Grab your Demons by the Neck

I suggest you stalk your demons. Embrace them. If you are a writer, especially one who has been unable to make your work count or stick, you must grab your demons by the neck and face them down. And whatever you do, don’t censor yourself. There’s always time and editors for that. (Lerner, 2000)

Betsy Lerner in The Forest for the Trees, encourages “The Ambivalent Writer” to find the real reason they write. Writers who do extensive research and read broadly in the face of a deadline are called – procrastinators. Learner describes ambivalent writers as those too frightened to share their emotional truth. This writer is stuck and sadly that writing may never stick.

Lerner speaks the truth with a mentor’s heart. She says we write because we are haunted, bothered, and uneasy in the world. Writers suffer from excessive feelings and must bleed on-screen to find motivation – the reason they write. Nobody has to read this first vent, but it is part of the process. If you do not connect with your own heart – you will not connect with anyone else’s. There is enough writing out there for the head. People want writing for the heart. This explains the reason Creative Nonfiction is so popular . They want history, biography, and science in story form; they want narrative to matter.

Recently while watching Book TV on CSPAN,  I was mesmerized by Rebecca Skloot discuss her book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. She writes about science, a topic I am not normally interested. She was talking about a woman, known to most medical researchers only by her cells, the HeLa cells. The author tells Henrietta’s little known story:

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the effects of the atom bomb; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

I would have switched the channels if they had told me the story of the women in their books that changed their world of medicine. They wrote science as narrative. I wanted to read this science book and know more about Henrietta Lacks. Rebecca Skloot allowed Henrietta’s life touch her own and it touches our heart. Skloot does more than write a textbook about cancer cells, she tells a

Henrietta Lacks 1940s

story she that haunted her about a poor black woman. “Doctors took her cells without asking. Those cells never died. They launched a medical revolution and a multimillion-dollar industry.”

 

Writers carry around demons. Some of those demons are emotional, some are physical, some are spiritual, some are just stories that won’t go away – they haunt us and taunt us to deal with them. Writers are gifted with the opportunity to reach around and grab those things by the neck and wrestle it into words.

A wise graduate professor suggested that before we write anything else, that we deal with the elephant in the room. My Creative Nonfiction class has been a profound journey. It has forced me to look deep into the eyes of my demon and decide if I want to keep doing this writing thing. Why would anyone want to go through the agony of digging into the foundation of your soul, scaffolding your sentences so others can safely see what you are building? Then submit to the final humiliation – exposing your grammatical disability and giving your editor the power of life and death over your work? Why bother? That’s the question every writer must ask and answer. In that answer – you will find your motivation to write.

Henrietta Lacks 1940s

Words that can Change the World or a Piece of it

More rhetoric from Professor Michael D.C. Drout:

I want us to think about the different ways that speech can change the world (using) the Speech-Act Theory. The fundamental idea behind Speech-Act is just what the name implies: Speech is not just the communication of information, but also a kind of action that people perform and that therefore has social as well as communicative implications.

He goes on to use simple examples. A baseball player strikes out. Until the official – the umpire says it is out – it does not change the game. A fan can yell, “OUT!” but that does not change anything.  This illustrates “performative.” The speaker or writer can change worlds by using the right  performative words. Someone using performative does something as well as says or writes something – they change things.

For example, someone may try to seem to make a promise (which is a performative action) when he or she really is just giving information (which is not always performative). A promise is performative because after it has been made, a whole variety of expectations and obligations are now invoked.

Telling someone that you will promise to do something is not the same; nor is making it look like you have promised when you have not.

This is a powerful rhetorical thought. Changing someone’s world by things you say or write is a powerful tool – use it with care. The way we treat people at work or at home is the most basic way we use performative rhetoric. You do not have to be writing a speech or an essay or even a blog to change someone’s world forever. You can destroy someone’s self-esteem and career direction by the words you choose. Speaking the truth and nothing but in conversation, might damage your listener or reader. My husband simplifies this by saying, “You can be a blessing or a curse – you choose.”

Once while working with a group of women as the teacher, a woman said to me:

“You know by the way you teach and write – you have changed lives – I can not say I have ever done that for someone else. That is a powerful gift to have.”

