UDL Project: Universal Design for Learning in English Composition

To provide new resources for my students, I've started a new website that applies Universal Design for Learning to Writing Courses like English 101.  Much as I love Blogger, I'm finding that Google Sites offers somewhat more flexibility in terms of layout and organization, so I've been starting the site from scratch rather than continue on my Intro to Fiction and Poetry website at IFP.12Writing.com.

Motivate Your Students with Purpose-Driven Lesson Plans

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.

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

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.

How Do I Choose an MFA Program?

Choosing to move past the "lone ranger" stage of writing and on to an MFA program can be a big step forward for any writer.  But it does represent major changes in terms of the time and effort you dedicate to your work, and you want to make sure you choose an MFA program which fits your needs as a writer.

Why We Must Learn to Teach

Many writers - many writing teachers, in fact - fail to realize how different writing is from effective teaching.  Teaching online in particular carries many challenges.

Creating an Online Writing University

It isn't often that writers will admit to learning something from lawyers, but the Solo Practice University has developed an educational network for new lawyers that I would like to adopt for new writers.  In this framework, writers would seek out writing instructors who share similar interests.  Yet unlike the Solo Practice approach, I believe that a writing website could overcome the need for membership fees by placing the writers and instructors on equal footing...

Hiring and Interviewing Candidates for 1-2-Writing Associates

Yes, we're expanding. And in keeping with the idea of building an open-source writing website, below I've included my 1-2-Writing Interviewer's Guide. Although I am only hiring in the Baltimore Area, my hope is to gradually expand the website geographically, too. If you are running a small business of your own - or if you're simply interested in my approach to business - please read on.

Hiring the Young to Save the Old

I'm thirty years old.  It finally sunk in about a month before my birthday - I'm getting old.  Or at least I'm not getting any younger.  But the entire world around me seems to lose ten years every time I look around.  Kids half my age are getting thousands of hits on YouTube videos, artists who don't remember the fall of the Berlin Wall are old enough that we can see their work beginning to mature.  And my goal is to teach people to use a seven-thousand-year-old communication technology: writing.It's a scary world, constantly changing.  And I simply can't type creative writing articles fast enough to keep up - not if I'm going to go to school full time, build a website, and market said website to all these kids who don't need a search engine in order to find writing workshop.  So I'm taking a new route: I'm hiring students to make things happen.

I feel strange, to a degree, posting this where potential job seekers might find it.  What does this say, after all?  That I'm so desperate for help that I'll write about my struggles online?  Not exactly.  It's more of an admission of the obvious - I am only one man.  I'm a single, solitary creative writer.  And I don't have ten or twenty years to wait before I "make a name" for myself just to "break even" financially.  And it's pretty clear that "making a name" will involve some kind of semi-personal contact with thousands of people.  And by semi-personal, I mean that they'll read my blog posts, they'll watch some of the videos I plan to post, or they'll enjoy some of the feedback I've written for stories they'll submit to my workshop.  But in this world, people are overwhelmed with material to read.  Somehow, as I writer, I have to convince all they people swimming through the deluge of the internet firehouse that my little drop of water is worth a second, third, or tenth look.

Hence, the need for help.  The need for younger help, help from students who grew up with this new world we've entered.  Yes, I have a new-found appreciation for Facebook - that still doesn't make me very savvy.  I'm still struggling to erect my secondary pages.  And Twitter?  I still haven't figured out how to post a Twitter Feed on my site.  I'm sure it's easy - I just haven't made it that far.

 

It's not necessarily the case that a college student would understand these particular tricks - it's more that the younger minds will better know how to look.  They'll be quicker.  They might not need to wade through quite as many pages of Google Search Results before finding the answer to the question.

 

And how do I know this will work?  Simple - it's from the way I've seen myself grow older even before I aged.  Even in college, I was ignoring the internet explosion.  Wikipedia didn't quite exist, and neither did Facebook.  Cell phones, to me, were fad, the kind of thing you carried around if you were incompetent enough to let your car break down.  Never mind that my only phone, now, is a cell phone - and I won't mention the time I hit a deer at two a.m. on an empty stretch of road.  I took on the trappings of technology with the grudging air of "I still know how to do this the old fashioned way."  Handwriting a paper, researching books at the library, laying out stacks of index cards with notes - yes, I learned how to organize paperwork in the days before laptops were cheap enough to buy.

