12Writing - Workshops for Creative Writers and Teachers

One Teacher, Many Discussions: Fostering Independent Student Engagement

2012-01-11T08:51:00.000-08:00

How do we balance student engagement with the needs of teaching? How do we stretch the tight boundaries of classroom time? Here is one approach which uses online forums and pre-class discussion as a way to prepare students.

<--Proposal - Facebook Gallery: In the Classroom-->

Introduction: Cross-Linking Intellectual Discussion and Discovery

First, I'd like to thank CTLT for inviting me to present today, and to thank everyone here for listening.

In this presentation, we're going to consider a set of techniques used to encourage students to talk with each other in small groups both before and during class. We want to teach them how to select those ideas which appear to be the most relevant to intellectual discussion, and then test their thoughts within the wider forum of their peers. This pedagogy uses a combination of online tools, classroom structuring, and instructional modeling as a way to increase student interactions, allow room for mistakes, and illustrate the active process of intellectual inquiry. The ultimate goal is to ensure that each student personally takes part in the social act of intellectual discourse as preparation for future scholarship.

Originally, we were going to go through some examples of online discussions on Moodle, and then perhaps do some in-class rearrrangement so you could see these techniques firsthand. However, given the ready availability of online discussion platforms, I feel that it's more useful to talk about the general observations of how to run an online discussion than it is to go through the step-by-step process for a single platform. So, my apologies for the false advertising in the presentation proposal - if you do have questions about Moodle or other online courseware, I'd be happy to show you after the presentation.

Now,this presentation is somewhat multi-modal. You can find the complete text of this paper on my website, 12Writing.com, which you'll find on the handout. Additionally, you'll find a link there to a Facebook page which provides pictures to directly illustrate ways to manage in-class interactions. If I've done my work well, you will feel compelled to visit my website if for no other reason than to see the Lego-guy Darth Vader leading a classroom discussion with penguins and dinosaurs.

Part 1: The Participation Problem

The Curse of Consumer-Based Learning

In his article "Inventing the University," David Bartholomae describes the urgency students face as they attempt to take part in academic discourse. As he writes, a student:

"must learn to speak our language. Or he must dare to speak it or to carry off the bluff, since speaking and writing will most certainly be required long before the skill is 'learned,'" (606).

As part of the ongoing effort to introduce our students to academic discourse and "engage" them in Bartholomae's notion of the student-generated university, we have come to place great emphasis on the value of in-class participation. Yet given the constraints of classroom time, it isn't clear how successful the discussion-based model of teaching truly is. Part of the problem, I feel, is the tacit feeling that much of today's demand for in-class discussion is not driven butby solely pedagogical aims, but rather the new pressure to "entertain" our students. In her article on directed self placement, Leah Schweitzer warns that universities risk becoming "complicit" in fostering a consumer-driven educational model. In her eyes, the traditional approach to higher education "which assumes we have much to teach and students have much to learn" is under tension due to a serious economic reality: today's students are willing "purchase" their high-tuition college experience elsewhere.

At the level of the individual classroom, this pressure is most painfully felt through the course evaluation. As Schweitzer writes, "students' evaluations suggest they want to be entertained while they're learning and the value placed on that entertainment is at a premium."

image - How Would I Rate the Content of My Course Evaluation?

Thus, if we are to lead effective classroom discussions, we must balance the need to teach our students while holding their attention.

The Challenge of the Classroom

Currently, I teach composition to forty-six students a semester. I see them in two sections of twenty-three students for a hundred and fifty minutes each week, and they have the additional work of assigned readings, workshops, and projects outside of class. Now, if I run a class-wide discussion each day, this translates to each student talking for an average of six-point-five minutes per week. Now, this ignores the fact that I address the whole group for a good chunk of that time. And then there's the time lost for attendance and giggles and those questions for which there are no answers. Then we factor in the fact that some students are shy, and certain other students will talk for at least eight minutes a week.

I mean, can you imagine? A single student soaking up eight minutes of my precious classroom time? Over the course of a whole week? What do they think they're doing? Participating??

image - penguins talking

Given these tight constraints, it's difficult to differentiate the unprepared students from those who are simply shy. I'm sometimes embarrassed by how terribly I misjudge my quietest students - the ones who sit in the back, say nothing, and then turn in thoughtful essays which force me to reevaluate the material I've been teaching. The problem, though, is social. Students, like all of us, are afraid to make mistakes, especially in front of their classmates. As Grammy-Award-Winning violinist Joshua Bell explains, "No one tells you what to do if you completely flop at the beginning of a performance" (64) - yet the traditional model of in-class participation is setting up students to do just that, to fail in the beginning performance of their higher education. They are justifiably wary.

In my first semester as a creative writing instructor, I tried assigning grades for participation - I mean, if a student didn't manage those four minutes of in-class participation each week, you can't just let that go. You have to dock them points. You have to make them feel guilty about their lack of effort. You know, really encourage them to come back with an enthusiastic smile for next week.

image series - quiet student becomes sad student

Clearly, the traditional credit-for-participation model is dangerously arbitrary. Further, it does not allow students enough time to engage either with the material or with each other. As a result, students who are unprepared often slip by entirely unnoticed while many of those who are prepared end up muted by the more insistent voices of their peers. In writing-intensive courses, this means that students are primarily evaluated on their essays - works which they are forced to compose alone using personal interpretations which have been neither vetted nor challenged - until, of course, I hit their work with a red pen. It's little wonder that students develop writer's block - again, the fear of "first performance failure" is not only natural, but justified.

image - sharpie marker

I myself use a big red Sharpie marker in an effort to bleed the ignorance from their souls...

My goal in this presentation is provide techniques for leading in-class and online discussions which give students the confidence and practice to overcome these social barriers to establishing Bartholomae's university. These techniques take two central approaches. The first is establishing confidence within the classroom by helping students meet each other, reinforce each other's ideas, and hence foster an atmosphere of open discourse. The second aspect involves providing direction and modeling for the nature of this discourse.

In approaching this challenge, my goal has been to decentralize the learning activity without abdicating instructional authority. We can't simply expect students to learn from each other material they have never studied - instead, I challenge my students with questions and specific assignments which they answer by working together in small groups. In this way, they challenge each other with the variety of answers they find, and then I am able further guide their learning by asking follow-up questions of each group. Students are not simply taught the content material of the course outside the course - instead, they play an active role in their own learning.

