Mostly dazzling

I've just spent some time doing my homework for today's class, and have been mostly dazzled by the work many of you are doing.

Patrick already alluded to this haunting image that Eugenia posted recently, but it's worth mentioning again (she really has an eye for capturing powerful moments without overplaying her hand and slipping into sentimentality or absurdism, which I gather must be much more difficult to do than it appears). Meagan and Morgan, meanwhile, are smartly (and sometimes playfully) mining their workaday lives for insights into our orrdinary world and everyday selves. I often imagine scenarios that account for students' absences from class, but Lisa (aka Subversive Sistah) has given me perhaps the most vivid one yet: sitting in a Lehigh Acres smoothie bar with a flat tire (plus, thanks to the post's title, I've been singing Madonna's "Who's that Girl" all morning now). And Christine is rapidly proving that it's still possible to write interestingly about ubiquitous topics like pop culture and entertainment (and I still heart Christine's blog title).

Perhaps the most rewarding part of this latest spin through some of your blogging is seeing how gracefully many of you are managing to make class assignments and homework look natural ... as though it's just another day at work in the blogosphere. I realize the schedule you're on with the syllabus can seem regimented and artificial for a medium that thrives on the spontaneous and what one might call an off-the-top-of-my-headism - styles that can be sabotaged if they're forced too hard, I know. But sometimes the prose that seems the most effortless is actually the "gift of screws," as Dickinson (in a slightly different context) described the difficult process of distilling thoughts into words.

If you find yourself chafing at this or that part of the classwork, take it as a sign that you're being pushed out of your comfort zones - an inevitability for all of us who have yet to attain the status of The Perfect Writer. And since you know the torture won't last forever, you can use the pressure productively, safe in knowledge that this too shall pass but that when it does you'll probably be a better blogger (and writer in general) for the discomfort.