Now, not everyone my age was like this in college, but a good number were.  A good number still are.  And then I look at the grad students who are five or ten years older than me, the ones who cannot type fast enough to outrun their own handwriting.  And then there are the faculty I've met who forward e-mails to someone else to have them forwarded to the students.  But I don't mind that much - it's my classmates who constantly forget to add people to e-mail lists who worry me, the folks my age who use "reply-all" as the only means of sending out a mass e-mail.  The faculty members, at least, recognize that they don't have time to build the lists themselves.

The problem now isn't that "the younger ones don't know how to do things the way we did them."  The problem, actually, is that we're doing things now that were simply never possible back "the way we did them."  Posting a video for thousands to watch?  Back in the day, you had to be an independent filmmaker of some means to make that happen.  Either that, or you worked for a news network, and they distributed your footage for you.  Or what about Holiday Greetings for all two hundred of your friends?  Even today I have a secret dread of Christmas cards and envelopes.  I've never sent out more than twelve in a single year - I am still racked with guilt for all the New Year's Greetings I never expressed.  And now?  Switch to BCC in your Reply All, and you've sent out more sets of good wishes in three minutes than you have in the entire rest of your life.

But this brings us around to the irony of my current project.  Back in the day - I mean back before the telephone - people used to write letters.  I mean letters.  The kind of letters that said "you've been wondering for the past month whether or not I died in that flu epidemic, and now you're going to wait and hope I reply again to prove that I still haven't died in the epidemic."  We don't have those now - at least, not often.  I have a couple hundred friends on Facebook - nearly all of them people I've personally known.  Already, in this post, I've probably written more than I've written to all of them in the past month combined.  Why express the deep flames of love when you can send a Flickr at any moment?

And yet I'm here to teach writing.  My goal is to teach others to express themselves with words in a world dominated by sound and images.  My aim is to encourage thoughtful composition in the Buzzed-Up universe of Twitter.  Aren't these goals in conflict?  This idea of using the technology of now to teach a skill of "back then"?

I don't think so.  As a writer, I believe there is a special quality in writing which the internet may never supplant.  Poems and novels - these collections of carefully-assembled words - still convey a level of meaning that can't be directed into a Flash video.  It's the compression here that matters, the presentation of thoughts so refined - so basic - that words alone are enough to convey them.  And the freedom of these words is incomparable.  Through written stories, a single individual can express lifetimes of experience without the conflict of other souls struggled for control of the camera.

But it is still hard, teaching this.  Writing might be an ancient art, but it becomes a new creation with each generation.  And with the internet as it is, we may one day need to fight to reveal just how rewarding a good story can be - not some snippets of IM conversation, but a story.  And when that day comes, we'll want to have as many authors ready as we can find.

So, in the meantime, I'll hire the folks who are most ready to live in both worlds, carrying the ancient torch of writing into the new land of electronic expression: the young.

1-2-Writing Workshops Online
Creative Writing Blog
Creative Writing Newsletter
Introduction to Fiction and Poetry

January 22, 2010 - My Novel Just Ate My Cat

Greetings Fellow Writers!

Yes, we've just reached the Third Week of 2010 - I'm feeling worn out already.  How are you doing today?  Is your new year off to a good start?  Have you had a chance to do much writing?

If you haven't written much yet this year, I encourage you to take a look at today's freewriting prompt below - fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent of that desire to to clean the bathroom.  And if you're working on a novel or another long piece of fiction, we have two article links below you'll be very interested in - Curing the Urge to Write and Researching Your Material.

If your e-mail is plaintext, or if you have trouble with any of the links below, please visit our Newsletter online at www.12writingworkshopsonline.com/newsletter.


My Novel Just Ate My Cat
Do you feel lonely?  Unappreciated?  Financially Unstable?  As if your life is no more than a slow death by papercut?  Then you might be a writer.  Visit Ryan's Blog for for information regarding the treatment of Deteriorative Autoimmune Writing Disease of the Liver.

