ASSAY: A JOURNAL OF NONFICTION STUDIES
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Richard Louth
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The “New Orleans Writing Marathon” (NOWM) is a communal writing experience that takes writers out of the dis/comfort zones of their typical school and home writing environments and into new locations. Created in New Orleans twenty years ago, it involves groups of writers, over lengths of time varying from one hour to three days, writing their way across a landscape while voluntarily sharing their work with each other, socializing, and interacting with the outside world. A typical NOWM might find a community of thirty writers, after a brief welcome in a crowded room, splitting into groups of five with each group doing several rounds of writing and sharing as it moves independently from café to pub, park, river, restaurant, cathedral, and bookstore.
Three key principles of the NOWM are that participants identify themselves as writers, they write for enjoyment, and they respond to each other’s work with a simple “Thank you” rather than criticism. The NOWM’s success stems from the above principles as well as from these associated with the National Writing Project model: |
identity—calling oneself a writer, using writing to explore one’s personal and professional lives, and taking time to write just for oneself; |
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While the NOWM has taken many forms as it has spread across the country with the support of the National Writing Project, its success can be attributed to a few basic principles, a genuine respect for writers and their desire to write, and an emphasis on “writing in world.” The NOWM not only provides a model for studying the relationship between writing and place, but it also raises questions about how we currently teach writing and what we might do differently.
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Feb. 19, 1994, Napoleon House, New Orleans, Louisiana |
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Those are the first words written at a NOWM. Little did anyone know 20 years ago what would follow: thousands of writers from elementary students to published novelists moving as writers across campuses, small towns, rural settings, and big cities, writing for enjoyment in the company of others.
My only previous experience with writing marathons had been through Melanie Plesh, a high school teacher who had led one as her “teaching demonstration” in my NWP site’s first Summer Institute. Melanie had followed Natalie Goldberg’s model in Writing Down the Bones, asking our Institute to sit around a table for two hours, freewriting quickly in journals, and sharing work again and again according to Goldberg’s protocol: |
Everyone in the group agrees to commit himself or herself for the full time. Then we make up a schedule. For example, a ten minute writing session, another ten minute session, a fifteen minute session, two twenty minute sessions, and then we finish with a half-hour round of writing. So for the first session we all write for ten minutes and then go around the room and read what we’ve written with no comments by anyone. . . . A pause naturally happens after each reader, but we do not say ‘That was great’ or even ‘I know what you mean.’ There is no good or bad, no praise or criticism. We read what we have written and go on to the next person. People are allowed to pass and not read twice during the marathon. Naturally there should be some flexibility. If someone feels the need to pass more often or less often, that is fine. What usually happens is you stop thinking: you write; you become less and less self-conscious. Everyone is in the same boat, and because no comments are made, you feel freer and freer to write anything you want. (150) |
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Because of its extended length of time, numerous short freewrites, voluntary sharing, and non-threatening response, Goldberg’s original concept of the writing marathon could generate surprisingly intense writing and build community quickly. As writers listened to each other read and then returned to their journals, a Zen-like calm came over the room. I noticed how writers riffed off each other’s writing, how they sometimes exposed their deepest selves in response to each other and the blank page, and how they seemed to become less and less aware of their place (a dull classroom) as they became more and more aware of each other. Clearly, Goldberg had designed a method of writing, and teaching writing, which succeeded by respecting the writer as well as the writing community.