I must humbly admit that this person was not complementing me, she was warning me. She was upset with me and wanted to let me know that I had power in the words I used or omitted.  She was right. Words once spoken are seldom forgotten. Forgiveness is obligatory, but if the words were performative in nature, they can do damage forever.

Our words can change an opinion, they can encourage and uplift. They have the same power to wound or damage. Words. Write and speak responsibly.

Rhetoric in the Political Season

I am looking forward to our rhetorical assignment in 6000 class. The timing is perfect as we are up against an important election this fall and the rhetoric is flying everywhere. I am thinking I want to take an op-ed piece that I totally disagree with and find the rhetorical fallacies.

I have found an additional source on rhetoric. Professor Michael Drout has the unusual skill of making boring English topics and making them lively and practical.

Michael Drout

The Modern Scholar is a series of online downloadable course with audio, a free PDF and even a test. Drout has a lively and fresh way of discussing everything English – grammar, literature and rhetoric.

His points are clear and easy to follow. In the book, A Way With Words: Writing, Rhetoric, and the Art of Persuasion, Drout provides an easy way to understand rhetoric and how it applies to real life.

Michael D.C. Drout is an associate professor of English at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. He teachers Old and Middle English, medieval literature, Chaucer, Fantasy, and science fiction. Drout says:

“We tend to think of “rhetoric” either as something bad and manipulative (when we discount speech as “just a bunch of rhetoric”) or as something elevated and perhaps overblown, but in fact rhetoric is simply (and complexly)the art of using words to change the world.

The word “rhetor” means “orator” or “teacher,”and the art of rhetoric was taught in ancient Greece for public purposes: convincing and inspiring one’s peers so that they would take courses of action you believed to be wise.

Don’t be a Cassandra

Drout further encourages us not to be a “Cassandra”.

In ancient Greek literature, Cassandra tricked the god Apollo into giving her the gift of prophesy. But as a punishment, Apollo cursed Cassandra to beright always but never to have anyone believe her. Cassandra thus exemplifies the rhetorically deficient person: She knows what is right, but she is unable to convince anyone to do anything about it.

I do not want to be a Cassandra. How about you?

Logos,Ethos, Pathos

Drout gives us a good way to remember the important rhetoric elements of logos, ethos, and pathos.

You can think of the three pieces, logos, ethos,and pathos, as logic, ethics, and sympathy (the root words are recognizable).

Fallacies to Play within Political Analysis

My son, who agrees with me about most things political made a comment that kind of made me feel good, but also made me say, “Hmmm.”  We were discussion political issues when he said,

” Mom, you should have a talk show about politics.”

Maybe I should. I know for certain, I need to understand and identify some of the Logical Fallacies. Some of the examples of these logical fallacies are mine and may contain rhetorical errors and thus another kind of logical fallacy. Please do not automatically assign Argumentum ad Hominem to me!

• Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc. This is a fallacy somewhat related to asserting the consequent. This is a hard one to avoid. This is assuming that the converse of a true statement is automatically true. “The economy is failing, it must be George Bush’s fault. The war in Iran was a victor, it must be Obama’s presidency.”
• Denying the Antecedent. People incorrectly assume the invese is true. Inverse takes a true statement and puts NOT on both sides.  “If the economy is not failing, it must not be George Bush’s fault. The war in Iran was not a victor, it must not be Obama’s fault.”

• Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc. This fallacy is when a writer assumes that because something came after something else, the first thing caused the second thing. “Gore was in office during the birth of the internet, thus Gore invented the internet”.
• Petitio Principii (Begging the Question). This fallacy is abused by newspaper columnists according to Professor Drout. This means you have asked the other side to concede the main point in the argument. A simple example:

If we are arguing about what to eat for dinner, you say, “just to speed things up, can’t you at least agree that we won’t eat seafood?” so that we can move on. But if I wanted to eat seafood, asking me to concede, for the sake of argument, that we won’t eat seafood, is begging the question: asking for me to give in preemptively.

To be fair and balanced...

