It doesn’t matter

“... why am I completely incapable of putting non-verbal marks on a page so they do the same? What neural channels are so blocked that my ducks don’t just look wonky, they look like scribbles? Why does eye-mind-hand work about as well in me as I contemplate a teacup or imagine a tree, as it does in my two-year-old nephew?”

and

“This must be what a lot of real beginner-writers feel. There’s stuff in their head or before their eyes which they yearn/burn to get down on paper. And when they try? It reads like scribbling. Awkward, ugly, incompetent, even incomprehensible. The one writerly skill I’ve always had is the capacity to bend words to my purpose (I just had to learn everything else about writing fiction). So I’ve never really had the feeling that the words in my hands won’t do what my mind wants them to. Now by analogy I know how it feels, and as a teacher that’s a lesson worth its weight in red biros.”.Emma Darwin, It doesn’t matter

All teachers should have something they do that ‘doesn’t matter’ and that they have to learn from scratch. That’s me and my piano, Darwin and her drawing. Then we can understand students better. What’s your thing that does not matter?

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