writing

After Reading Always Apprentices

Initial Thoughts: I thought I’d like this book because I often like texts that come from The Believer. As I started to read, I thought the book was going to stink due to idle banter. There are some not-good conversations in here. When I didn’t connect with a conversation, I skipped ahead to the next [...]

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Are You Talking to Me? Dad Starts Off The Mushroom Hunter

“Tell me about this trail,” I said to my dad. We were at France Park, just outside Logansport, Indiana. I’d driven 700 miles over Easter Weekend 2012 to film Dad while he hunted morel mushrooms. The park used to be a rock quarry, and now it’s filled with water and used for fishing, swimming, and [...]

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Dear Reader,

Ever since a former professor of mine introduced me to the idea that writing floats on a sea of conversation, I’ve thrived on the energy that is derived from interacting with others who care about stories and the teaching of writing. I’m a writer and filmmaker who teaches in the Institute For Writing Studies at St. John’s [...]

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To the Students: An Invitation to Twitter

Dear Writer, Twitter can be used for much more than publishing to the world what you are having for dinner. There’s a metaphor gifted to me from a former professor that goes like this: writing floats on a sea of conversation. Twitter is often about conversation. It’s great for making professional connections, accessing information published [...]

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NCTE 2012 Handout: Twitter in the Writing Classroom

Dear Colleague, I use a metaphor gifted to me by a former professor to think about my professional life. It goes, Writing Floats on a Sea of Conversation. In the fifteen years I’ve been in writing classrooms, I’ve come to believe it’s important for me to help students navigate all of the conversations they are [...]

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Would you vote and tell me about your Twitter use?

his post is for anyone who thinks they might want to try out Twitter, or perhaps, anyone who could use a set of instructions to pass along to students. The handout to my instructions are here, or you can just read them below: Consider if you’d like for people to know who you are on [...]

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Who Will the Students Follow on Twitter?

The idea is that my students will follow tweeters within a topic that interests them. This worries me in that I’m sure I’ll have lots of Yankee fans who will automatically want to follow the team’s outfielder and frequent tweeter, Nick Swisher. I don’t object to students following Swisher, but as far as the class [...]

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Twitter in the Classroom?

Depending on how many people you follow on Twitter, it could be impossible to keep up with Tweets during a real-time discussion. Imagine a screen with fifty or so Tweets, updating every ten seconds, and only about 20% of them being from students in the class.  In order to organize the students’ Tweets, we used [...]

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My Top 5 Movies, Ben’s, and a Request for You to Vote

Changing your life, going to grad school, entrepreneurism, and all-time favorite movies are the topics this week. I’ve got a new partner, Ben Atkinson, a former student of mine from over ten years ago. After a stint as a molecular biologist, Ben went back to school for an MBA in Marketing & Entrepreneurship from Indiana University. He [...]

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Podcast: How Did I Learn to Write (a film script)?

Working from notes I’m going to use for a panel at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, during this podcast I talk about how I learned to write, how I try to teach writing, and how a person might be able to get something going when it comes to the business of writing, screenplays, and film. [...]

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