Part 2: Online Tools - Preparing Students for the Task of Intellectual Discourse

By looking at the goals of intellectual discourse, we can consider how best to prepare our students for not only the classroom, but also professional and academic careers. By the time they complete college, students should be capable of:

Critical, in-depth reading of articles.
Preparing their thoughts before meeting with their colleagues to discuss important matters.
Sharing and considering multiple - and often conflicting - points of view.
Responding appropriately to the ideas and feedback of their colleagues.

In traditional pedagogies, we rely on outside readings and writing assignments to teach the first three of these essential skills - whether they're learning differential equations or European history, it's expected that students will manage the groundwork of learning independently. Classroom discussion is meant to reinforce content learning while somewhat introducing professional courtesy. In these traditions, we have two major tools for ensuring that students come to class prepared for the work of critical thinking. Quizzes can be used to ensure that students are at least reading the material, and written responses provide a direct measure of how well students "get" what they've read. However, both tools are limited to a two-way street - the individual student and the teacher. Except in group projects (which may or may not involve actual teamwork...) nearly all of the student-to-student interaction is limited to the physical space of the classroom.

This limited time alloted for in-class meetings doesn't allow us to fully explore course topics. It was never meant to. The current system of meeting for only three hours a week is built around the lecture. Even when students break up into groups, there simply isn't enough time for individual students to undertake more than a cursory discussion of the material - in a course with fifteen or more students, it's very difficult for the instructor to provide time for each student to adequately contribute to the conversation. It's even worse if the students haven't prepared for class. If they arrive at a lecture unprepared, they can simply listen and absorb content knowledge - if they're in small groups, then they have nothing to talk about.

I've found that the best way to address this problem is to extend the discussion outside the classroom using online discussion forums such as Blackboard, Moodle, and Facebook.

Many of you are no doubt familiar with Blackboard - whether it's a curse or a blessing, it's university-sanctioned. I myself prefer using Moodle, which is a public (and free) course management program which offers many of the same tools, and I find that it's more user-friendly for teachers.

Many of my students, on the other hand, don't enjoy having to learn yet another online tool...which should be ironic, considering I'm teaching students who were born the year that Al Gore invented the internet...on the plus side, there is nothing more priceless than hearing an eighteen-year-old explain that "Facebook is so annoying" and then ask "why do we have to use it every day for this class?"

I want to emphasize, however, that the choice of online forum is far less important than the implementation. I have found myself using Facebook more and more because students can have more of a back-and-forth conversation - they're notified when their classmates post replies. However, the shortcoming with Facebook is that the replies tend to be shorter, and I'm not convinced that five short replies can carry the same thoughtful consideration seen in a single well-crafted, paragraph-length comment.

Regardless of the program you use, here are some guidelines for how to get the discussion going:

Require specific, inquiry-oriented discussions.

One of the simple approaches to online discussion is to require each student to "post to the forum." This approach is prefaced on the idea that each student should have something to say. The problem, though, is that students sometimes don't know what it is they have to say. Worse still, they'llspend less time responding to each other. Rather than fostering discussion, this approach simply leads students to share their reading responses online - as a result, there is little need for them to even read the responses posted by their peers.

To overcome this, you want to make sure that each discussion has a purpose. Rather than asking them to "respond to Derrida," you could have them "describe the possible shortcomings of deconstructionism." The tasks should be difficult - the goal is to provide a challenge which cannot be fully answered by any single student using a fifteen-minute online post. At the same time, the instructions must be simple enough that students know what they are trying to do, even if they aren't sure just how to do it. Asking them to "describe ways to integrate postmodern thought in the classroom" might be interesting, except that they've probably never taught before and they are still unfamiliar with postmodern thought.

I mean, I know I'm still unfamiliar with postmodern thought, and I write essays on the stuff. Honestly, I've been trying to wash the postmodern off my face for several years now.

Be very specific about who will start the discussion.

Most students hesitate before initiating discussions in the classroom - they hesitate just as much online. For the first discussion, it makes sense for the teacher to start.

Now, starting a discussion is far more difficult than simply participating. Whoever starts the discussion needs to establish the priorities and tenor of the conversation, providing both appropriate background information and questions to start a line of inquiry. This is why I recommend limiting the online discussions to three or four discussions per class, and then rotating which students are assigned to begin each discussion.

Traditional classroom interactions actually provide a good model for how to coordinate online discussions. In the past, I've had students give oral presentations on the daily readings - this way, one or two students would present each day to kick-off the in-class discussions. On the plus side, each student was given a stage, and some students appeared more confident during their presentations than during regular discussions. However, it took quite a bit of time, which made it even harder for each student to respond to the presentation. A good alternative is the "online presentation," wherein each day the readings are introduced online by a designated student, and then students are required to post a reply. In this model, the presenter can post his or her write-up a couple days before the class meeting, and then students have time to read and respond to each other.

Remember, though, that the the focus must begin on the discussion's start. I grade my students on the quality of their online presentations, and then other discussion posts are simply graded on completion. Generally speaking, students will follow the example of those post first.

As an added bonus, your overacheiver students generally post their responses early, and they tend to be long and carefully thought out. This can intimidate some students who aren't as prepared, but it appears to also push them to write more. Unlike in-class discussion, the online forum has a "scoreboard" in the number of words written - students can tell at-a-glance when they aren't writing enough to keep up.

The online discussion should directly relate to the in-class discussion or other graded course material.

Students are very savvy. They know when we give them busywork. To encourage their thoughtful online replies, we need to reward their efforts by giving them space to elaborate on what they've learned and presented. This goes with:

You do not need to grade every word your students write.

If you're preparing enough venues for online discussion, it should be impossible to grade every word. It's not that your students are grading each other, but that they're using the online discussions as a place to prepare themselves for the graded assignments they'll prepare for class. They should be writing more words than you can possibly read.

This means that the online forums become far more decentralized than the classroom. This is why modeling is so important. When you grade and comment on the individual presentations, you are helping the students one-by-one as theybecome better online contributors. Students learn by example, and few examples are more effective than seeing their classmates fully engage the material.

Don't grade discussions, but do grade your students.

The caveat to not grading every word is that you must reassure each student that he or she can make progress. The online discussion and in-class groups are not a substitute for personal feedback from the instructor - instead, I see them as practice. By interacting with each other, students are better learning how to interact with you, their teacher. A five-paragraph paper is scary - it's less scary, however, when they realize how you've tricked into writing a page's worth of thoughtful online comments every week.

Part 3: Expansion to the In-Class Discussion

Naturally, I've run out of time. It is the curse of time and space: a seminar paper on then nature of student participation will itself leave little chance for participation, and I would like to leave time for my fellow presenters.