New! at 1-2-Writing
Research.  It conjures up notions of boredom and term papers.  But it doesn't have to.  In fact, it's one of the best ways to bolster the realism in your fiction.  Find out more about How to Thoroughly Research Your Material.  (Or just use Wikipedia - it's quicker...and free...)


Friday Freewriting Prompt
Are you ready for 15 minutes away from the humdrum of modern life?  Then take this quick meditation in memoir, Opening the Door.

New! in the Members Area
As always, you can post your freewriting exercises, poems, and stories in our Members Area for feedback and discussion.  Not a member yet?  Then Click Here to Join - membership these days is Completely Free!  (As an Added Bonus, you'll get More Than You Pay For!)

Happy Writing!
Ryan

1-2-Writing Workshops Online   Ryan's Creative Writing Blog
1-2-Writing Community Blog   Friday Freewriting Prompts

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Ryan Edel
1-2-Writing Site Administrator
www.12writingworkshopsonline.com

If you've received our Newsletter in error, or would prefer not to receive e-mails from us in the future, please reply back with REMOVE in the subject line.

Free and Instant Publication! The Joys of Hosting Your Own Website...and then Navigating the Minefield of Online Freedom

Okay, so I don't get to publish exactly for free...I pay like $6.95 a Month...but it's still my own website, and I can post whatever strikes my fancy.  And this, perhaps, can be a problem.

One of the major strengths of the internet is the way we can access simply vast amounts of information at the click of a button.  Yet, for all the convenience this offers, we also face the terrible specter of abuse.  Information is often misrepresented online - just look at the way some businesses will fill out their own customer ratings to give themselves more "I loved this place!"-type reviews.  Worse still, many individuals use the internet as their own hunting ground - I recently saw a poster at a bus stop here in Baltimore stating that one out of every five children is solicited online.  Now, I don't know how they came up with the numbers (are 20% of American children online often enough to be solicited?  Are 20% of our children visiting websites that would allow pedophiles access to their attention?  I don't know...)  However, we do know for fact that useful sites like craigslist and eBay have been used to sell nonexistent merchandise and even lure people out of their homes to be murdered.  We do know that some children have been solicited online - an even just one child is one too many.  And this is despite continual oversight by both the websites themselves and the authorities.

So what, then, should we think about the rest of the internet, the ones that fall in that middle ground somewhere between famous and utterly irrelevant?  Places like www.12writingworkshopsonline.com?  No one will punish me if I post bad writing advice.  I could post outright lies, actually, and no one could do much - I don't offer services or require physical meetings which could endanger anyone's life, limb, or property.  About the only thing illegal I could do would be to accept money for classes which were subsequently never taught - it's a possibility, certainly, but credit card companies do a good job of stopping that kind of behavior very quickly.  (Not to mention I wouldn't be able to sleep at night - accepting someone's money is a bit more than a promise to do something, I think).

Money aside, though, how should we approach this freedom of the internet?  Thomas Jefferson once wrote that "ignorance may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it" - and I believe very strongly in this.  It is, perhaps, the ultimate defense of free speech.  But how do we know this works online?  How do we know that reason is combating ignorance?  Do they have a little button on Google you can press to defend yourself?  I'm thinking something along the lines of a link to "Combat Ignorance Now!" - maybe even make it a complete widget, with advanced tools like "Reference Wikipedia" and HTML code for "Fire Claymore."

Unfortunately, such automated functions will never exist.  Or, if they ever do, they'll never work in the ways we require - by the time technology is advanced enough to provide such wonderful toys, we'll need something still more advanced just to keep tabs on the technology.  (Terminator fans, anyone?)

As writers, we are particularly vulnerable to the lures of the internet.  Although we have many websites to protect our rights (SFWA's Writer Beware is a great example), the vast majority of writing websites are assembled by individuals like myself.  For the most part, we're small-time or part-time writers looking to claim a bit of online real estate, build up a following, maybe even get our names out there.  No one really checks up on us - no one needs to.  We aren't dangerous - we're writers (lol...)

