If Not Teaching, then What?

The question I've been having with my recent introduction to Rhetoric and Comp. is the same question I got my entire life as an English major: "What are you going to do with this if you're not a teacher?" My answer, of course, was always: "Well, I'm going to write."

Not to jump too far back, but I've been writing since before I could spell. At 6, I shut myself into a walk-in closet with a little waitress notebook I swiped off my mom and I rewrote fairytales. My most memorable one was the Three Little Wolves and the Big Bag Pig, and ultimately it was almost the same but shorter, because the little wolves ran and told their mom on the big bag pig. That was the end of the story. It was a homage to my single mom and the belief I had that she was all-powerful. Of course back then I simply questioned why the little pigs didn't tell their mom on the wolf, and so I rewrote it to make more sense to my 6 year old brain, but I like to think of it as more than that.

At seven, I wrote a thank-you letter to a family member and signed it, "Your Friend, Maddi. The Writer." He keeps it framed in his house, and I walk past it every time I go over, even now, 16 years later.

Before the first grade, before being introduced to writing in any real way, I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And surprisingly, that's never changed.

At 12, I joined an online community. Since then, I've written over 21 complete stories, with between 68,000-300,000+ words each. Two of them will hopefully become published novels.

At 18, my brother Jorden, a tattoo artist, gave me a birthday present in the form of a quill-pen tattoo that he designed. At 21, I added "Create" to my other forearm.

I double-majored in English and journalism, and excelled at and loved both. My freshman year of college, I became a writing tutor and stayed there for the next four years. I wrote for the college newspaper. I published poetry in the campus literary maganize. I headed NIU's chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, and organized a 7-person trip to the national English convention across the country.

As a graduate student, I'm teaching writing as part of First-Year Composition and one of my previous journalism professors asked me to help him with a book he's writing.

So I guess, it's not an exaggeration to say that writing is my life. And while I'm good at academic writing and I enjoy teaching, my passion is books. Novels. So coming into Rhetoric of Prose, I hoped to find actual prose and to be able to discuss what choices influenced the conception of it.

I'm interested in what influences novels. I'm interested in movements like #OwnVoices, which advocates multicultural characters in YA that are written by multicultural authors. It's a pushback against the white-washing of characters and authors. It claims both that young readers should see themselves in the characters they're reading, but also that authors of all backgrounds should be represented on the best seller's list.

I'm interested in the belief in the Bechdel Test, and the current push for women characters that aren't simply created to move the plot along for male characters. I'm interested in creating a writing community that values all people and all types of writers.

I'm interested in the notion that genre fiction and fanfiction are valid forms of writing; that literature isn't the end all be all for the world of books.

I guess I'm interested in learning if these type of things have a place under the umbrella of "Rhetoric and Composition." I'm interested in reading the works of authors who also care about these things. I'm interested in adding my voice to the conversation. In adding value to the conversation. This is my passion - it's gotten me through my education - and I hope it will materialize in Rhetoric and Composition.

I guess my goal now is to discover all of this within Rhet/Comp.