As I mentioned at the start of the presentation, you can visit my website to follow a photo gallery describing the in-class mechanics of multiple discussions. The website is at 12Writing.com, and you can find links to the specific articles on the handout.

Thank you again for listening.

References

Bartholomae, David. "Inventing the University," The Norton Book of Composition Studies, Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009.

Bell, Joshua. "Violinist Joshua Bell on the mind game of performing," interview with Kara Cutruzzula. Newsweek, 9 & 16 January 2012, pg. 64.

Schweitzer, Leah. "Accomodating the Consumer-Student." Composition Forum, Issue 20, Summer 2009. Web: http://compositionforum.com/issue/20/accommodating-consumer-student.php

12Writing: Write Your Inspiration

Student Engagement: Proposal for Center for Teaching and Learning Symposium

2012-01-06T14:37:00.001-08:00

One Teacher, Many Discussions: Fostering Independent Engagement Among Students Inside and Outside the Classroom

In this presentation, we'll talk about how to foster more discussion between students both inside and outside the classroom as a way to enhance classroom cohesion and further students's intellectual engagement.
CTLT Panel Description - Presentation-->

Fostering and Assessing Student Engagement
Location:
Track:
Format:Fell B
Thriving in a Climate of Assessment
Individual Presentation

Session Time:
2:00-2:50 pm

While teaching Introduction to Fiction and Poetry at Johns Hopkins and English 101 here at Illinois State University, I have used a combination of small groups, online forums, and writing workshops to foster environments where multiple conversations occur simultaneously. By having students post written work the day before class and then requiring typed feedback from their peers, I’ve found that students arrive at class better prepared both in terms of the content and the modes of discussion. This leads them to be more independent in their small groups, allowing more time for personalized instructional attention with each student. By working with smaller groups of students, I am better able to illustrate productive habits of critical thinking and constructive criticism while providing them the opportunity to continue these habits without supervision. In this session, we’ll use Moodle to demonstrate how to initiate effective online forums, and then move into the dynamics of enabling small group discussions without sacrificing the instructor’s role in modeling the modes of academic discourse.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Workshops: An ISU Writing Program Spring Summit Presentation

2012-01-06T14:20:00.001-08:00

Title: "Forty-Six Students, Sixteen Weeks, and Eight-Point-Nine Billion Genre Conventions: Using the Writing Workshop to Provide Personalized Feedback for Each Student"

Recognizing the limited time we have with our students and the multiplicity of written and multimedia genres, it's essential that we find effective ways to provide helpful feedback without limiting our own comments to preconceptions of specific genre forms. The writing workshop provides an ideal forum for the instructor to foster a class-wide conversation regarding the writing process and the specific composition decisions made by our students.

It's known that a well-organized traditional workshop provides the kind of audience feedback which can help individual writers better target their work, but we can go further by encouraging the writers to discuss their individual writing practices. Through this discussion, we can help students see the relationships between the writing process, genre choices, and the resulting product. In addition, the responsive nature of workshops allows a back-and-forth conversation which is often impossible through written feedback alone.

For this presentation, we'll look at the logistics of leading effective workshops within the genre studies model. Open-ended questions can foster student discussion, and specific questions regarding specific genre choices can allow instructors to highlight the rhetorical effects of a given work without becoming "arbiters of good."

This presentation with start with a brief introduction to the workshop process, and then we'll break into small groups to workshop a series of brief meta-documents describing different aspects of the writing process. Each group will spend approximately ten minutes considering their own thoughts on each short document, and I will rotate between each group to show how a single instructor is able to provide effective guidance for a large class. The meta-documents will describe approaches to constructive workshop discourse, formulating open-ended questions, the logistics of the rotation process, and ways to assess student participation. As in any workshop, participants will have the opportunity to provide their own recommendations for each document, offering suggestions and new possibilities for each aspect of the workshop process.

As participants will see, the combination of student-led and instructor-led small groups allows for simultaneous discussions within a confined space, the flexibility to address topics of personal interest, and the opportunity for each student to bring questions and comments directly to the instructor's attention in a more relaxed environment than is possible in a full-class workshop. This arrangement is ideally suited for the genre studies model because it allows the in-depth back-and-forth discussion necessary for students to consider multiple genre approaches in their work given the context of shifting audience perspectives.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Should I Share My Poetry and Fiction Online?

2011-08-29T07:23:00.000-07:00

It's the "Catch-22" of publication: you want to publish your work, but many publishers want you to have following before they'll publish your work. To get the following, though, you need to share your work online...but then it counts as "already published," and then you can't send it on to magazines or booksellers.(thanks to Luna S. for pointing this out!) Read on to learn how you can navigate this tricky aspect of self-promotion.

Many writers face this issue, especially those who are trying to publish poetry collections and novels. Usually, literary magazines are willing to publish individuals who don't have a large online following, so it's not as much of an issue if you're just looking to publish a couple poems or a short story. Magazines usually have an established audience, and they don't look to their submitting authors to also promote the subscription. Books by first-time authors, on the other hand, don't have an established group of readers. Before publishing any kind of book, most publishers want to make sure that they'll be able to make money, and they now look to the first-time writers to do much of the book promotion themselves.

This places a lot of pressure on unpublished authors. You want to share your work to build the audience before you attract agents, but you need to be careful not to take your own best work off the market. Once you've published a poem or story online for the world to see, it is considered published, and you will probably not be able to convince anyone to republish it for you. (And don't try to "sneak it past" a publisher by saying it's not published - when you sign a contract with a publisher, you are granting them first publication rights - you could actually be guilty of breach-of-contract if you post your work independently.) Basically, publishers don't want your online work to compete with the work they've just published in their magazine.

For myself, I recommend keeping your online postings and the work you want published as two separate entities. Sometimes I like to take my notes and "failed" drafts and post them online, and I'll use these non-publishable works to help build my following. Also, you don't need to only post using only your creative work - you can also build a following by leaving comments for other writers and providing tips on how to write. That's how 12Writing came about - I wanted to attract people to my own work without actually posting my work online.

However, there are times when you do want to share your creative work online, both to get feedback and to find people who are specifically interested in your poetry. With online forums, "published" means that your work is public domain, and thousands of people can read it. But not everything you post online is available to everyone. For example, if you publish something on your Facebook profile but set the privacy so that only your friends can see it, it's not actually published. There's a similar effect with some writing forums, but it depends on how large the forum is and how many people you're sharing work with on those forums. First, check to see who can view the work that's posted - if your work is visible on Google or can be viewed by a reader who's not a member of the forum, then it definitely counts as having been published. If, on the other hand, the forum is password protected, then you may be able to argue that the work you're sharing hasn't been published. However, if the forum is password protected, but thousands of people are registered for that forum and could read your work, then your work has essentially been published.

