Time for reflection and repentance for not sustaining this conversation. Since the Fall Semester resumed, I have been mostly responding to news stories that outraged and intrigued me. Today I will try to  pick up the thread I dropped back in July: the joy and satisfaction of writing.

My text is Zechariah 4:10 – “Who despises the day of small things?” This verse drops into the midst of chapters on the apocalyptic visions of Zechariah, so I am not even sure how it sits in context. But it seemed to address the problem of writing for fun, rather than work.  “Small things” are the subjects we can write about daily, without addressing the “big things” of school reform, pronouncements of the Secretary of Education, and the failure of the “Dream Act.”  I have been guilty of dealing only with “big things” in this blog for the past six months. For this, I repent.

“Small things” are the topics of “expressive writing,” as I commented in the summer. The writing is done only for the satisfaction of writing, not for ulterior motives. It is both the most self-indulgent and the most rejuvenating writing we do. As I wrote in July,

With the proliferation of e-mail, texting, and blogging, this daily writing becomes more and more recreational, something that gives the writer pleasure in the act itself. She is not concerned with work accomplished by expressive writing, because she feels satisfaction in merely writing (July 19, 2010).

My point was that expressive writing was more inclusive and egalitarian than transactional writing and could be expected to get more people writing and feeling the benefit of writing.  I called this the horizontal axis of school reform: the axis that expands the field of writers without severely regulating what they write. I had traced this horizontal growth from the early 1970’s with the writing and research of Peter Elbow and James Britton.

The institution of the Common Core State Standards in Language Arts would be a more vertical trend in school reform, since words like “rigor”  and “high quality first draft text under a tight deadline” proliferate throughout the document.  Obviously the very notion of standards has a vertical momentum to it. Far be it from me to deny the vertical path to glory.

But my theme for 2011 will continue to be the “day of small things,” because I believe that ultimately better writers are motivated by more writers, and that writing can be fun as well as hard work.  The best analogy I can give is how water boils.

Water boils when all the molecules are in furious motion and not a moment before they reach 212 degrees Fahrenheit.  They start bumping each other and pretty soon they have the urge to evaporate. Then we get steam, a very productive form of the water molecule.   So productivity comes from individual and communal energy. The horizontal axis expands and the vertical axis rises to glory.

I am not claiming that the laws of physics pertain to literacy, but I am claiming that development of literacy is both horizontal and vertical. The small things we write about daily constitute the horizontal axis and should not be neglected.

Do not despise the “day of small things.” My New Year’s resolution and a word of encouragement for teachers of writing in 2011.