Location played a role in her marathon. Everyone surrounded a table. The room remained quiet except for scratching pens. For Goldberg, the physical location was essential—not as a source of inspiration, but as a safety zone where writers could achieve a Zen-like concentration. At our Summer Institute, in fact, we had put “Do Not Disturb” signs on our door when we began the marathon and whenever we did morning journaling together. In Goldberg’s marathon, while the place’s serenity helps transform writers by allowing access to their innermost thoughts, the writers in turn transform the place, essentially eliminating its dull existence for a brief time. I wanted to bring this traditional Goldberg experience to the Festival and initially intended to have participants sit around a table for writing intensely. However, before the workshop began, I had second thoughts. Knowing that these teachers from across the state rarely visited New Orleans, I realized that my workshop would be poorly attended or resented by participants who wanted to be on the streets of the French Quarter. What would happen if I just let participants spend an afternoon writing in the Quarter rather than sitting in a room? Wrestling with this question over lunch, I decided to combine what participants likely wanted to do (walk the streets of the Quarter) with who they really were (teacher-writers). At the end of lunch, I asked anyone wanting to join the writing marathon to change into their walking shoes and bring a jacket. The sign-up sheet grew from ten to thirty names. To kick off this first, experimental NOWM, I met with participants for about ten minutes to review Goldberg’s protocol and explain her “no response but a thank you” approach. This was something new for NWP teacher-writers, who usually thought of response groups as places for critique. I also said it was ok to enjoy oneself, to socialize, and to browse—that this was all part of the writing experience. This, too, was something new for conference participants. Who’d think of writing as enjoyment, or of mixing it with food, drink, and talk? Who’d think that writing could be used to interact with, enjoy, and know place? On the spot, directors who knew the French Quarter volunteered to lead groups (as we had no maps), and writers almost flew out the revolving doors of the hotel, journals in hand, to write along the Mississippi River, at a coffeehouse, and in one of the Quarter’s oldest bars, the Napoleon House. With only 90 minutes, each group had time to visit one place and do a few rounds of writing; however, the basics of the NOWM were formed, and it now differed significantly from Goldberg’s marathon. The next morning, when writers gathered over breakfast to share writing publically, many read pieces that they had started on the marathon and polished in their rooms that night. I too returned to my room that night under the marathon spirit to polish a letter I written at the Napoleon House: Dear Kevin. Happy birthday, son. Today you are three years old. I’ll see you tomorrow. Tomorrow your mother and I will pretend it’s your birthday. But I wonder if you’ll figure out the trick. I’m sorry I’m not home today, but I’m doing something you may yourself do sometime. I wonder what you would notice if you were here. What would you see. I wish I could see the world for a day through your eyes. I never really think enough of what things must appear like to you. Would you hear the voice singing in the distance and say, “Whose that daddy? Who is singing?” Or would you be more interested in the balloons. Of course the balloons. The way they move in the breeze. You’d have to have a balloon. And you’d be sipping on a straw, proud of your drink, in total possession of it even though it’s slipping out of your hands and coming close to catastrophe every 2 minutes. You’d be sipping on your straw, slipping out of your seat, fixated on those balloons. You’d see the ceiling fan. “Look at it go round and round,” you’d say. You’d be fascinated by the hole in the roof. “Look at the sky.” Look at the green door. And the plants. “Big plants.” (Letter) My pieces from the first NOWM represent two extremes of writing typically produced during a NOWM. A fragment focused on the external vs a letter focused on the internal, they are both saturated with place. Neither could have been written in a workshop, classroom, or home. Both only could have been written on a NOWM.
What participants in the first NOWM discovered, beyond the joy of seeing the city as writers, was how writing and sharing “in the world” affected writing, sense of place, and self. Writing in a place could give the writer a sense of belonging to it or of ownership over it. Also, writing with a group and in a community contributed to one’s sense of place in the world.
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As Stafford notes in The Muses Among Us, Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft, rather than attempt to be prophets, writers can be scribes to the world, listening to the muses around us as “professional eavesdroppers” who appreciate the abundance of the world (14).
The above writers consciously chose their writing places. However, what happens when location is thrust upon us? While choice is crucial to a writing marathon, so too is chance. As Karen Seamans discovered, a sudden storm can result in a serendipitous shelter and productive writing: This past summer, we were on a marathon in the French Quarter. One person is our small group planned for us to go to a particular location. We were en route, chatting merrily through the blistering July sun and sweltering South Louisiana heat. Suddenly, a torrential downpour came out of nowhere, which is very typical if you are familiar with New Orleans. We sought shelter in a small pizza parlor. It was 10:30 in the morning and the place was not even open. The proprietors were gracious enough to let us take refuge there. Being a group of writers, we decide to do just that, write. I began writing a piece about my late father. For me, I feel that it is one of the better pieces that I have composed. The unique part is that it never would have occurred without the environment and the culture created by the writing marathon. I may have never created that piece if we were not caught in the rain. Before being introduced to my merry band of writers, I would have sat in the pizza place and talked with my friends until the rain passed. Fortunately, I now understand and dine regularly on the moveable feast that is the writing marathon. |
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For Seamans, “the environment and culture created by the writing marathon” are connected, freeing writers from comfort zones that impede discovery’s delight.