12Writing: Write Your Inspiration

Writing the Novel: Intertwining Plot, Conflict, and the Tapestry of Character Development

2011-08-09T11:57:00.000-07:00

Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Novels are complex creatures. They involve a complex weave of characters and events which must still fascinate the reader from the first page to last.

The key to unlocking your novel lies in integrating the personal conflicts of each individual character with the central conflict of the whole novel. The goal is to help the reader sympathize with your characters as they struggle not only to "solve" the core problem of the novel, but also as they try to face the dangerous facts of their own lives.

(more examples coming soon!)

The Central Conflict Drives the Story Forward

From the very first page, your novel should have a question that needs to be answered. It should be a relatively simple question - something along the lines of "Will Darth Vader and Emporer Palpatine Rule the Galaxy?" or "Will the Bennet sisters find suitable husbands?" The question should be simple because the you want the reader to know what your novel is about, and you want the hints of this central conflict to appear on page one of the novel - ideally, somewhere in the first paragraph, if not in the first sentence.

Click for more details on Crafting Your Novel's Central Conflict (coming soon!)

The Novel: It's About People

One mistake that many beginning novelists make - especially writers in genres like science fiction and fantasy - is to make the entire novel about the central conflict. However, novels themselves are not about that one main conflict - that main conflict is only present in order to provide unity and tension to the work. The novel itself is about people. It's about the characters inhabiting your pages and their responses to that central conflict. For a novel to be truly interesting, it must be peopled by fascinating characters, the kind of people who struggle to succeed in their everyday lives, the kind of people who will not have easy answers to the central conflict of your story. And each one of your characters will face his or her own personal challenges which appear unrelated to the main conflict of the story itself.

Naturally, these conflicts should be deeply personal. They should be the kind of conflicts that afflict ordinary people every day. For example, the Hero of the Galaxy will still have trouble getting her mother to agree to a nursing home. To make these conflicts especially real, use very specific details. Let us smell the bedpan odors of the mother's room and here the insistent buzzing of the heroe's "Time to Save the Universe" pager.

These personal conflicts should not have easy answers - if they did, they wouldn't be plaguing your protagonists through the whole course of their lives. Just because you own a transtellar frigate with photon deathpedoes doesn't mean your mother cares what you think about nursing homes. The uncertainty in the outcome helps build the tension to hold the reader's attention.

Click to learn about Personal versus Central Conflicts (coming soon!)

The Changing Situation Leads to Changes in Perspective and Outlook

As your novel progresses, your main characters will learn new details about themselves and the world around them. As this happens, their personalities and perspectives must change in order to keep up. This is a critical component of good storytelling - just as the novel is more about the characters than it is about the single conflict, a story about characters must be a story about change over time. We expect people to grow and evolve as they face new experiences - this is how we ourselves discover what it means to be human in the challenging and ever-shifting environment called life.

A Novel Chronicles the Changing Personalities and Relationships of Your Characters

These personal shifts in perspective lead to major shifts in the relationships between your characters. Over time, it's natural that your main characters will find new friends and discover new enemies - often, characters who appeared as a friend or an enemy at first glance will switch to the other side based on their own views of the conflict.

Ideally, we need to see the strain on character relationships from the very first page. The central conflict of your novel will hold a different meaning for each of your characters. For some characters, the "problem" isn't a problem at all. They may like things just the way they are. Other characters - usually your protagonists - will find this central conflict unbearable. They must "fix" the situation in order to survive. And then there are the antagonists, your "evil-doers" who are inflicting the core problem for their own benefit.

As the characters change their views, their relationships with one another will also change. If we examine Harry Potter's interactions with Snape and the Dursleys, for example, we see that the antagonists of The Sorcerer's Stone are seen as allies - whether willing or unwilling - by the time we reach The Deathly Hallows.

Click to see how Relationships Evolve Between Fictional Characters. (coming soon!)

This is the point where you want the deeply personal conflicts to play a role in the resolution of the single overriding conflict. It isn't enough that a character "fixes" the world - that character's personal problems should play a role in how he or she fixes the world.

Click to see how Personal Conflicts Affect the Main Conflict. (coming soon!)

12Writing: Write Your Inspiration

Do I Need an Agent to Publish My Book?

2011-07-25T16:03:00.000-07:00

The publishing world is changing rapidly due to improvements in technology and media. However, many facts of the literary landscape mean that agents should still be a relevant (and very important) part of your publishing plan.

Do you need an agent? Yes and no - it depends on where you are as a writer and what you want for your book. Read on to learn more about when and why you should find an agent. (Thanks to Joserie F. for asking this question.)
In the traditional publishing industry - before the internet and the expansion of "vanity" presses - you almost always needed an agent in order to get a book published. Many traditional publishing houses wouldn't consider a manuscript unless it was "good enough" for an agent. This is still very true today - if you want to publish via the traditional route, you should find an agent. An effective agent will know which companies to send your manuscript to based on genre and the personal interests of those publishers. Plus, agents are far more familiar with negotiating contracts than we (as first time authors) could possibly be.

Finding and Working With an Agent
In her question, Joserie asked if finding an agent is a good move. The short answer is yes - if you can find a good agent, you should. However, you'll need to make sure you've found a good agent who will help you progress as a published author.

First, make sure you find a reputable agent - an agent is there to represent you and your book, and a reputable agent will earn his or her profits only when your book earns a profit. Therefore, you should never accept an agent who wants to charge you money up-front. If an agent truly believes in your book, then that agent will help get your book published. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA.org) provides their Writer Beware list with danger signs of literary agents to avoid. Just remember: if an agent is charging the author, then that agent is not bringing in money from publishers, and that agent is not going to get your book published.

Now the tough part: finding the good agents. Nathan Bransford offers a very helpful guide to finding a literary agent. Note that it is an involved process - for many authors, finding an agent can take anywhere from months to years.

If you'd like more details, Give 'Em What They Want is a very helpful book which lays out all the steps to publishing your novel: pitching your manuscript, writing cover letters, and even how to summarize your novel.

Once you've found an agent, you're only halfway toward publishing your book. The next part involves successfully working with your agent - and this may mean a lot of work on your part. A helpful agent will read your manuscript and provide suggestions regarding possible changes you should make, publishers who may be interested in your book, and the potential for sequels. Even though your agent works for you and your book, true publishing success will depend on your working with your agent. The website Write a Novel Fast offers some great tips on What Literary Agents Look for in an Author.

