During the first week of my Creative Nonfiction class, I spend a lot of time asking students where they might find themselves writing and under what circumstances. In a notebook or on a laptop? Do they listen to music? Do they need a cup of coffee? A glass of scotch? A cigarette? Complete silence? Prefer to write in noisy […]
A pleasant trip this week to Chehalis to see my mom, no student papers to grade (yet), my corrected manuscript of SPARROW to return to Writers & Books (in the mail as of 3:30), a productive morning in the potting shed, and sunshine conspired to make me feel buoyant by this afternoon. Friday, sitting in my EvCC […]
This afternoon, in preparation for our first meeting of Writing Lab this quarter, I browsed my bookshelves and found Fingerpainting on the Moon by Peter Levitt. This book contains one of my all time favorite quotations (which I’ve shared more than once, but here it is again): “This is joy — the kind that comes from expressing […]
Our English word “assignment” originated in the 13th century, from Old French. It means “to allot by sign, to mark out, to award.” It’s the first day of fall quarter classes at my college, and I’ve just returned from my Creative Nonfiction class. My students are an inspiring mix, so inspiring that, for the first […]