As participants often discover, place can thwart a writer’s expectations even if it is chosen. College student Marley Stuart began a NOWM intending to write a letter to New Orleans that he had partly framed beforehand, yet two bars later he ended up writing about pigeons, bartenders, and his discovery about writing in the world: We all have expectations about our own writing. I came to New Orleans the day of that winter writing marathon expecting to write a piece about how time changes everything, how culture is swept along by time's current and is eventually lost. I would write a letter to the city itself, in the future, about how the good old days of faded print, bartender smiles, shrimpmen, dirty shoes, and live music in the streets were gone. Replaced by computer screens, smartphones, and smartcars. I had this expectation, to lament the inevitable loss of culture. And then I stepped into Molly's bar. I could barely grab a pen fast enough to write, “as I sit in this bar, warm glow from the yellow lights hanging from exposed rafters, framed newspaper clippings, cat in the jacket on the table next to us, fire hydrant inside set into the stone floor—I know the spirit will never die, that culture will last forever.” I felt a surge from that place (place I had never been before), that crushed my expectations. |
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External places can be unfamiliar or familiar, and each can produce surprisingly different effects on the writer. John Scanlan, from Oregon, did not know the French Quarter when he visited for his first NOWM. His piece from “New Orleans in Words” typifies those written in and about unfamiliar places.
1:45 P.M., Pirate’s Alley. The air is different here. Wet, heavy, sticky—I like it. I’m not sure I even knew I liked it before. I’ve hardly ever experienced it. I live in the high desert of Eastern Oregon where the air is bone dry and heat comes at you more like a sauna and less like a steam room. Maybe the novelty of this climate would soon wear off if every day I had to trudge through the heat and humidity and I would soon grow to resent it, but for now it feels like a big wet kiss from an exotic lover. |
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Unlike Scanlan, Karen Maceira is a native of New Orleans, and had come to her NOWM reluctantly because of the city’s familiarity. Her piece illustrates a different kind of discovery.
July 22, 2003. “Yesterday was Hemingway’s birthday.” This statement by George started the day off for me. The Quarter is so allied in my mind, my life, with my husband, my last love, and with Marcel, my first love. They both, as I, loved Hemingway. When I was in high school (the early 60’s), we all wanted to write like Hemingway, and I think Marcel wanted to be Hemingway. |
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Below, Maceira’s reflection on this entry reveals how writing in and about a familiar place was difficult, yet cathartic. She also reveals how her writing group affected her willingness to write and share.
I had come rather irritably to this marathon because I wanted, at least unconsciously to push away home and the past. I wanted safe topics but the minute I was present in that place, place began its work on me. [...] Surprised at what I had written, I hesitated to read it to my group, but only for a few seconds. For one thing, I knew that haring was essential to the marathon process, and I felt responsibility, if not to myself, to my group. I remember saying aloud when I was finished reading, “That’s why I didn’t want to come here.” Perhaps if I had not already felt a sense of collegiality and friendship with my group, I would have ignored my responsibility. I don’t know that for sure. I can only say that I am grateful that I did feel that sense of trust, for I know that their accepting response was an affirmation that allowed me to go even further into a past experience I thought I had “dealt with” long ago. (41) |
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The writing group, a significant part of a writer’s external space, can affect the writer as significantly as a jukebox or sticky bar. As Michelle Russo discusses below, her choice of place is usually purposeful because of the kind of writer she is. However, the choice of place is intimately connected to her writing group, who become part of her place, her experience of it, and her writing.
The idea of place on writing marathon becomes more and more complex as I ponder it. For, in my experience during my marathons, I have found that a place is directly impacted by—directly connected to—the people I write with. Truthfully I think the variety of personalities in a writing group help to reflect the character of the place we decide to write. For this reason, I am a selfish writing-marathoner. While I welcome an outsider for a few rounds, I am rather exclusive with my marathon writing comrades. Because I want to write in places that are more relaxing, places that reflect the local, less popular locations without it seeming disingenuous, I want the people I write with to be similar to me in their desire for a quiet, breezy location with good chairs and the music turned down. I like a place that I can stay a while. And, I like people I don't mind staying a while with. |
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One of Russo’s companions, Kate Lane, discusses how writing marathon groups increase her sense of self and ownership.