What if I Can't Get an Agent?
Now here's the tough part: good agents are very hard to hire. It isn't that there aren't enough agents out there - there are many, many excellent agents. The problem is that there are so, so many authors who are also looking for agents to represent their stories. The typical agent may have hundreds of unsolicited cover letters, each one saying "Hey! Pick Me! I'm a good book! Really! Pick Me!!" It could take months or years to find an agent who is willing and able to represent your book. (Note the able part - there are agents who will charge you to "represent" your book. Don't go with them. See above.)

Back in the days before computers, this wasn't such a big problem - fewer people prepared manuscripts, and those who did usually only typed up one copy to mail out. Now, though, I could easily print and mail fifty copies of a 100-page manuscript in about three or four hours - and many authors do this. Or - worse still - I could spam an agent's e-mail inbox (note: don't e-mail an agent unless that agent specifically asks you to. If the agent does personally ask you to e-mail, then send that e-mail right away! [you probably have no idea how cool that is...unless it's one of those disreputable agents. See above.])

So if you're having trouble getting an agent, what do you do? First, ask yourself what you want from your publishing experience. If you are writing specifically for the sake of publication and "making a living," then figure out how to improve your manuscript and how to better market it to agents. Remind yourself that making a living off your published work is extremely difficult, and that it takes a lot of perseverance to make that dream happen.

Now ask yourself the really tough question: where are you as a writer? Have you been writing stories for years? Have your earned an MFA and/or published in several magazines? Then you have a track record in writing and you've received high-level feedback. You may just need to keep trying with agents. You may also try going directly to some publishers. Either way, you should keep trying.

What if you haven't been writing for very long? What if this is your first novel manuscript, you've never published in a magazine, and you haven't had the time to earn an MFA? Then it can be harder to evaluate your own work. If you can, you'll want to find other writers who can read your work and let you know how you're doing. You don't necessarily need an MFA or prior publication to be a good writer, but you do need feedback in order to see how readers (and agents) will respond to your work. If you can't find a local writing group, then I recommend finding an online workshop or writing group.

But Do I Really Need an Agent?
Short answer: no. No one really "needs" an agent today. Just look at Amanda Hocking, the self-published author who has grossed over $2 million on Amazon. Given the internet and social media, I think her story will become far more common in the years to come, but we aren't quite there yet. (At least I'm not - I haven't made a dime off self-publishing...then again, I haven't exactly made much off of traditional publishing, either. Any way you cut it, publishing stories and earning a living off your writing is a difficult business.)

There are a couple situations where you don't need an agent. If your writing is not very good and you know it's unlikely to be published, then don't worry about finding an agent just yet. (If you don't have a finished novel manuscript, then you wouldn't be able to hire a reputable agent anyway, but that's okay - we've all been there.) If you're writing a book that just for your family or just for the industry you work in, it might not make sense to wait the year-or-more it might take for traditional publishing. Yes, you'd have to pay for it, but you could get a novel printed and into your grandmother's hands in time for her birthday - and that might be worth every penny and more.

Now, let's go back to that beginning author...

No Agent Doesn't Mean Stop Working
Though many traditional writers, agents, and publishers (and some readers, too) are bemoaning the growth of self-publishing. Some have said that self-publication will hurt the overall quality of the fiction produced today. Others feel that it cheapens the writing process by robbing authors of appropriate payment - essentially, authors who should be paid for publishing are instead giving away their stories pretty much for free.

I disagree. As a barely published author without an agent, I see many ways in which self-publication can help your traditional publication in the future.

First, you don't need to wait for that first novel to come out before you start building your audience. Instead, you can use Facebook, Blogger, and other internet tools to share your work and build a fan base. (The fact that you're reading this is proof of that.) I recommend sharing a variety of stories and, most importantly, interacting with your fans. Let them get to know you. Let them see that you care about your work. Let them see that you care about their thoughts, and that you're looking for their feedback. Not only will they appreciate you as an author, but they'll help you improve your stories.

Next, you can earn some money through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). You need to build up your fan base, of course, and you'll want to make sure that you're selling stories that people are happy to pay for. But it can get you going.

While you're doing this, you can also market your short stories and poems to magazines. Every magazine you publish in helps certify that you are writing material that's worth reading.

Finally, everything you do to build up a fan base and sell your stories will help you land an agent and publish your book. Traditionally publish it, as in the publisher gives you and advance and you later collect royalties. From the agent and publisher's perspective, a writer who can command an audience without their help will be better able to sell books, and that helps their bottom line (and yours.)

Questions?
Please let me know if I can answer any questions, or if you have suggestions for this article. You can leave a comment below, or simply leave a note on our Facebook Fan Page.

12Writing: Write Your Inspiration

How to Write a Novel: The Quick Guide

2011-06-13T22:58:00.000-07:00

Writing a novel can bee an extremely difficult experience, and yet it remains one of the most rewarding experiences in writing. Public adoration aside, the sense of accomplishment runs deep.

To help you reach that, here are some tips on how to write a novel.

How to write a novel

Must strike a balance between planning and spontaneity

Requires a kind of daily mindset. Even when you are not writing by hand, you are writing in your mind. The characters are taking shape even as you dream. You must be careful not to expend all of your creative energy when you're away from the computer/paper. If you find yourself spending days and days on imagination and yet putting nothing on the page, then you may be losing valuable material.

Inspiration: Start Anywhere
Find the essence of your idea. What is compelling enough to make you want to write? Is it an eerie place? A gutsy protagonist? An unusual situation?
Jot this down, but you don't need to dwell on it.
Optional: write down why this idea is compelling to YOU, the author. Does it resonate with your childhood? With something you saw at work?

Planning: Start with Character and Conflict
Who is your main character? What does he or she want? What must this character do in order to reach that goal? And what are the obstacles?

Plot Points: Map Out What Happens
This should be just a very rough skeleton. Who fights who when? What makes the struggle interesting?
Be ready to adjust your outline depending on which direction the story takes.

Writing: Focus on Scene
For each of your plot points, you want to put us in the place of the events and into the mind of your protagonist. What does your leading character see, smell, and hear? What is he or she thinking? What are the loves and fears?

Tension: Focus on Information Control
You need to hook the reader. Provide enough information for the reader to feel "there," but not enough to know what's going to happen next. And this flow of information to the reader should closely match the flow of information to the lead characters. We feel the protagonist's confusion because it matches our own.

