Writing blogs abound

I happened to find a writer’s blog this morning, and it was most fun. I spent at least 30 minutes reading and learning. Try to find some writer’s blogs or blog and share with each other.

I’m putting my wanderings and findings in “Got WAC?” on the header to keep all links to such places in one central location. I’ll write about what I find, of course, well, not always, but I will continue to collect links in that one spot.  I think knowing various writers on the web and the writing they are doing is a great benefit to our WAC Attack at AUM.

I lay down this challenge: while surfing around on the cyberwaves of the web, see if you can find some blogs by writers about writing to collect. Try to find five by Wednesday, June 8.  Find one, and you’ll likely find blogroll links to a lot more, just as you might explore a bibliography in a book to see what other works are out there on a topic, you will find writers through writers. We can grow our writerly knowledge and WAC knowledge from such investigation.

I vow to find four more by next Wed.–and ones that I don’t already know!

Go blogosphere.

Letter from a WAC editor

My goal in the course of our WAC class is to read something about WAC five days a week and see how I can apply that to my own writing, my teaching this summer term, and also to the fall classes I’m preparing to teach: a composition studies class on basic writing pedagogy and a freshman honors comp on Civil Rights writing.

My favorite place to find WAC inspiration is the WAC Clearinghouse. And I’m interested in Across the Disciplines in particular because I’m writing something this summer to send off to them by Sept. 1.

This morning, I’ve read Michael Pemberton’s “Reflections on Across the Disciplines” for two reasons: 1) my goal–mentioned above; 2) I need to know something more about the journal I’ll be submitting to–mentioned above. But there is a third reason, I heard that online journals were moving fast these days so that publication was not taking a year to reach readers, but a matter of weeks.  I was hoping to see how ATD was handling this and was delighted to see that they are embracing the whole publish articles when they are ready, not when the whole issue is ready. I like that. It adopts a “just-in-time” method of knowledge dissemination that more mimics teaching (the point of publishing in the academy is teaching one another!).

One of the featured article Pemberton talks about is of particular interest to me: Katherine K. Gottschalk’s, “Writing from Experience: The Evolving Roles of Personal Writing in a Writing in the Disciplines Program.” I’m deeply invested in the idea that if we work from a personal place as writers, and get entirely comfortable being writers, then we can work as writers in a number of disciplines given appropriate content and vocabulary knowledge. But it all comes from seeing ourselves as writers–one of the reasons I sequence freshman comp 1 to move from personal writing to writing that projects outward and to the future, one of the reasons I always want student reflects and responses to reading to take on a more personal note–what are you really learning when you read, what are you really thinking.

If we don’t see ourselves as writers, we are hobbled. When we write a lot and write from our central core of self, then we learn to see ourselves as writers, in a community of writers (so true of a class), and we start to see ourselves as writers. Writers can do anything. Give us 36 hours and we can research and understand a particular issue and then write about it–maybe not in total depth, but we have no fear that our thinking in text will be good communication, at the least, raising questions that need raising.

The Gottschalk article isn’t long. If you have time to read through, go for it. If not, bookmark it for later. It confirms my belief that our first term comp assignment of a literacy narrative is both personal and opens the door to talking about academic endeavors across the disciplines. Sometimes reading scholarship is so affirming. Not always, but today, I got that, and I totally feel like a writer.

I’m going to try to enjoy that feeling all day.

Next post in public…

Yep. I’m doing another one in front of people. (Okay, I should have really clarified that.) By doing, I mean writing; by one, I mean post; by in front of people, I mean my students plus one visitor. Totally made sense when I was doing one in front of people, then I changed locations, and it just didn’t work.

This is why writing is an ever-evolving business for even the greatest writers ever–we’re always becoming, never become.

And now I’m home and editing this post as practice. Writers must always practice. Sometimes, I do a lot of writing in my head… just let something rumble around in my mind for awhile, and then it comes out in a big messy sploosh. Of course, I have to revise for what seems like ages.

I really wanted to edit this post to see if I could figure out the categories thing.  I don’t like “uncategorized” attaching itself to something I write. Just as I get my nose out of joint when I encounter art work entitled “Untitled.” Really? If there’s no title, then leave it without a title. I may have to do a tutorial again today, this time on categories. So. I’ll do it. I also want to add tags (not exactly sure what these do, but I heard they were good and I’ve done them in another blog). So far, I haven’t figured this out yet. Tutorial here I come.

As I am moving along, I feel the need to add an image here. In order to do that, I think I need to add the image to my media library (a button on my dashboard on the left nav bar). I’m going to try that approach.

Yep. That was right. I needed to add an image to my media library–really easy. Then I add it into this post, by clicking on the image inserter icon thing at the top of the posting page. You can add images from your computer or through a URL, too, but this is a photograph I actually took on an eerie evening one night.  (We’ll talk about copyright and such when we get to reading the Web Writing Style Guide soon (by Writing Spaces)–there’s a great section on copyright for text, images, film, etc.). In the meantime, this is fair use (most likely) of any materials because we are doing this for a class–though our blog’s somewhat public nature might be an issue. Such a tricky business.

But what matters most: I remembered how to upload an image into a blog post. Go me.

"Moon Over WAC" by wacattack@aum