I also think another major aspect of the marathon experience is community. I’ve written “alone” (which always implies isolation) and with a group and if I’m not gelling with a group I find it hard to break away and write on my own. Yet, I’m very aware of the difference in rhetoric here—on my own—which implies ownership and control versus the isolation implied by “alone.” I find that when I write with certain people, Carolyn and Michelle for instance, that the rhythms of my writing smooth out and I’m able to reveal dark/uncomfortable thoughts more easily—which probably speaks to my friendship with them more than anything—but it’s interesting to see how rhythms work and how imagery reappears through a group’s pieces over the course of a day. |
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Internal Places: The external stimuli of a NOWM coalesce finally in the writer’s mind, a location unto itself that can be in sync with its surroundings or opposed. Passive recipient, active respondent or producer, the mind of the marathoner stands in a multiple relationships with the external. The passive/active opposition that marathons produce inside can result in Zen-like moments of quiet in loud places, in withdrawal, in epiphany, and in mad rushes of thought. The internal center of the writer’s self can be the place for observation, inquiry, memory, meditation, and imagination—all of which can be found in marathon writings.
Tracy Ferrington discusses how the mind, if unable to interact with external stimuli, can inhibit marathon writers. When I was going through some terrible times—divorce, career crisis—my writing did not result in any satisfactory product. But I urged myself (in writing) to continue writing my way through the marathon, to keep going no matter how many false starts and dead ends I hit because I was loving being with other writers and listening to them read their stuff, even though I was not able to produce anything coherent. During one of these times, I turned to fiction writing because my own life story was a wreck at that moment, and I was able to take what the FQ offered and fictionalize it. |
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On the other hand, when the mind is in sync with the street, epiphanies are possible, like novelist Bev Marshall’s below. Her piece represents many that begin with an external place (Bourbon Street), only for observation to lead to memory, meditation, and imagination. Marshall is transplanted like Hemingway, who in A Moveable Feast discusses how writing in a Parisian café “transplants” him back to youth in Michigan (5).
11:15 A.M., Bourbon Street. An octogenarian lady holds aloft a pink and white umbrella. It’s not raining, but we all know sun darkens Southern ladies’ skin. Here she comes now; 5’10” red stilettos, raven hair piled high on her head. “New Awlins ladies, them Creole babies.” She struts and the dark man with cornrows emits a low whistle. |
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In recalling a particular NOWM experience at the Columns Hotel, Michelle Russo notes how her unfamiliar physical surroundings, which contrasted with her familiar writing group, influenced her ability to call upon distant memories. As she observes, the act of writing as well as sharing also connects the writer to place, and vice versa.
The most memorable writing marathon experience for me was the marathon with three teacher consultants from the year I completed the Institute. I was with people with whom I felt comfortable. I was in places where we felt comfortable. And it made for a far more personal experience. We each got to pick our own kind of location; one where each of us wanted to spend some time writing. Carolyn's choice was at the Columns Hotel in the Garden District. Off to the right in the hotel is a little nook with a stained glass window and small pews. The place made me feel calm, it made me feel peaceful, and it provided a quiet opportunity to write. That round, I wrote about my sister marrying for the wrong reasons, marriage in general, the Catholic guilt associated with Church weddings and vows--all very personal, all of which I shared with my companions. Like most marathons, I felt like I could share anything with my group, but more specifically, the place called up memories about my own wedding, brought up ideas about tradition in my family, and my unsteady feelings regarding Catholicism. All this from a place that I had never been. I guess that's what I think the beauty of place comes from—because of the kind of writing I do—I appreciate the beauty of a memory that place brings back. That particular marathon really gave us each a piece of one another, both through the places that we chose and the writing that we shared in those places. |
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Communal Places: While the opening location establishes the sense of community that inspires the day’s writing, the closing location celebrates the writing, writer, and community.