This decentralization mixed with the very portable nature of our work (an entire novel can be attached to a single e-mail of less than one megabyte...) makes it very possible for scams to weave their way among our numbers.  Although the vast majority of writers, writing coaches, editors, and agents are legitimate, it only takes one bad one to ruin your year.  You might find yourself paying hundreds (or possibly thousands...) of dollars for online workshops or editing services which aren't worth either the time or the money.  You might even find yourself reading a website which tells you that everything you've ever thought about writing is absolutely wrong - that you should quit now and never write another word (note: even free advice can be bad advice).  Or, in the true nightmare for the unpublished author, you may actually find someone to steal your manuscript and sell it as their own.  (Please note: I have never heard of a single instance of this happening.  But I know it's one of my nightmares.  I know that other writers share this nightmare.  In my opinion, most people dumb enough to steal a manuscript wouldn't be smart enough to market it.  But it remains a compelling sort of nightmare...)

So what do you do?  Well, I have a few suggestions.  And I think these are focused just as much on keeping your sanity as protecting yourself:

1. Go to Real Live Writing Conferences
Online, it can be hard to know who you're talking with.  At a real live conference, though, you can meet people, shake hands, exchange business cards.  Many of these people have legitimate websites, and they offer very helpful services.  Or they have friends who do.  There's no better way to come in contact with reputable help than through word-of-mouth.

2. Talk to As Many Fellow Writers As Possible
I already know of a counterexample to Number 1 above - a friend of mine once paid very large amounts of money to a reputable writer for feedback that wasn't helpful.  Meeting people in person is great, but it's best to meet lots of people, if possible.  And this is where the internet is even more useful.  If you see a writing website that looks interesting, and you really want to check it out, then there's a good chance that others have already visited and commented on it.  Go ahead and Google the site you're interested in - you'll probably find feedback about the site (whether good or bad) that you can use to decide if it's a reputable link.

3. Use Your Own Judgement
In grade school, our biology teacher told us that when you get a bad feeling about something, there's probably a reason.  And I believe this is very true online.  If something seems too good to be true, or if the website just doesn't look the way you think it should for the services promised, then try to figure out what's up.  It might be nothing, but you never know.  A big giveaway, though, is spelling.  If you're visiting a website that promises writing or editing services - and yet the site itself is filled with misspellings, typos, or grammatical errors - then there's a good chance that something is wrong.

4. Beware Those Fees!
On the internet (as in life), know what it is you're paying for.  Any reputable vendor will let you know up-front what your money will buy.  If someone offers a workshop or editing services for a fee, feel free to ask them how much you can expect for your money.  My friend mentioned in Number 2 above would have been much better off had the reputable writer provided an estimate before doing the work.  And this lesson should apply to your entire writing life, especially when you seek publication - be aware of the fees a typical agent will charge versus the fees your prospective agent will charge.

5. Always Know You Can Walk Away
If a website just doesn't provide what you want, don't feel obligated to use their services.  If they're genuine, they'll understand.  If they start sending you lots of e-mails promising "Oh, just give us one more try" or "you should think twice about passing up our Deluxe Service," then that's all the more reason to walk away.  (Honestly, anyone who abuses your e-mail should be ignored.  All reputable vendors I know of will offer you the opportunity to be removed from their e-mail lists).

6. Tell Others About Your Experiences
Nothing can be more helpful - or more damning - than word of mouth.  If you've had a positive experience with a website, let your friends know.  If a website provides an exceptional service, post that on your own website.  Likewise, if you are dissatisfied with a website (e.g. "Those F***ers totally S****ed me!), then you should post this to online forums somewhere.  And it doesn't matter where - whenever most of the links to a site say "Don't go here, these F***ers will S**** you," then people tend to stop going to that site.

(You'll note that here on www.12writingworkshopsonline.com I provide links to sites like HostMonster and thesitewizard.com and Storm the Castle.  This is because these websites have made my own site possible.  For full disclosure, though, I do receive a commission from HostMonster if you click their link on my site and then sign up for a website through them.  It's the same with all the Amazon books listed on the site.  I still recommend them, of course, but you have a right to know where I'm coming from.)

Conclusion
I hope this article has been interesting and helpful.  If you have comments on it, or you'd like to relate some of your internet writing experiences, please feel free to comment below.  Of, if you prefer, you can visit our homepage and then follow the links to contact me directly.

