teaching, education

Virginia Woolf on a writer’s education

October 31, 2010 | 7 Comments

“. . . [A] writer’s education is so much less definite than other educations. Reading, listening, talking, travel, leisure—many different things it seems are mixed together. Life and books must be shaken and taken in the right proportions.” “Let us always remember—influences are infinitely numerous; writers are infinitely sensitive.” And: “If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.” “A writer is a person who sits at a desk and keeps his eye …

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For teachers & kind souls elsewhere

October 26, 2010 | 9 Comments

“Ideals and opportunities and social theorizing are just fine, but if you must understand only one thing, it is this: a warm hand and words whispered into the ear are what we want. Paths that can be seen and followed and walked upon are what we most need. “And in the end, the thing that feeds us, no matter how tenuous, is what we will reach for.” This excerpt is from Ghostbread, a memoir by Sonja Livingston. University of Georgia …

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Can journalism schools teach narrative?

October 17, 2010 | 6 Comments

Narrative nonfiction is risky; it has to be grabby, telling, and true. To bear analytical weight, it has to be almost frighteningly shrewd.—Jill Lepore, The New Yorker (September 6, 2010) What is journalism? How does one teach this thing you have so defined? I haven’t an answer to either question, but that places me in good company because I think most journalism schools haven’t had a clue, at least concerning the best way to educate their students as writers. With …

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Dinty W. Moore: revise & discover

September 9, 2010 | 3 Comments

“Too often, in my opinion, beginning writers focus on what point they want to make, what the message will be in their writing, the ‘theme’ or ‘thesis,’ whereas the seasoned and successful writers that I know are always after what they can discover. Being too sure of what you want to say from the outset can be a bad thing in writing—you just end up re-stating the obvious.” “If you want to be a writer, you have to love to write, …

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America’s greatest essay

August 29, 2010 | 3 Comments

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a very bad novel, having, in its self-righteous, virtuous sentimentality, much in common with Little Women. Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty.”—James Baldwin, “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” from Notes of a …

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Two great literary journalism archives

August 24, 2010 | 3 Comments

I’ve learned from other bloggers about two online archives of great nonfiction—mostly essayistic or at least personal, as well as reported, magazine articles. Kevin Kelly’s site KK has, under his Cool Tools category, “The Best Magazine Articles Ever,” with a “Top 25” list and extensive decade-by-decade hyperlinks. And Longform is where two guys post compelling long-form narrative nonfiction they’ve come across, both contemporary and historical. These are valuable resources for readers, writers, teachers, and students of creative nonfiction, especially at …

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Chautauqua Festival June 17–20

May 12, 2010 | No Comments

I visited the retreat in Chautauqua last winter for the first time, and it’s a magical place—an early twentieth-century intellectual spa and retreat where ladies and gentlemen discussed great ideas over tea in old Victorian houses and in stone amphitheaters modeled after Greek temples. The annual writer’s retreat there next month is worth considering, both for the atmosphere and for the workshopping. Each registrant works with one established writer in poetry, fiction, or nonfiction. In nonfiction this year: Jacob Levenson …

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