While Roman Keller writes that “the very essence of what the writing marathon is and what it does” concerns “spontaneous opportunity,” his reflection below suggests that those opportunities can be attributed to the NOWM being a kind of location that writers are inside. It was a marathon in New Orleans, staying on the second floor of the Richelieu. It was the morning of the second day and I made myself a cup of coffee, even though I am not really a coffee drinker, but it seemed like the thing to do. I stepped out onto the balcony with my cup of coffee to have a cigarette. I was looking down and watching the street cleaners scrubbing as much of the previous night away as they could and laying down that lemon scent. I looked up and across to whatever building it was across the street. I have no idea what the building was, what it once was supposed to be, or what it was being used for now, but it struck me all at once that that particular building could be nowhere else but in the French Quarter of New Orleans. If not for the fact that I was on a writing marathon, that I had been writing all the day before, that thought would have been all that came of that sight. I would have gone back into my room, finished my coffee and went about whatever my business might have been. However, I was on a marathon, so I rushed into my room, grabbed my journal and a pen, pulled a chair up to the doors to the balcony and began to write [a] poem. I can't help but think about the poet that wrote it. He only existed for about the 20 minutes or so that it took to write it. He hasn't been back since. But for one brief shining moment, in the dull sunrise on that balcony, someone else came into being. I didn't want it to happen. I didn't plan on it happening. If someone would have told me to write some poetry during the marathon, all that would have come out is crap. I don't claim it to be a great poem, or even a good one, but I love it. If I had to give it a name, I'd have to say the writing marathon is about spontaneous opportunity. The chance to truly be a writer. The writing marathon had not officially begun that day, but that poet decided he was gonna write a poem, and I am truly thankful that I was there at that particular morning, at that particular place, and at that time and place I wasn't a teacher, a brother, a son, a friend, a colleague, a boyfriend (though all those things play their part). I was a writer. |
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In her essay “The Never Ending Marathon” found in an NWP Quarterly article on marathons, Tracy (Ferrington) Amond describes heading home in afternoon traffic and finding that she must pull off the road to eat and write hours after her NOWM ends. Unable to stop writing, she wonders “if I’m perhaps on some kind of adrenaline rush that needs to come down” (7). Like Keller, who entered the NOWM even before it began, Ferrington confirms what many marathoners sense: that there is something place-like about the NOWM itself and that being in “it” has an effect on writers like being in a shared location.
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Conclusion |
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Besides finding ways to hold NOWMs in our classes, how else can the NOWM’s thinking impact writers and teachers? Obviously, college teachers could pay more attention to the importance of place in writing; expand the kinds of places students write in and about; and be mindful of the components that contribute to a writer’s sense of place (external, internal, communal, and invisible). Also, we could determine ways to integrate the principles underlying the NOWM into our traditional classes. If we know that enjoyment, community, choice, and spontaneity motivate writers on a NOWM, how might we better infuse those elements into the learning environments we establish for our students?
Also, helping students to identify themselves as “writers” rather than “students,” identifying ourselves as writers, and writing along with our classes could produce a sense of community that would change the nature of our classroom as place. Once that is done, stepping outside to write together is easy. Probably the most distinguishing characteristic of the NOWM is that it is about the writing act and the writer, not the writing product (though astonishing products often result). Most of our writing in school and in the publishing life is about product. We teach our students the so-called writing process: draft, revise, polish, edit, and when that is done, they have supposedly learned to write. What they have learned is one way to write. There is an entire world of writers—and enjoyment in writing—that this academically defined process does not tap into. But the NOWM does tap into it. We might call it “writing for the sake of writing.” Writing for the moment. Writing for the immediate audience. Writing as the foundation of other writing by peers who respond directly to our thoughts in their own writing. Writing as the experience of a moment or place. Writing for the self. Or as Robert P. Yagelski calls it, “Writing as a way of being.” None of that necessarily puts a paper in a portfolio to be graded, or a book on the bookshelf to be re-shelved years later in a used bookstore or shipped to Goodwill, or recycled to become cardboard boxes to contain books shipped to Goodwill. My point: the NOWM is all about the writer and the writing act, and enjoyment of the writing act, whatever it produces. In that sense, it is subversive, and nontraditional—probably one reason it keeps attracting writers. Perhaps all we need do to learn from the NOWM is to trust in our best instincts as writers and teachers; to question some traditional assumptions about writing, writers, process, and product, and place; and then to go out and write like we’ve never written before. |
Click here to download a printable PDF with Works Cited.
Click here for a handout on the New Orleans Writing Marathon.
Click here for a handout on the New Orleans Writing Marathon.
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Richard Louth is the Director of Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project and Professor of English at Southeastern Louisiana University. Recent journal publications include work in Research in the Teaching of English, The Journal of Experimental Education, Journal for College Writing, Strategies for Technical Communication: A Collection of Teaching Tips, and The Bulletin of the Association for Business Communication. He also has fiction and poetry published in Louisiana Literature. Books: How to Teach Freshman Composition and Collaborative Technical Writing: Theory and Practice.
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