Happy Writing!
Ryan

1-2-Writing Workshops Online
About Ryan Edel

Blogging Thoughts

Websites are a funny thing.  I started 1-2-Writing after a few less-than-positive experiences with writing workshops - both online and in-person.  The biggest problem I ran into was price - I was paying money for workshops (some rather serious money - $500 for one of the online courses I took) and getting some really bad service.  It wasn't that I disagreed with the feedback or that the instructors were people I didn't like - it just seemed like they didn't know how to teach.  They were good writers, great people, but not very well organized.  I wouldn't have minded if the workshops were free, but they weren't.  It didn't help that I was barely employed at the time - I had just gotten out of the Army, I was paying rent for the first time in my life, and the only jobs I had were these part-time spots that barely covered rent, let alone food and health insurance and car insurance and my internet cable and...but who's counting?  When you get to the point that you're buying generic dried beans from Harris Teeter so you can make a batch of chili that's even cheaper than the last batch, you get a bit irate after dropping a few hundred dollars for a writing course that doesn't pay off.

Like I said, though, it wasn't that I disagreed with the feedback.  The real problem was the relative lack of feedback.  The course for which I paid $500 was a 15 week novel writing course - I received no feedback from the instructor until after I submitted my third assignment some nine weeks into the course (and trust me, two months is a long time to wait for feedback worth $500).  We were told the problem was instructor illness, and then the course was extended, and a new instructor brought in, but it was very hard to get back in the swing of things.  The web administrator offered us all $250 refunds, but there was no reply back when I e-mailed in.

You can imagine that this experience turned me off to online workshops.  Unfortunately, I think I was one of the lucky ones.  After this experience, I made it into an MFA program, so I don't pay money for writing courses now.  But I have friends who do.  I've seen one friend pay a very, very large amount of money (thousands of dollars) for writing help with turned out to be little more than line edits.  And it galls me because there isn't a lot I can do about it.  I'm not exactly famous, I can't exactly say I've written enough to argue with these instructors who've published several books each.  All I have out there is a short story and the fact that I'm earning in MFA.  But I do have some knowledge.  Maybe I haven't published much yet, but I've written a lot, especially compared to where I was when I first dropped engineering to pursue creative writing.  It's not so much that I know enough to teach everything, but I can teach more than some of my teachers have.  They may have known more, but they didn't have the time or - in my opinion - the knowledge of teaching necessary to convey their experience.

That, however, was two years ago - before I'd even finished applying to MFA programs.  Since then, I've taught three semesters of undergraduate writing as part of our MFA program.  What amazes me the most about teaching is not how much I know about writing, but how much I still have to learn about teaching.  I've had to reconsider what I thought about the $500 instructor who disappeared.  Sometimes, I wonder what I would really do if I became so sick that I couldn't teach - I'm not sure I would want my students to know just how sick I really was, and it's possible that she really couldn't continue with the course.  And although I feel that I am a better teacher than some instructors I've met, I realize now that I am not the best teacher out there, not by far.  Over the years, I've learned how to provide good feedback and good encouragement, but I've taken workshops from teachers who can literally light up a room.  Two teachers I highly recommend for anyone who has a chance - Zelda Lockhart and Pat Schneider - changed the way I write.  Another writer who I've only met through an online workshop - Karlyn Thayer - really kept me going when I was first learning to tighten my short stories.  I wish I had space here to list all the teachers who've helped me - there's no way I would have made it even this far without the help of many, many people, most of whom I've only known for brief periods between moving.  I have more than enough proof that writing workshops do work - maybe not always, and maybe not perfectly, but they do help your writing.

And something else to consider is what I've learned from the writing instructors who weren't as helpful.  Sometimes, the books that best show you how to write well are the ones where you can see where the writing failed - I think the same is true for writing workshops.  The great workshops gave me the experience and the desire necessary to take up writing - it was the bad ones that pushed me to take charge of my writing, to stop waiting for my writing to "improve enough" for me just just start publishing.  What I've found is that it doesn't happen that way - some days you write well, some days you write through setback, and some days are so bad that you want to write but can't.  Regardless of the situation, regardless of where you're at or the resources you have, you have to keep faith in your writing and push onward.  If you read a book that's terrible, you sit down to write another one - if you take a workshop that's not worth the money, you start a website and do better.

