About the Site

It's hard preparing resources for writing students.  And that's the main point of this website — I just wanted a composition guide I could use in my classes, and the internet hasn't provided exactly what I need.  The problem isn't quantity or even quality — there are thousands of excellent and freely available resources for teaching writing.  And this website benefits from those — in addition to my own takes on writing and teaching, here you'll find additional outside resources that I find helpful.  But I haven't found a source that delivers everying that I want for my courses.

Like any teacher, I have my own teaching style.  There are certain resources I find helpful for my courses, and others that just don't fit my personal focus.  And this creates a real struggle — I don't know of any one single composition textbook that provides the mix that I want for my students.  Most textbooks have so much information that my students won't read the full chapters, and the many of the most interesting online materials are scattered across the internet.

Over the years, I've prepared so many different assignments for my students.  Unfortunately, they're scattered across multiple websites, course management systems, and Google Drive folders.  There's no possible way I could sort them all — and why would I want to?  Most of them are old and outdated.  I've changed and updated my teaching practices with time and coursework.  In the past I taught more creative writing courses, and today I primarily teach college composition — the dreaded English 101.  I sometimes also teach the companion course English 099 or the continuation of English 102.  And on the side?  I still teach creative writing workshops — I'm even building a separate creative writing guide for that group of students.

This doesn't mean my teaching style is better.  I've looked over many, many textbooks, and they are excellent resources.  A typical composition guide provides more detailed information on the writing process than I could possibly share here.  Also, my primary experience is not composition studies — it's creative writing.  Sure, my Ph.D. is in creative writing and rhetoric, and yes, I have taken a number of courses in composition studies, but there are major differences between these fields.  And let's just say that made for some very interesting discussions with my dissertation committee.  It wasn't easy meeting the varying and sometimes conflicting expectations of professors from these different disciplines.  Sure, my advisors were all English professors, but English is a complex collection of disciplines built on sophisticated assumptions about how we communicate through the written word — and within each discipline, people still debate how to view writing and how to teach it.  Hell — some don't even believe that writing can be taught (Sacasas).  Personally, I strongly believe that writing can and must be taught — I agree with September C. Fawkes that "Sure, for some, learning to write might come easier, but everyone still has to learn. Even natural talent needs direction and growth."  And that direction comes through teaching.  And my direction differs from the direction provided by others — and that's a good thing!

I've learned so much from having a variety of teachers who each focused on different elements of the writing craft.  Workshops with creative writing professors helped me learn to see the heartbeat in every story.  I've learned rhythm from poets, plotting from novelists, and emotional investment from memoirists.  And there was the journalism professor who showed me the importance of writing in a clear, succinct style — a lesson I still struggle with, as you can tell from the long-winded sentences you'll find throughout this website.  And the literary theory professor who introduced me to the thesis statement — an aspect of writing that I don't always find appropriate, let alone useful.  I prefer the techniques of hedging and signposting taught by my rhetoric professor.

But those techniques have only helped me because of the foundations from years of reading and writing.  I've been fortunate to have great teachers — elementary school teachers who encouraged storywriting, middle school teachers who taught structure, and high school teaches who laid the groundwork for close reading and research.  I've always loved reading, and I had family members who encouraged this through gifts of books and science fiction magazines.

Not all students are this fortunate.  Let's be real: I'm was a middle-class child of privilege.  And as a teacher, I'm painfully aware of the differences between my education into writing versus what my students have learned.  Many of my students have been taught to dread reading and fear writing by an educational system that doesn't actually reward students for reading and writing (@sberens).  Sure, I teach research skills and a bit of style, but I see my primary job as helping students believe in their own abilities to write — and hopefully begin to enjoy and appreciate that process.