I can’t tell you how many students of mine have said, “I want to write this novel, short story, poem,” but I don’t know if I’ll ever get it published. And I can’t say enough, don’t worry about that while you’re writing.
Worry. Robert Frost once said that once it’s written, a draft of a poem can be worked [...]
Entries from February 2008
February 22, 2008
In Praise of Mistakes
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Because I’ve been deeply involved in reading Eric Maisel’s wonderful book, Fearless Creating, I’ve been thinking a lot about mistakes. Failure. Blowing it.
In order to succeed as artists, and in order for our students to succeed, we must feel the freedom to take risks. Taking risks often results in failure. Just creating can be taking [...]
February 18, 2008
Reading Grants, Writing Grants: What I Know
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I spent the weekend at one of the tables above, reading Continued Funding Applications (hereafter known as CFA’s) for the National Writing Project, a thirty plus year old federally funded program to enhance the teaching of writing in American schools and offer teachers a professional network in the process. It was an [...]
February 15, 2008
A Visual History of Creative Writing or, Why I love my students
In my Teaching Creative Writing course, a senior seminar, we spend the first few weeks talking and reading about the history of higher education and the history of writing and creative writing with that landscape. It’s a lot of history, a lot of names, dates and places to remember so before we move on, I [...]
February 14, 2008
Valentine’s Greetings
That’s all. Just Happy Valentine’s Day. Which I view more as “tell your friends and family you love them day,” rather than the romantic stuff –not that there’s anything wrong with that
Anyway, I’m working up some interesting writing and teaching writing posts from all my various activities in the last week or so. Coming [...]
February 10, 2008
This one goes out to all the junk drawer people. . .
You know who you are. Got a junk drawer? Or two? Or three? Or four?
Bella Dia can tell you how to organize them here.
Wish I could write more but I’ve been reading National Writing Project Continued Funding Applications all day the last two days and writing response letters. As fascinating as that is; and it [...]
February 6, 2008
Winners announced, Tornadoes devastate
We had four sets of prizes from the AWP Bookfair to giveaway. And the winners are:
Tim Sisk
Monda Fason
Cindi Hoppes
Cindi Hoppes
Congratulations to the winners! I’ll try to come up with another giveaway whenever I can.
Cindi, please email me with your address. I have everyone else covered.
You may have heard that my home state, as well as [...]
February 5, 2008
Of books, birthdays and debriefings (from AWP, that is)
We returned from New York yesterday, after three flights. FYI, three flights is AT LEAST one flight too many, especially if you don’t like to fly.
Well, it happened–I went over the luggage weight limit. I had 39 lbs to work with but ended up with 66. This means I picked up 55 lbs worth of [...]
February 3, 2008
As AWP Turns: Fourth And Final Day
“I never knew that writers existed in crowd form.”
Martin Amis, reading at AWP 2008
Snippets from the day’s meetings:
4 Truths of Writing (According to Gail Scher)
Writing is a Process
Writers Write
You don’t know what you’re going to write until you’ve written it.
The only failure is not writing.
What creative writers bring to comp teaching (according to Lad Tobin)
Extensive [...]
February 1, 2008
As AWP Turns, Day Three: You’re The Boss of Your Poem!
With really young people, the teaching strategy is obvious: get out of their way.
Philip Levine
The K-12 Pedagogy workshop was a great way to start the day. Various writers in the schools programs across the country weighed in on the best way to step into a classroom and teach as a guest. I liked the rules [...]
