There is no one right way to be a writer. Let’s start there. I don’t care if Brandon Sanderson accidentally writes whole novels while on vacation. I don’t care if Stephen King gets up early to write. I don’t care if you know someone who writes 2,000 words every day. They aren’t you. The importantContinue reading “Building a Writing Habit that Works for You”
Tag Archives: write
Picking Perspective In Fiction Part 1: The Grammar
One question I see a lot in writing groups is “Which perspective should I use?” Frustratingly, the asker never gets a straight answer, no matter how much detail they provide. That’s because this is one of the fundamental questions for an author to decide, and really no one can decide it for them. It’s alsoContinue reading “Picking Perspective In Fiction Part 1: The Grammar”
Writing Software For Beginners: No Need to Specialize
In a writing group I joined recently online, the question of writing software for beginning writers came up. There’s a lot that beginning writers worry about because they haven’t found what works for them yet, but I don’t think software needs to be one of them. Not because there aren’t a lot of choices ofContinue reading “Writing Software For Beginners: No Need to Specialize”
Teaching and Assignment Design In The Age of ChatGPT Part 3: Coda
The quarter has ended and I’ve had a chance to reflect on what happened since I last reported on teaching AI in my classroom. It got weird at the end of the quarter. Some teachers would be alarmed. I’m actually encouraged and comforted. As I reported before, I taught lessons in which my students explicitlyContinue reading “Teaching and Assignment Design In The Age of ChatGPT Part 3: Coda”
Framing Matters: Teaching and Assignment Design In The Age of ChatGPT Part 2
In my last post, I talked about how I explored what ChatGPT could and could not do with the assignments I give my students. Now I want to talk about another little “experiment” I did with my students themselves that showed so much about how we receive AI and what we perceive as good writing.Continue reading “Framing Matters: Teaching and Assignment Design In The Age of ChatGPT Part 2”
Sneaking In Time To Write
Most writing advice for adults includes setting a routine that blocks out time for writing. If your brain knows that on Wednesdays at 10 am after you’ve taken the kids to school and the dog for a walk and gotten your second cup of coffee, it’s time to write, then you can pretty reliably expectContinue reading “Sneaking In Time To Write”
One Lesson Plan, Two Results
Stay tuned for the end-of-term life update below the main content! Conflicting Lesson Results One of the most frustrating things about teaching is just how unpredictable a lesson plan can be. If you’ve been teaching the same content to different groups of students for any length of time, you’ve probably had this experience: You carefullyContinue reading “One Lesson Plan, Two Results”
Paragraphs, Chapters, and Other Breaks
When I was in elementary school, I couldn’t figure out paragraph breaks, no matter how many times my teachers tried to explain them to me. My paragraphs were always too long or too short, evidently. It was always the same feedback. Paragraph breaks are a higher level of separation. Above that, chapter breaks. Above evenContinue reading “Paragraphs, Chapters, and Other Breaks”
Punctuation and Visual Rhythm
Recently I was proofreading a novel draft of mine, and I came across this sentence: Anne advanced; he retreated; she cornered him against a wall and pounded his shoulders. Now, I love me some semicolons, so it’s no surprise that I would somehow manage to get two into a single sentence in the first fiveContinue reading “Punctuation and Visual Rhythm”
Reading for Saturation
When we teach college writing, we’re generally asking students to write in genres that they may have never read. Why, then, do we expect them to be able to write these successfully? Genres are, as I have often observed, slippery things and can’t really be completely understood through explicit instruction. Sure, scholars can and oftenContinue reading “Reading for Saturation”
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