An red flag for this fallacy:the use of an adjective or adverb to perform all the logical work in the sentence. When politicians campaign on the platform of eliminating “wasteful spending,” they are in fact begging the question. Everyone is against wasteful spending; there is no need to have an argument about it. The real question (which has been begged here) is which spending is wasteful and which is not. Therefore the word “wasteful” begs the question by trying to get you to agree that whatever spending the politician is against, you’re against too. You’ll see that this fallacy is related to the enthymeme: It assumes that you share the enthymeme with the speaker even when you don’t.

• Attacking the Messenger: Argumentum ad Hominem

Argumentum ad hominem is probably most commonly used today in attacks on people’s intelligence: Candidate X is stupid; therefore his policies must be bad. Note that “candidate X is stupid, therefore we should not elect him” is a reasonable syllogism (with the enthymeme of “we should not elect stupid people”), but this says nothing about the policies the candidate is advocating.

• Tu Quoque.

An example would be “famous actor X says that population control is a good idea, but he has eleven children.” Famous actor X may be a hypocrite, but that does not address the merits of the idea of population control, whatever they may be. The tu quoque fallacy is probably the most common in all of political discourse.

Red Herring (Ignoratio Elenchi—Irrelevant Thesis). Because tu quoque focuses on the hypocrisy of the speaker, it distracts the hearer or reader from the real issues. That is the same general idea of the red herring, which is an attempt to change the subject from one in which the speaker is losing to one in which he is likely to win.

Other Logical Fallacies

• Sweeping Generalization (Dicto Simpliciter).
• Appeal to Ignorance (Argumentum ad Ignorantiam).
• Plurium Interrogationum (Too Many Questions).
• and many more…

Interviewing and Intimacy

Interviewing someone for a feature story is unnerving. I had to interview my subject for our 6000 Issues and Research class earlier than was on the syllabus. I did my research, prepared the questions, contacted her “people” and prepared for a phone interview. I rigged the phone with my Scribe Pen that would record our conversation and printed my questions in LARGE print with s p a c e between the lines.  (My questions are below)

She called. We talked. Something was not quite right. I learned, after the fact, how the next interview will be better. I was reading a text used another MAPW class (that I could not fit into my schedule) called, Telling True Stories from the Neiman Foundation at Harvard University School of Journalism. An interesting essay by Isabel Wilkerson, “Interviewing: Accelerated Intimacy” pointed out where my interview with my author could have been better.

Accelerated Intimacy

Wilkerson describes seven phases to an interview that will allow writers to get “beautiful narrative stories.” She suggests that the subjects must be comfortable enough to share anything. Wilkerson goes as far as to call this interaction between subject and writer a “relationship.”

Isabel Wilkerson expands and interesting onion metaphor:

“People often compare interviewing to peeling an onion. Though it’s a cliché, the metaphor is instructive. Picture the onion. Its outer layer is dry and brittle. You tear off the outer layer and throw it away. The next layer is shiny, rubbery, limp, and sometimes has a tinge of green. You won’t use it, either, unless it’s the only onion you have. You want the center of the onion: It is crisp and pungent and has the sharpest, truest flavor. It’s the very best part. It requires very little slicing because it’s already small, compact. The size and quality are so perfect that you can just toss it right into whatever you’re making. The same goes for the interview process. The first thing out of a source’s mouth is often of little use. It’s the outer layer. Whenever we sit down with a person, we want to get to the center of the onion as fast as we can. That’s accelerated intimacy.”

The Seven Phases of Interviews

Informal guided conversations are recommended and not formal interviews; being formal places unnecessary barriers between interviewer and interviewee. Here are the seven phases to an interview as suggested by Wilkerson in Telling True Stories:

Phase One: Introduction

The person is busy and do not have time to talk. They want to be rid of you as soon as possible.

Phase Two: Adjustment

You are adjusting to each other. You ask the prepared questions to start the conversation and you wonder if you are getting what you need to write your interview.  The subject is wondering, “Why am I doing this? How long is it going to take? I do not want to talk to this person.”

