First Draft, Finished Draft, and the Hoi Polloi

My friend has to stop bringing his writer's notebook to his classroom because there's an internet meme prompting kids to steal from teachers and share their stuff on video. The last thing any writer needs is their writer's notebook and first drafts mocked online.

As a teacher, I worried people would read my writer's notebook. I wrote some unpleasant stuff about kids and a shit-ton of bad stuff about admins, working through things in there. I keep that first-draft thinking private because writing must be revised to be worth sharing.

Non-writers don't get that.

I once shared a finished piece with students about them swearing and cursing at me. One kid, eager to get me in trouble, shared it with my admin. In the piece, I used the term hoi polloi and wrote:

Hoi polloi. I like that term because students who abuse their teachers won’t know what it means and won’t bother to look it up.

I got called into a disciplinary meeting where HR read the paragraph aloud, a paperback dictionary next to him with a sticky note sticking out of what I guessed was the _H_ section. "Hoi polloi?" he asked. "What does that even mean?" He waited for my answer. I pointed at the dictionary and said, "you know exactly what it means." He read the definition at me, hoping I'd be ashamed, but I kept thinking, "assholes who think I'm impressed by a fucking paperback dictionary, that's the hoi polloi."

(I own a shirt that reads "People say I'm condescending. That means I talk down to people.")

I didn't feel badly about that piece. I had revised until it said exactly what I wanted to say exactly how I wanted to say it. That piece taught kids something. Even if it hadn't, my admins' reactions entertained the hell out of me. Four years later, I'm still entertained. That's good writing.

Writing often starts out personal, raw, undisciplined. Most good writers let that out onto the page then go back through. My revision process is mostly cutting, rewording, hearing the words as if someone else had written them, making each piece say what I want it to say. There's almost no better work.

I want to tell my friend's students to leave his writer's notebook alone. Him having it there, writing in it during class is the best thing that could happen to them in school. It's a gift, having a writer as an English teacher. Treat it like a gift.

I want to tell them, go steal HR's shitty paperback dictionary instead. Use your powers for good, not evil.