Missed dates and missed steaks. I can’t stay on topic these days with my writing. Been starting essays on writing and ended up writing about soccer (again). Wrote about dead cows and ate a steak. Went to Houston. Drove to South Texas. Saw my mother. The dog is cuter than I am. The dog behaves [...]

From a book I’m reading for Seminar in Pedagogy, Composition Studies as a Creative Art by Lynn Z. Bloom: STANLEY––HE PLAYS HIS DRUMS, SOMETIMES, AND HE BANGS EM, HE BANGS EM AND HE BANGS EM, HE’LL ROLL EM, BACK AND FORTH AND BACK REAL QUICK WITH A BASE THUMP, AND HE’LL BANG EM AND HIS [...]

Scotland unveiled a new slogan today: “Welcome to Scotland.” My students workshopped the hell out of six essays in class today. On the essays we workshop, I change the student name to protect the innocent, although sometimes it is fairly obvious who the author is. I have found that changing the name frees up the [...]

The reading went well on Thursday. Six of my students showed up. Yesterday I walked in to class without a lesson plan. We just talked about the assignment and about what makes good writing. I had them come up with a list as the class. I thought I’d post it here and share with everyone. [...]

I have spent the last three hours (and by “three,” I mean five), “productinating.” This is a special word I have coined, meaning “avoiding immediate work for minor, lesser work that could be postponed, and in fact should be postponed immediately.” Like cleaning my closet instead of writing a paper that’s due. Like balancing my [...]