Phase Three: Moment of Connection

You find a connection to accelerate the intimacy needed to peel the layers and get to the good stuff. Many interviews are cut off before they get to this phase. You may have a quote, but the first part of an interview is rarely the best. Remember that being interviewed is hard and the subject must get themselves together, sometimes this takes longer than the time it takes you to ask your first questions. Sometimes you need to ask again in a new way, come at the same questions at a different angle.

Phase Four: Settling In

Things are starting to feel comfortable and you both are enjoying this short-term relationship.

Phase Five: Revelation

This is the point where your source will feel comfortable to reveal something real and true. The subject will be surprised they said it. This is a turning point in the interview, a moment of trust that will help the writer get what is needed.

Phase Six: Deceleration

As things wind down and you bring closure, the source may not want it to end and tell you more. Listen with your notebook closed.

Phase Seven: Reinvigoration

At this point, the interviewee may make the greatest revelation of the interview. This is the center of the onion.  Use this moment, it is rare and fleeting.

One final point Wilkerson makes is that we must maintain humility when we interview. We must “understand the enormity of what our sources are doing when they talk to us. Sometimes they don’t even realize it.”

Re do

If I could redo my interview with Tori Murden McClure, A Pearl in the Storm, I would have attempted immediate intimacy. This is an easy thing for me to do in conversation with almost anyone. I was too formal and very nervous with my subject. I would do it different the next time, I would be more comfortable and make my interviewee more at ease.

Here are my questions from my notebook:

From your book, A Pearl in the Storm, I saw important reading was to you. With weight and space at a premium, you took your books

You took your books on your boat when weight and space were premium. You said:

“You wouldn’t give up your books. The written word is the connective tissues. Without knowledge freedom suffocates.”

What are you reading now?

We used your class in our summer reading class and Professor Melanie Sumner suggested we look for the way you used mixed genre. In your book you used adventure, history, romance and memoir.

Why did you use so many genres to write your story?

You purposefully waited several years after your second trip rowing across the Atlantic

Why did you wait so long?

What memory devices did you use to recall your story?

How long did it take to write your story, once you started?

You had to abandon your trip the first time because of a hurricane.

If you had written your story, before your second rowing trip across the Atlantic how different would your story had been?

When you were thinking about writing about your adventures, you asked your uncle how you should write it. Your uncle suggested you write a “romance” to tell your story of your explorations, “the greatest stories in your life are about romance.”

What did it mean that you found romance out there in the middle of the ocean – alone. Your finance was on the shore waiting for you. How did you discover romance alone?

New position as President of Spaulding University,what are you writing and what will your next book be about?

God is in the details or is it the Devil? And Prose goes on and on

Sometimes when I read a book, I can’t figure out if it is the content of the book or the voice of the author that turns me off. The content in Francine Prose’s book is beneficial for the graduate writing student, but the author is annoying by the last chapter.

Details and Gestures

Prose discusses detail and gestures in great “detail.” The author of Reading like a Writer, demonstrates with expertise in literature how important these aspects in writing can be used to tell your story. Well-chosen words used sparingly can alert the reader to plot and character. On the other hand, words used wastefully will lose readers. Simple details and cliché-free gestures will move your story and keep your readers’ interest.

The Prose Problem

I am afraid if I had Francine Prose for a writing class, I would drop. Her arrogance is revealed by her “voice”. She exposes herself with those “big” words she uses. Her motivation is uncovered by the way she arranges her sentences. I don’t like her voice. Her attitude does not resonate. I just don’t like her. She embodies everything I loathe in English education – snobbery.

I may be wrong, I may have not read carefully enough. I certainly have not put a dent in her “Must Read Immediately” list. I am all about reading and encouraging writing students to read to write better, but we could use a better spokesperson.  I was encouraged that Chekov humbled Prose, but she could use a few more trips on that bus. And her description of the people in the bus station – arrogance and elitist dripped from every detail and gesture she used to describe her surroundings. Even the act of reading, People Magazine was a display of disdain. Prose is not in love with literature as much as she is in love with her own voice.

Prose has great advice for writers, but this writer has trouble getting the message from someone who thinks so little of her reader to lecture. How about a little respect Francine?

