[In an effort to get more specific and address more of the what, why, and how of my teaching practice, I'd like to outline how I begin to move students away from the five-paragraph essay and toward a more sophisticated understanding of writing. This is a long post because I want to be specific. [...]

“Please get out of the habit of saying that you’ve got an idea for a short story. Art does not come from ideas. … Art comes from the place where you dream … your unconscious … the white-hot center of you.” (13)
A while ago, I read Robert Olen Butler’s From Where You Dream. [...]

I’ve been reading 2012 and just came across a passage that struck me as particularly helpful in thinking about how and why fiction works. The author, Daniel Pinchbeck, is quoting F. David Peat and discussing the concept of synchronicity, that phenomenon that is usually brushed off as “just a weird coincidence.” Peat says:
It [...]

Maybe it’s just interesting timing, or synchronicity, or maybe it’s because we tend to see the things we’re looking for, but I’ve come across two sources in the last few days that take up the question “why learn this?” in relation to writing and literature.The first is Sheridan Blau’s The Literature Workshop: Teaching Texts and [...]

A problem that I’m working on, and want to remind myself to continue solving. Also, probably a problem that I will continue to work on for most (or all) of my life. Why should people learn anything beyond that which is required for survival? And specifically, why should anyone learn whatever it [...]

I want my creative writing students to understand how important reading is to the development of writing, and I want them to be aware of what’s going on in the literary world as well as the world in general. One way to do this, I think, is to have them discover and read blogs … [...]