With this thought, I encourage each of you to keep up the faith and know that, whatever your publications or lack of publications, you're a writer.  And something I've learned over the years is very simple, but many people forget either one side of it or the other: every writer has something to learn, and every writer has something to teach us.

Happy Writing,
Ryan

1-2-Writing Workshops Online
About Ryan Edel

The Beginning Writer Workshop

I'm trying out the free-lance writing life in Raleigh while bartending on the side. Ends don't quite meet, but I feel like I'm actually living my dream for the first time. It's a great feeling, even as I put in twelve-and-fourteen hour days at my self-imposed "office."

There's a drawback to "living the dream," however. After many years of trying to convince my parents that writing is what I'm meant to do, I've had accept that they don't quite understand. I'm sure it's a common problem though. For a beginning writer - as for the beginning artist in any field - it's hard convincing your parents that starving is the right thing to do. Starting this website, to my practical mother, would be an even more foolhardy endeavor. I'm attempting to teach writing while hardly established myself. I'm applying to MFA programs, but I don't have one under my belt just yet. From the perspective of the mother who expected her son to excel in engineering, I'm throwing away both time and talent to a lost cause.

Why, then, do I write? Why endure the questions? Why not give in and find something lucrative? I've always been decent at math, and chemistry never was very hard for me (at least not until I took engineering classes - that was fun...). Why should someone who could make a living in another field want to be a writer?

The simple answer is that I can't not write. When the chemistry became to hard, I used the structures to describe my science fictional space alloy. When the differential equations were incomprehensible, I wove the squiggles into the setting of a new story. When my own life stopped making sense, I wrote out what I could. It's become an unbreakable habit - incestuous, almost. When I get tired of working on whichever novel is in progress, I'll take a break by writing a short story. Sometimes I have to pry myself away from the keyboard just to make sure I get my requisite hour of air and sunlight. Somedays I don't make it outside before dark.

Naturally, I want to share this unusual passion for words on a screen - I'm launching an online creative writing workshop. The focus will be on helping beginning writers learn the fundamentals of fiction writing while building the confidence to really experiment with their work. It feels ironic, almost. I'm barely published - my first story will see print later this year. My other stories are still in the submission stages. My first half-decent novel needs a cover-letter before so I can hunt for an agent. And yet I want to teach others.

Like any writer, I know the milestones in my work. I have a feeling of when and why I learned certain lessons at certain times. And I've made some major breakthroughs recently - the writing is beginning to "click" like it never did before.

My "sudden" progress is a combination of thousands of hours logged at the keyboard and time spent in some excellent workshops. I've learned valuable lessons from other writers and begun applying these lessons to my work. These are lessons in writing that I can pass on directly. Just as importantly, though, I've taken a few workshops that didn't help me as much. I've met writers who provided bad advice. And I can apply the lessons from these less-than-helpful seminars to provide lessons that are better structured and feedback that is targeted to the differing needs of each writer.

I have two goals in these workshops. My primary goal is to lead writing exercises that will help writers see stories from the inside out. This involves critiquing the work of others, it involves writing stories to specific prompts, it involves viewing your own writing in new ways. My second goal in is to illustrate the key guidelines for teaching creative writing. I believe that anyone who can write well can teach, but teaching creative writing is itself an art. It is a complicated process that involves both an understanding of the art and a connection with the artist. Many of the best writers and teachers, unfortunately, are not both.

I believe that much of the problem is an issue of focus – the best writers often never teach until after they’ve become successful authorities in their field, and then they have no one above them to guide them in how to run a workshop. The curriculum I'm assembling now is designed to overcome this. Starting young, I believe that beginning writers can quickly grasp the essential rules of teaching craft. By mastering these rules, a writer becomes both better with words and develops an affinity for helping other writers. And it is this bond - the ability to see and understand a human being through the words on the page - that defines a true writer.

1-2-Writing Workshops Online
About Ryan Edel