Characters and Dialogue: “Well al-ight then.” Character Speak

Francine Prose in Reading Like a Writer has two separate chapters discussing developing character and dialogue. I will combine the two concepts, because I began to see how they were related. Prose demonstrates through classical literature how characters are fleshed-out through dialogue: “In these scenes, both Austin and Eliot manage to establish several complex characters at once, partly through narration and partly through drama and dialogue that allow us to observe the characters interacting.” (p135)

Prose exposes her first writing lessons. She was taught to improve and cleaned up her character’s dialogue. “Unlike us, they should say what they mean, get to the point, and avoid circumlocution and digression.” (p143) Prose confesses that this sanitized dialogue is colorless and wooden. Much better was a writing assignment she did that required eavesdropping and transcribing. In this assignment she discovered what is being said and what is not being said: text and subtext.

I love the character “Ruby” in Cold Mountain. Her mannerisms and language combine to show us the personality of Ruby. Her take-charge personality came through along with her emotional deflection. When it was getting too emotional, Ruby would say in her strange Appalachian-way, “Well, a-ight then.” That tiny piece of dialogue reveals Ruby. Here are some other gems:

Ruby: [about her father] Oh, he’s so full of manure, that man! We could lay him in the dirt and  grow another one just like him.

Ruby: My daddy – he’d walk forty miles for liquor but not forty inches for kindness.

Meet Ruby

Experimenting with dialogue, I use my best friend Ella as a model. She is a wise and talented woman with some strange country-phrasing. I have actually collected her phrases for years. Phrases like “snid bit” or “snatch you bald-headed” are on the list. I want to introduce, Emma Leigh, a very countrywoman with strange speech and a depth of life-wisdom that rivals that of a Ph.D.

Who Cares? Narration according to Francine Prose

That is my biggest fear when I write, that I will write something not worthy of reading. Why write another sentence that someone would rather not read?  Francine Prose offered a practical suggestion in her book,  Reading like a Writer, that maybe a solution to boring our readers. Prose suggests we write narrationwith the reader in mind. Narration should be directed at someone; who we are telling the story is as important as how we tell the story. (p 86)

Writing with your reader in mind, may encourage us to skip over parts of the plot that are unnecessary. Thinking about someone glancing at their watch or their phone waiting for you to get to your point will cause me to edit my words. My sons are good indicators of when I need to write the story for the listener. Painfully honest, my boys will interject, “Get to the point, Mama!”  Francine Prose says,  “…it forced me to confront the painful question of whether what I was telling was actually a story or merely, say, a rumination.” (p. 86)

In memoir, the narrator is not necessarily the writer. In our Creative Nonfiction class, the author of Writing Memoirs points this out.  Sometimes a memoir requires the memory of another person to tell a complete story. I had to use my sister’s memory to tell my story, “Watching.”

While writing my first exercise, I knew would be read to the entire class, I was obsessively conscious of the fact that other writers would be listening. If they were like me, they do not have patience for 22 sentimental ramblings. I tried to respect my class members and got to the point and conserve my words. Here is the result:

Watching

The world was watching Vietnam become a war in the summer of 1965. Americans were focused on President Johnson as he gave them Medicare and Medicaid. But my mother was distracted with preparations for the weekend Fourth of July party and my third birthday.

Buffalo, New York was never hot enough for air conditioning, and old farm houses built-in the 1800s were not equipped for sweltering summer days.  The troubled property on Route 16 in the Aurora Village was an adventure-filled place for the Moser kids to explore:dark wooded places, large lush lawns, and dangerous structures. In that household of 7, soon to be 10, the kids scattered across the acreage of the Seven Pines looking for something cool to do. Slipping outside with my siblings, I made my escape to the Picnic House.

The Picnic House was an open-shelter with brick grills, built-in cabinets, a glass-bottle Coke machine, and an old Frigidaire refrigerator. The refrigerator was only plugged in for weekend parties to store macaroni salad, condiments, and Kool-Aid.

In the bits and pieces of a developing mind, I remember patches of playing with someone(someone real or imagined), who I thought was my “friend.” We were playing picnic and making hamburgers with mustard. I loved mustard. My “friend” said,

“We don’t have any mustard.”