12Writing: Write Your Inspiration

Lead Online Writing Groups with 12Writing

2011-06-01T23:10:00.000-07:00

Image: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Are you ready to encourage fellow writers in an upbeat atmosphere? Would you like a place to share your own work and receive feedback? Looking for experience teaching a writing workshop? Then consider joining 12Writing as a Writing Group Leader.

Becoming a Group Leader

Benefits - Requirements - Application

12Writing: Expanding to Help More Writers
As a teacher, I am continually faced with the challenge of finding enough hours in the day. Unfortunately, I am not able to provide the writing help to as many students as I would like. But I feel that every writer deserves feedback and support. My own progress as a writer wouldn't have been possible without the encouragement of my many caring teachers and friends. My goal is to pass this on to other beginning writers.

The Writing Group versus The Workshop: We Encourage More Writing
A writing workshop is an intensive form of writing group centered on close critique of student work. To be truly successful, most workshops require the presence of a more experienced teacher who understands the deeper nuances of writing. Unfortunately, not everyone has the time (or the inclination) to take part in this level of critique.

Our writing groups are meant as an intermediate stage between writing alone and taking part in a full-fledged workshop. You will provide feedback on work by your fellow participants, but these comments need only be your brief initial reactions. Simple advice along the lines of "I like the twist at the end" to "I'd like to know more about the protagonist's childhood" can provide a writer with good ideas for further development.

Overall, we simply want to encourage our fellow group members to read each others work and to keep writing. Practice makes perfect, and the writing group is meant to inspire more practice. To learn more about the role of writing in groups, see my article on Traditional vs Freewriting Workshops.

Benefits of Leading a Group with 12Writing

Although we are not offering any paid positions at this time, there are many intrinsic benefits to leading a writing group with 12Writing. We aim to create a welcoming and productive atmosphere for all writers, and I believe that every group leader will develop a better sense of his or her role as both a writer and as a teacher.

Develop Your Skills as a Teacher
Although a writing group is not a full-fledged workshop, you'll still be providing the encouragement and coordination to ensure your group members are active participants. These are crucial skills for teachers in all fields, and I'll provide feedback and suggestions to help you make the most of your experience.

Set the Tone for Your Group
Do you enjoy short stories? Or would you prefer working with novelists? Each writing group will be tailored to your interests. You can chat with potential group members in advance to let them know the kind of group you'll be leading, and you'll be free to invite any friends you like. We want each group leader to feel a personal investment in his or her group, and you to have the freedom to lead the kind of group that best fits your interests.

Receive Feedback on Your Writing
As a Writing Group Leader, you aren't just a leader, but also a member of the group. You will be posting your own stories and poems alongside your fellow group members, and they'll be expected to comment on your work just as you comment on theirs.

Requirements of Writing Group Leaders

Although Goup Leaders are unpaid associates of 12Writing, each of you will be required to adhere to the following standards. These standards are put in place to ensure that every participant has the opportunity to grow and develop as a writer. Group Leaders (and other writing group participants) may be removed from the their groups for failure to uphold the following:

12Writing Is an Equal Opportunity Organization
We do not discriminate based on gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, or sexual preference. All writing group participants are to treat fellow group members with dignity and respect.

We Provide Progressive, Supportive Feedback to Encourage Writers
Although some negative feedback is essential in a writer's growth, these writing groups are not the place to "perfect" a particular style. Every writer deserves the freedom to experiment in a supportive atmosphere, and the emphasis for these groups is practice. Although the writing groups are not full-fledged workshops, every Group Leader will ensure the groups are conducted according to the 12Writing Philosophy.

You'll Provide Weekly Updates on Your Group's Progress
I cannot be everywhere at once. Although I'll "check in" on each group to see how things are going, I'll depend on your eyes to see how everyone's doing. At least once a week, you'll e-mail or message me to say how the group seems to be going. This is also a great time to ask any questions you might have and to request specific feedback on how to make your group more active.

Ready to Lead Your Writing Group? Apply Now!

If you're up to the challenge of leading a group of writers, you'll first need to like our Fan Page. Once you're a Fan, post on our wall to request a follow-up interview. Tell me the type of writing group you'd like to lead with 12Writing, and what you feel are the most important aspects of a writing group. Links to any writing websites you're currently part of are also helpful.

Depending on the quality of your post, I may contact you on Facebook with additional questions. Mostly I'll be looking to learn more about your writing interests, the reasons you'd like to lead a writing group, and your long-term plans as a writer.

Provided your responses are thoughtful and timely, we'll go ahead and schedule an interview to be held via Facebook's instant messenger. During the interview, I'll ask questions about your personal thoughts on writing and and teaching.

The final step will be your taking part in our Facebook Group for Writing Group Leaders (a beautifully redundant name, I know.) This group will be geared toward providing a brief orientation to Facebook Groups and how we use them to share writing. I'll also be checking to make sure you have the time and interest to lead a writing group.

Because our writing groups are Facebook-based, the entire application process will be conducted via Facebook. Once you're approved as a group leader, I'll send you my e-mail and phone number so that you can contact me directly whenever you need. Plus, the Group Leaders Group will remain active, so you can always post advice and questions for incoming and experienced Group Leaders.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions. You can post a comment below or, better still, post on our wall at Facebook.com/12Writing.

12Writing: Write Your Inspiration

Motivate Your Students with Purpose-Driven Lesson Plans

2011-05-22T13:13:00.000-07:00

Image: healingdream / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Our students are now more distracted than ever. As writing teachers trying to hold the attention of our students, we compete with Facebook, Netflix, and the upheavals of the modern family.

To keep our students focused on our classes - and, more importantly, to keep them interested in writing - we need to give our students a reason to to study.

I once read that clarity of writing is a clear sign of clarity of thought, and I do believe there is some real truth to this. However, there are many clear thinkers who have never been taught to appreciate the power of writing. From lawyers who refuse to read fiction to engineers who see writing as a waste of effort, I've met some very intelligent individuals who are unable to express themselves on the page.

As a teacher, my own goal is to help every student become a writer. And I don't mean that my students all need to love poetry, or that they'll each need to publish in the New Yorker. I simply believe that every student should complete my course with the feeling that he or she can and should learn to write well. Whether it's writing e-mails to close friends or refining proposals for NSF funding, I want my students to see the importance of words in their lives. As an added benefit, students who believe in the importance of writing will also believe in the importance of your class, and this makes them better students. They will be more likely to complete their homework assignments and to approach you with questions.

Here are techniques I have used to instill this desire in my students.

