpose in the writing surely varies, but when I use language, I'm involved in an act of creativity.

WP: What are some “passion igniters”—ways writers can stimulate their creativity or break out of a writing slump?

I sometimes read through my notebooks. I never fail to find events and characters and observations I've written about that quicken my interest. Three years ago Heinemann published my memoir, "Zigzag: A Life in Reading and Writing, Teaching and Learning." I discovered the title in a notebook entry from four years earlier. I had forgotten all about a distinctive scene I'd observed in a motel parking lot in which the word zigzag was used.

Let yourself be ever observant and amazed. Many years ago, more than thirty now, one of my high school students said that she had developed a "writing state of mind." Whenever she saw something of interest during her day, she'd think, "I could write about that."

WP: Have you had the experience of losing your passion? If so, how did you recover it?

Whenever I finish a big writing project, I often feel empty, like I'll never have anything to write again. During a writing seminar at UNH, I asked Donald Murray about this feeling. He said that he thought it was natural to feel this way after writing, that the field might have to lie fallow for awhile.

WP: How can you tell when your passion for writing is at its peak or, conversely, when you are in need of a “passion injection”?

I'm most passionate, driven, and interested when I am amidst a writing project. Just last month I wrote an introduction for a friend's book about teaching reading and writing in high school. I produced ten drafts on the way to arriving at a final copy. My usual tack is to write a draft then move away from it for a day or two, then get the writing out again and begin working with it, revising and tinkering, rethinking and resaying. That process was bliss to me. I couldn't wait to get to the writing, usually in a restaurant-coffee shop called The Bagelry in Durham, New Hampshire. I'd go to The Bagelry at 6:30 in the morning to work on my writing before I went to class to begin teaching at 8:15.

A passion injection? It helps to have friends who love write as you do. Being with a community and writing together can work. Letting your mind ramble on the page in your notebook often leads you to subjects you find you want to write more about.

WP: What did you learn in the process of writing your book? Has it affected the way you write or teach others about writing?

In all my books, without exception, even the two unpublished ones, I learned that I discovered ideas and subject matter during the writing process. While writing Writing With Passion, I learned that there were chapters I'd planned to write that weren't substantive enough to be a chapter. 

On the other hand, there were chapters that I planned and began writing that I soon realized had to be two chapters. With "Zigzag," I suddenly realized one morning that the chapter I was writing was the end of the book, even though I'd originally planned to write another ten or twenty thousand words. You can learn from teachers and editors and responders, but the first and best teacher is the writing itself.

WP: What three recommendations do you have for writers who want to keep their love and passion for writing alive?

1. Keep a notebook. Write in it what you care about, what bothers you, what you remember, what delights you, what surprises you. And write with detail. Write in a way that when you reread the pages, even years later, what you wrote about comes back vividly to you.
   
2. Be alert to whatever comes along to write. When an idea or observation strikes you, do what Whitman advised: trust the gush of language that begins moving in you. Put it down on paper and be absolutely unconcerned with any notions of good or bad. Just try to tell the truth and tell it in detail.
   
3. Be wary of adverbs when you begin tinkering and revising.

There you have it — advice from a teacher and writer on the profession! Now, how do you keep your passion for the craft alive?