• Tuesday, September 7, 2010
• Heine Brothers Coffee, Chenoweth Lane, “Green Room”
• Meeting, Class & Workshop

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This summer I attended a creative non-fiction workshop as a student at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. I just received a copy of this note from one of my classmates, and I’m reproducing it here with her permission.

I attended the Short Narrative Essay weekend workshop in June.  It was an enjoyable and useful workshop, in large measure because of the student group.  One of my classmates in particular, Michael Jackman, was as good or better than any instructor I’ve had in my 5 Iowa workshop experiences.  He offered helpful, incisive feedback to participants in a warm, encouraging, non-threatening manner.  A nice touch of humor as well.  It was my sense that there was general consensus in the group about this.

I’m psyched to say that tonight’s workshop is full. I look forward to working with 10 authors – topic: a complication of “showing vs. telling” and workshopping draft manuscripts. See you tonight.

Today I discovered a very decent and FREE! screenplay and play writing program called page2stage. I use a program called scriptware and this free alternative (tested today) seems to work. Here’s the link:

www.page2stage.com

I was actually looking to see if an update was available to the program I was using, Scriptware, which has become obsolete and seems to be dead, though the Web site is live. Wikepedia gets credit for this one. Thanks Wiki!

Make Word Writer-Friendly: Change Default Quick Styles

(This is a preview of the full article available online for purchase)

by Michael Jackman, Director, Writers Workshop Project

To help make Word 2007 more helpful to creative writers, here are three solutions to a common problem with default styles.

Problem: “Normal” Style

The new “Normal” style is causing problems for teachers, editors and writers. Why did Microsoft decide on making this style, with extra line spaces before and after paragraphs and the non-standard Calibri font face, the default? We may never know, but the most important question for writers is, how do we change it to something writer-friendly? There are a few options. Read more »

dude–so im pretty convinced that its thru texting that students use of complete spelling & little things like apostrophes r disappearing fr emails & even papers. LOL.

ok, so like 4 a disclaimer i should say right up front that i both use and admire formal english & i want my students 2 like use it & admire it 2

& like im so anal when texting that i uh revise my texts & almost never use shorthand

anyway the point im trying 2 make is that there r no apostrophes in spoken english

or capital letters

or the various punctuation marks

or spaces either between words or phonemes

texting is a more phonetic & therefore verbal writing then formal writing

i think thats pretty interesting & also i like how it reveals the difference between speaking & formal writing

also it shows that when students apostrophes r left off its not about grammar its about usage which means its not so much wrong as irreverent & disrespectful, kind of like a kiss my ass told 2 the institution of written language

we cn all lighten up about language some x

thats all neat 2 realize & i hope u r thinking its neat 2

I figured since I’ve been teaching writing, maybe on my writing project site I ought to have some blogs for teachers, too. Especially elementary ed teachers, those generalists who have to teach just about everything, even writing, even if they feel they don’t understand or do it well.

So look for more entries on teaching writing, and also look for some teacherly products, coming in the future, such as lesson plans for creative writing.

All this I hope will benefit everyone, including folks who want to make their own informal writing workshops more focused and craft-oriented.

A rubric, for all the flaws in the concept, can be a helpful aid to grading and assessment. Even if
“helpful” from a rigorous point of view, means “better than nothing.” Not all teachers, even faculty at universities, know what they are, so I’ll give an example.

Often it’s a table. On the left is list of things you want to assess. Across the top a score from 1-3 or 0-5, say. In the type I use, an analytic rubric, I also articulate what distinguishes one level from another. So it might look like this: Read more »