Treat Your Students as Writers
Are all my students writers? Yes - of course they are. Any student taking my course is actively writing fiction or poetry on a weekly basis. They are all writers. Hopefully, they will continue to be writers long after they turn in their final portfolio.

To ensure this, I make sure to never put up the boundary of "I'm a writer and you're a student." Instead, I will often start my lessons with "As writers, we need to understand..." Now, I understand that it may sometimes be hard to think of your students as writers - sometimes, they will turn in paragraphs which are so convoluted that you'd rather stare at the wall for hours than try untangling the mess. But really, they are no different than we were at some point. Sure, I might have learned to write a coherent essay before some of my students could read, but I still remember that big red-pencil "C" I got on the first five-paragraph essay I ever tried to write. I can still remember my first journalism professor deleting half the sentences in an article I wrote - he then went on to explain that the remaining words "needed to be stronger."

Every writer starts somewhere. It is impossible to know who our students will be in five, ten, or twenty years. Whether they go on to six years of graduate school in fiction or choose a career in biomolecular engineering, they are in your writing class. They are on the road that has been followed by Stephen King, William Shakespeare, and Sylvia Plath.

Give Contemporary Examples of Successful Writing
It's tempting to think that movies and the internet have "ended" the "age of writing." This is, however, patently untrue. From e-mails to movie scripts, writing is still an integral part of our modern society. Lessons in setting, plot, and characterization help our students understand the world around them. By describing a room on paper, they learn which details are important in perception. By writing a coherent plot, they learn to understand and utilize causality in storytelling.

It is our job as teachers to reveal this to students. When discussing plot, I often reference blockbuster movies to illustrate the ideas of scene and climax. When assigning literary essays, I teach them how to structure a convincing argument - the kind of argument they might run across in one of those "Special Advertising Sections" of Newsweek. For a final project, I had one of my classes put together a Facebook Fan Page for writing - basically, I asked them to use writing to help others learn to write.

Writing, in my eyes, is more than simply placing words on paper. It's the art of ordering those words to convey compelling thoughts, images, and opinions. By teaching our students how to do this, we are also teaching them how to think rationally. We are teaching them to observe the subtle differences between individuals and to understand how disparate aspects of the world are interrelated.

Show How Writing Benefits Individuals in All Fields
You don't need to be a professional writer to benefit from writing well. I have had a few students who see writing courses as a waste of time - usually, they're planning on entering more lucrative fields in the sciences or engineering. What they might not realize is that funding for scientific research goes to those who can write the best proposals, and that individuals who are able to write clear and concise e-mails are better able to collaborate in the international landscape of modern research.

Share Your Experiences
Have you found ways of teaching that really help motivate your students? Please share them. You can either comment below or, better still, post on our wall: Facebook.com/12Writing.

12Writing: Write Your Inspiration

Learn to Market Yourself and Mentor Your Students with Cameron Herold's Double Double

2011-05-22T12:18:00.000-07:00

Double Double: How to Double Your Revenue and Profit in 3 Years or Less

No, I don't normally read business books. But I've been trying to expand 12Writing into something profitable, and this book came highly recommended. But you shouldn't read this book just because you're maybe interested in business - this is actually a book about building a solid foundation for any organization.

From setting visible goals to running meetings and fostering a productive (and happy) work environment, Herold's Double Double provides useful real-world examples of how to work well with others.

Although marketed as a book to help you raise revenues in business, Double Double's lessons are very applicable to other areas of writing. The book is centered around Herold's idea of "The Painted Picture," in which you write down the goals which define your business. Where he differs from other business plans I've read is that these goals focus on the human side of the business. Sure, there's the goal to double revenues or to increase profits - add to this the way you want customers to feel after working with you, and the open integrity your business will need in order to attract the best employees.

I'll be honest - the book is written as a how-to guide for boosting profits, and that might turn some readers away. Herold's methods and conclusions, however, are refreshing. As a writer, I can see many applications for his views both in marketing a book and for teaching in the classroom. Being up-front with your readers, knowing how to target your book to your target audience, and providing your students with a welcoming environment in which to learn and grow - these are some of the critical lessons that I've drawn from this book so far.

12Writing: Write Your Inspiration

Traditional Workshops vs Freewriting Workshops and the Amherst Method

2011-05-19T17:18:00.000-07:00

The structure and goals of the writing workshop have changed a great deal over past hundred years. To benefit the most from a workshop, you should familiarize yourself with the advantages and disadvantages of the different types of workshops.

Traditional Workshops: Refining the Writer through Sharing

My first experiences with writing workshops came as an undergrad at Case Western. Like most academic institutions, Case Western uses the Traditional Workshop Approach to teach creative writing. Relatively speaking, the traditional workshop is a "new" approach to learning creative writing. It first began at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, evolving during the 1930s as established writers tutored students of writing.

The traditional workshop is different from most academic courses because most of the "study" comes not from reading established works of literature, but rather from reading and responding to pieces recently written by classmates. Through this model, students learn to see their stories and poems through the perspectives of outside readers. They learn how to identify the strengths and weaknesses in creative work and - ideally - they become adept at revision.

The traditional workshop method is, however, still chained to the scholarly approaches from which it evolved. The structure, meaning, and style of individual pieces are dissected and analyzed. Given the diversity of writers present, most workshop participants are exposed to a variety of critical perspectives. Additionally, any "errors" of personal style can be corrected - if you're a wordy writer, or if you've used images of ravens in just one too many poems, you'll hear about it. The downside, though, is that there is little time allotted for learning "what" to write about, or for figuring out how to find your personal writing focus. Students are taught not to evaluate the author's personal growth as a writer, but rather the work alone.

Freewriting Workshops: Spilling Your Story Across the Page

More recently, freewriting has been popularized as a way to break through some of the barriers which prevent writers from getting their stories on the page. You may also be familiar with this as writing from your stream-of-consciousness - basically, writing whatever comes to mind, and writing it as quickly as possible. Books such as Peter Elbow's Writing without Teachers and Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way have pushed many writers away from trying to "plan" stories. With freewriting, the goal is less to develop a finished product and more to harvest ideas from your life. (from Wikipedia)

The primary advantage of freewriting is that it helps you dig deeper into your own well of memories of emotions in search of material, as best described in Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. Indeed, Goldberg's focus has been on writing as a personal journey, and she remains one of the strongest proponents of memoir writing. (read about her take on memoir writing in Old Friend from Far Away)

The problem, though, is that the work produced in this process is not very polished. When done correctly, the first draft may filled with all the common mistakes of rushed work: typos, incomplete sentences, and unresolved elements of story. Because of this, freewriting is rarely promoted under the traditional writing workshop. Instead, students do their best to turn in coherent stories which are well-structured - stories which are invested with meaning, but lacking the emotional power to really hold a reader's attention.

