hope for the editorially socialized

I don't remember how old I was when it began, but while all the other kids were bouncing on booths and testing out their milkshake slurping volumes in Perkins (or insert your favorite 1980s family diner here), I was busy editing the friggin' menu.

My name is Amy, and I come from a family of compulsive editors. ("Hi, Amy.") Not only was menu editing a common activity during McDougall family outings while I was just a wee one (Yep, I know, it's hard to curb your jealously when imagining such a fun-filled tradition in action), but editing also became my concentration -- within my major of print journalism -- during college. Then, I worked as a staff writer for a biweekly newspaper in Minneapolis, where I answered to the editor's every wish. When I didn't understand her wishes, I'd consult my trusty AP Stylebook for the Ultimate Answers on language conventions (a.k.a. Spooner's "master plan of finite conventions" [158]).

Eventually, I felt tired and stifled. Tired from my dependence on this standardized and format-obsessed version of English, and stifled because I wanted to believe that good writing could -- and should -- stretch beyond and outside such traditional limits. It seemed that nearly every author I was drawn to was messing with alternative discourses and styles, so why couldn't I?

I'm still asking that question. Maybe this (597) is the perfect arena in which to experiment with new and unconventional ways of writing... Or maybe I'll just stick with what I know. Yep, probably that.

But I can still study and applaud writers who are bending the rules in innovative ways while I stay safe in my comfortable writing style, right? And I can be satisfied by simply "allow[ing] variation to flourish" among my students while I continue consulting my AP Stylebook on my own writing, yes? No. I mean, I don't think so. See, it seems like a contradiction to me. Aren't I sending a mixed message to my students if I say, "Hey! Welcome to my radical, inventive, and resistant classroom, where busting out of these bland ol' conventions is encouraged!" while I remain nestled in the bosom of Grandpa and Grandma Grammarian? (Not my real grandparents' names, but might as well have been.)

This disconnect -- between promoting, but not modeling -- alternative discourses is where I wish Spooner would've spent more time. He does touch on it (within parenthesis like these) on 162 when he says, "(I think it's fair to note that most of the folks here advocating alternative discourses don't normally write in any other than the prestige dialect of American English. But does that make them phonies, Holden Caulfield?)" It's a dig, of sorts, to his colleagues, but he makes an important point: Do we believe in the potential of alt.dis enough to explore it in our own writing? If we don't, or aren't, then should we be cheering on our students to go there? Further, how many students really want to go there? Lastly, I'm led to consider questions of power. Can't Spooner delve into stylistic experimentation with wild abandon partly because he lives within a set of inherent privileges (being white, male, and professional)? Isn't there more at stake for humble 101ers than a published editor-writer-scholar like Spooner? I know the answer, but I'm not sure what to tell my students about it tomorrow morning. Or the next. Or the next. Or the...

For now, I guess the best I can do is just to live the questions. And, when needed, I'll consult the Bizzells, Foxes, and Shroeders of the world instead of my AP Stylebook. Come to think of it, I don't even know where that old thing is anymore. See, there is hope.