I love mustard. I went to the refrigerator and struggled with the locking door, but no mustard – it was musty and hot inside. My “friend” told me to be the mustard.So I got in the refrigerator and shut the door. That was the last thing I remembered.

When the door closed it locked. It was 1965, years before refrigerators were redesigned to open from the inside. There was no escape for a child yet to be three.

Ellen carried the weight of being the oldest daughter in a large family with a mother unable to deal with her responsibilities. Ellen was my 9-year-old sister and my savior on that hot July day in 1965. After being blamed for not watching me,she searched harder than anyone. After a couple of trips to the Picnic House, she decided to open the refrigerator.

Forty years later, Ellen still remembers the sight of her baby sister curled up in a ball,her powder-blue sun suit pulled off, and golden curls soaking wet. The next-door neighbor, a volunteer firefighter, rushed me to the village doctor who pronounced me lucky.

“Five more minutes and she would have been a goner.”

What does a young child remember of a near tragedy? I do not like small spaces. I still love mustard. I live with gratitude that my older sister found me. I am resolute to live with purpose, because though my mother was not watching over me, someone else was. I feel protected by an abiding unseen guide. Oh and one more thing – I choose my “friends” more carefully.

Words, Sentences, Paragraphs, Oh My!

Reading for the writer tells us “how to” write, whereas an editor or a workshop tells us “how not to” write. Reading beyond what we “like to read” is important because good writing transcends genres. Writers have to read differently – with a teachable heart looking for things we can apply to our own writing.

“Writers learn their craft, above all, from the work of other writers. From

Reading Like a Writer

reading. They learn it from immersing themselves in books.” Maria Arana instructs writers in The Writer’s Life. (Arana) Francine Prose in her book, Reading like a Writer suggests, “A workshop can be useful. A good teacher can show you how to edit your work. The right class can form the basis of a community that will help and sustain you. But that class, as helpful as it was, was not where I learned to write. Like most- maybe all- writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books.” (Prose) Reading widely and inclusively exposes the writer to good diction and sentences that transcend genres. A well-written passage can be isolated in all styles of writing; the well-read writer will have many teachers.

Writing is done one word at a time, one sentence at a time, line upon line, building point of view and a story. Reading as a writer requires an analytical eye being conscious of word choice, sentence formation, the voice and the message of the author. Paragraphs are still a mystery and to write a good one is better caught than taught. The catching requires reading many good writers. Paragraphs are personal and as varied as the “voice” of the writer.

Words
We learned to read word by word and somewhere along the way we are taught to read faster by scanning phrases. Reading passages, word by word, causes the writer to soak and steep in the rich beautiful descriptions and elegant prose of writers like Pat Conroy. In The Prince of Tides, Conroy employs economy of words: “The only word for goodness is goodness, and it is not enough.” (Conroy, The Prince of Tides) We can learn by reading writers as they put each word they write “on trial for its life.” (Prose)

Sentences

In Hemingway’s Paris memoirs, The Moveable Feast, we discover that he was influenced by many writers. He spent time reading other authors and commented on them in his memoir. Whether intentional or not, Ernest Hemingway left a wealth of advice to writers. He tells us to stop writing when we know what comes next. He shows us how he does not think about the story when he is not working. The most profound and most profoundly unexplained precept we learn from Hemingway is this:  “Write the truest sentence you know.” (Hemingway 20)

We learn from him by reading his words – line upon line that writing is a joy. Hemingway’s knows how to write a good sentence. His simple unadorned sentences display his ability to observe the world and simmering it down to one central truth. Hemingway suggests that when we focus on the “one truth thing” that we are on our way to writing what is good. Cutting out the superfluous and unnecessary is the key to a successful sentence.