Amherst Method Workshops: Building Confidence to Feed the Story

My first exposure to freewriting came through an Amherst Method writing residency with Pat Schneider. After returning from Afghanistan in 2006, I took her workshop as a way to "get away" from Fort Bragg for a bit and learn more about writing. And it was, I admit, an eye-opener. As a university-trained creative writer, I was very well-versed in grammar, style, and structure, but I had always had trouble developing the conflict in my stories. I always found myself writing characters who danced around their issues, avoiding all the pitfalls of fears and relationships.

Pat's workshop helped me overcome many of these issues because the focus was less on how to "tell" and story and more on how to find the story. And her main priority here is creating an environment in which it's safe for the writer to write and (if he or she chooses) to share that writing. Through her Five Essential Affirmations and the Five Workshop Rules, Pat creates a welcoming environment for creative exploration. In her workshops, you can write anything - anything at all - on the page. If it's something you'd rather not share with your classmates, you're not required to, and no one will pressure you. And only positive feedback is permitted, and all feedback is focused on the work itself.

The advantage to this approach is the amazing encouragement - the ideas and themes that come out are often surprising, and they affect you on a very deep level. But this approach is very limited in terms of time and revision. Because the writing takes place during the workshop itself, you're only analyzing snippets of rough drafts. Granted, a ten-minute exercise can yield two or maybe even three incredible pages, but most of us also need a workshop for the long-haul stories, or for the poems which are worked and reworked until each word carries the weight of years.

12Writing: Inspiration, Writing, and Ongoing Community
Our goal at 12Writing is to combine the advantages of the traditional long-term workshop with the encouragement of freewriting workshops. I use writing prompts and the opportunity for revision to help each writer bring out his or her best stories.

To find out more, please take a look at our Workshop Philosophy page.

Google Wave: Edit This Poem!

2011-05-03T10:26:00.000-07:00

Google Wave is out! And this may be the best way yet to have real-time collaboration online. I think this may revolutionize the way we conduct creative writing workshops, but we'll just have to see. Please click Read More below to see a sample of Google Wave in action.

Here's a poem about Velociraptors you can edit. I'm testing to see how well it embeds here on Blogger.

12Writing - Workshops for Creative Writers and Teachers

One Teacher, Many Discussions: Fostering Independent Student Engagement

Introduction: Cross-Linking Intellectual Discussion and Discovery

Part 1: The Participation Problem

The Curse of Consumer-Based Learning

The Challenge of the Classroom

Part 2: Online Tools - Preparing Students for the Task of Intellectual Discourse

Require specific, inquiry-oriented discussions.

Be very specific about who will start the discussion.

The online discussion should directly relate to the in-class discussion or other graded course material.

You do not need to grade every word your students write.

Don't grade discussions, but do grade your students.

Part 3: Expansion to the In-Class Discussion

References

Student Engagement: Proposal for Center for Teaching and Learning Symposium

One Teacher, Many Discussions: Fostering Independent Engagement Among Students Inside and Outside the Classroom

Workshops: An ISU Writing Program Spring Summit Presentation

Title: "Forty-Six Students, Sixteen Weeks, and Eight-Point-Nine Billion Genre Conventions: Using the Writing Workshop to Provide Personalized Feedback for Each Student"

Should I Share My Poetry and Fiction Online?

Writing the Novel: Intertwining Plot, Conflict, and the Tapestry of Character Development

Do I Need an Agent to Publish My Book?

How to Write a Novel: The Quick Guide

Lead Online Writing Groups with 12Writing

Benefits of Leading a Group with 12Writing

Requirements of Writing Group Leaders

Ready to Lead Your Writing Group? Apply Now!

Motivate Your Students with Purpose-Driven Lesson Plans

Learn to Market Yourself and Mentor Your Students with Cameron Herold's Double Double

Traditional Workshops vs Freewriting Workshops and the Amherst Method

Google Wave: Edit This Poem!

How Do I Choose an MFA Program?

Starting a Literary Magazine for Johns Hopkins Undergrads

Surviving the Writing Conference - AWP 2011

Ph.D. Programs in Creative Writing Go Global

Revising the Website - New Look for IFP

New Intersession Course on Writing the Human in Science Fiction

NaNoWriMo 2010 - Interactive Writing

Does My Head Look Big In This by Randa Abdel-Fattah

Revision: Realizing the Full Potential of the Story

June 9, 2010 Newsletter - Short Story Workshop Starts Friday

Freewriting Across Genres is Off to a Good Start

How to Write a Novel in Three Easy Steps

Novels Take Time

Step 1 - Find Your Idea (aka "Start Your Freakin' Novel!")

Step 2 - Persevere (aka "Keep Writing the Darn Thing Until It's Time to Stick a Fork in It")

Step 3 - Revise ("50,000 words without typos or sentence fragments? I don't think so...")

After All That: Find Some Readers

May 31, 2010 Newsletter - Free Workshops Start Friday

Scribophile: A fun approach to writing

Roxana Saberi's Memoir of Captivity in Iran

After the Apocalypse - Three Books on the Third World War

Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers

Learn to Write Fiction, Poetry, and Drama with X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia

Revise Your Work with Professional Editorial Advice from Polish My Paper

Are Online Writing Classes Right for You?

HubPages can Boost Traffic to Your Website

Optimizing Your Website - Search Engines and PageRank

2008 Publication - My Brother the Hero

Ryan Edel on GoArmy.com in 2003

Share Your Stories and Poems on Scribophile

Why I Write Fiction and Not Autobiography

Writing Action on Bill Henderson's TrueVoice Blog

Cleaning Out the Skeletons from My Online Profile

Why We Must Learn to Teach

Diagram Your Sentences with About.com

New Tax Law May Affect Small Websites and Writers

Place Your Commas Inside the Quotes

Punctuation: the Zero Tolerance Approach with Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Connection vs Content - Social Networking and the Future of Online Learning

The Writer's Idea Book by Jack Heffron

Writing Prompt: Express the Forgotten Senses

The Unthinkable - Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why by Amanda Ripley

Paragons - Master Science Fiction Writers Ply Their Craft

Michio Kaku and Physics of the Impossible

Creating an Online Writing University

Write the Reading Experience You've Always Wanted

Try the 1-2-Writing Forums!

Write Memoir with Natalie Goldberg's Old Friend from Far Away

Writing Your Way to the Long Story

Choosing the Right Online Writing Workshop