Hemingway was also quoted as saying, “When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.” (Hemingway) Sentences describing what a character says can make them real. Two of my favorite characters in literature are Ruby in Cold Mountain and Idgy in Fried Green Tomatoes. It is their resilience that inspires and entertains the reader; it is the descriptive sentences that bring them to life. In my work, Ichabod, I wanted to bring to life another strong Southern woman I call Emma Leigh. She is like Ruby in Cold Mountain who speaks in simple phrases like, “Well, all ite then.”  I began collecting sentences from my close friend raised on very old southern phrases to give Emma Leigh in Ichabod a persona expressed from her sentences. A sampling of those phrases are: “I slipped and became unpeeled!” and “I eit just a snidbit.” The sentences of dialogue show that Emma Leigh is Southern but not stupid. Good sentences will create real people for your readers, not characters.

Paragraphs

Francine Prose’s discussion of paragraphs was obtuse. At some points she gives us guidance with guidelines and then yank them away. Prose gives us room to breath and grow as writers by suggesting that paragraphs are as individual as our writing voice. The non-claustrophobic style of Francine Prose frees the writers; She does not micro-manage our writing process.

Writing careers and what I want to do when I grow up

The Bureau of Labor Statistics confirmed what I had suspected about the future of writing jobs Their report projects job growth from 2008 – 2018. Cross referencing the information about writing with Post-Secondary Education positions, the numbers support my suspicion that finding work as a writing instructor/professor in the next few years will be good. Work for freelancers is even more promising as companies outsource writing, editing, and graphic design. The factors influencing the increase in hiring include: demographic changes, digital media, and the growth of community colleges.

Demographic changes

Enrollment in postsecondary schools will rise with 18-24-year-old entering college between  2008 and 2018. In addition, adults are returning to colleges and technical institutions as a result of the failing economy. Therefore, Postsecondary teaching positions are “expected to grow by 15 percent between 2008 and 2018, which is faster than the average for all occupations.”

Growth is due to enrollment of traditional and nontraditional students and retirement of tenured professors hired in the “late 1960s and 1970s to teach members of the baby-boom generation.” Competition for tenured track positions will be stiff, but more community colleges and smaller institutions are hiring adjunct and part-time instructors. An English major with a Ph.D. will have better prospects of landing a full-time professorship.

Digital Media

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Online publications and services are growing in number and sophistication, spurring the demand for writers and editors with Web or multimedia experience.” Writers and writing instructors who can adapt and grow with the new media will have the required skill sets for the future in academics and as freelance writers, designers and marketers.

Recently, while researching for a column, I came across the following statistics:

It took 38 years for radio to reach 50 million users; television reached the same number in 13 years. The internet reached 50 million users in 4 years – Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months. Social media is not a fad; it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook daily.

Digital communications are here to stay. Generation Y (born 1976-2000) is not sitting in front of television but in front of computers. My twenty year old is more comfortable communicating on chat or texting in the next room than talking to me in person. Instead of fighting this new normal, helping this generation write better is the challenge. We are writing more because of the internet and social media, we need to write better. Current and later generations need to communicate effectively online; I want raise the level of online writing excellence

Community College Growth

With a weak economy and the rising cost of higher education, community colleges and technical institutions have grown in the last few years. A graduate of a Masters of Arts in Professional Writing will be able to gain experience as an adjunct instructor at these institutions. These smaller institutions do not want to hire Ph.D.s and the cost associated with that level of education. Many smaller colleges are even offering tenured-track positions to master’s level graduates.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics confirmed what I had suspected about the prospects for writing jobs from now until 2018. Cross-referencing the information about writing with Post-Secondary Education positions in English, the numbers support my suspicions that finding work as a writing instructor/professor in the next few years will be good. Work for freelancers is even more promising. The factors influencing the increase in hiring include: demographic changes, digital media, and the growth of community colleges. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos066.htm

When I grow up
When I am through with my graduate and maybe a Ph.D. program, I would like to work with college student to help them to write better online. I want to stay current with all the latest digital media and trends and merge them into my syllabus. I would like to help traditional and nontraditional students to acquire digital writing skills that will prepare them for a changing job market.

MAPW Research and Issues 6000

Beginning Research and Issues 6000 class for my Master in Arts of Professional Writing degree,  I am attaching my writing resume and a communications major. I feel like a “hack” being interviewed about writing, but here it is. Notice how I toy with my favorite writing tool – The Sharpie.

Lisa_M_Russell_Writing_Resume