Save the Date

Coming this October: the Month of Writing Challenge. 

Challenge yourself to write as many words as you can. Your words will count toward a scholarship for the DePaul school of your choice. Check back for more details--including a brand-new website--in September. 

Until then, feel free to contact snlwriting@depaul.edu with questions. 

Need to Write? Head Outside.

In "Training Your Brain for Creativity," writer and fitness specialist James Fell passes along some wisdom that we can finally take advantage of now that one of the worst winters on record is finally coming to an end. A personal observation that his creativity improves while exercising outdoors--he says the bulk of his book was written while either on his bike or running--prompted Fell to talk with Ruth Ann Atchley, chair of the psychology department at the University of Kansas. 

"We've known for a long time that writers get benefit from being active out in nature," she explained. "The environment makes a big difference." And while it's long been established that aerobic exercise improves cognition, it's the combination of activity and the outdoors that's key: "Reading email and checking your phone takes you off task and inhibits creativity for as long as five minutes each time." In contrast, the "natural environment has the ability to seduce and attract your attention system rather than demand it." 

Exercise, outdoors or not, can also enhance your career. Fell cites neurologist Dr. Miguel Alonso-Alonso, who explained that a "fitter person is going to have greater improvements in executive function." Moreover, there may be a correlation between physical and financial health, with Fell reporting economist Vasilios Kosteas's finding that people who exercised at least three times each week increased their earnings: "I found that for men the average was a 6 percent increase on weekly earnings. For women it was more on the order of a 9 to 10 percent increase in weekly earnings," said Kosteas. 

To read the full article and in-depth explanations of the research, click here. 

April Is National Poetry Month

Yesterday marked the beginning of National Poetry Month. The celebration's organizer, the Academy of American Poets, has hundreds of suggestions for ways to celebrate. Here are a few highlights:   

• Sign up for Poem-A-Day to receive a new poem via email each day.      

• Choose an activity from the "30 Ways to Celebrate list," such as Poem in Your Pocket, recording your favorites in a commonplace book, or gathering friends to play the intriguingly named Exquisite Corpse. 

• Browse poems by topic: love, teaching, parenting, and more--including sharks.

• Listen to readings of the site's most popular poems. (Click here to listen to the site's most popular recording, Dylan Thomas's "Do not go gentle into that good night."  

• Explore the rich history of poetry here in Illinois. (Distance students, click here to find information about your state.) On each state-specific site you'll find biographies and the work of local poets, lists of "poetry-friendly bookstores," event calendars, information about local literary organizations and publications, and poems about the state, its cities, and its people. 

  

Writing Showcase Deadline Is Tomorrow!

The Writing Showcase celebrates the outstanding writing of SNL students. If you have received an “A” on a paper or glowing feedback on an Independent Learning Project (ILP), consider submitting your work to the Writing Showcase. You may submit up to three pieces of writing. By submitting your work, you not only share your accomplishment with others, but also provide inspiration to your fellow SNL students as they work on their writing assignments.  Excellent submissions will be recognized at the Spring Awards Luncheon.

Click here to download a submission form. Email your work and the completed submission form as Word documents or PDFs to snlwriting@depaul.edu.

The Wrong Way You Were Probably Taught Grammar

Yesterday Professor Michelle Navarre Cleary was a guest on Wisconsin Public Radio’s The Kathleen Dunn Show. During the hour she discussed, in short, the wrong way to teach grammar.

Many SNL students probably remember having to memorize parts of speech, complete grammar drills, and—perhaps the worst of all—diagram sentences. Research has shown, however, that teaching grammar before students are allowed to actually write is counterproductive, serving only to produce “people who are terrified to write.”

It is the rare person who steps into a writing course or approaches a writing project completely free of anxiety. “Writing is hard,” and “good writing is clear thinking,” Navarre Cleary explains. And sometimes, “it’s easier to worry about where the comma goes than to really push yourself to clarify your ideas.” But if you allow yourself to be challenged—by answering classmates’ questions about your work, your instructor’s questions, and your own—the grammar will follow naturally: “it’s in that effort to communicate that people start to learn what makes sense in terms of arranging their words in sentences.”

To listen to the full recording and hear more about why you should give yourself permission to quiet your inner copy editor, click here.

ALSO: Don't forget the deadline to submit to the Writing Showcase is April 1st! 

Deadline for the Writing Showcase is Coming Up!

The Writing Showcase celebrates the outstanding writing of SNL students. If you have received an “A” on a paper or glowing feedback on an Independent Learning Project (ILP), consider submitting your work to the Writing Showcase. You may submit up to three pieces of writing. By submitting your work, you not only share your accomplishment with others, but also provide inspiration to your fellow SNL students as they work on their writing assignments.  Excellent submissions will be recognized at the Spring Awards Luncheon.

Click here to download a submission form. Email your work and the completed submission form as Word documents or PDFs to snlwriting@depaul.edu.

Submit to the 2014 Writing Showcase

If you received an “A” on a project or essay or glowing feedback on an Independent Learning Pursuit (ILP) this past quarter, please consider submitting your work to the Writing Showcase, which celebrates the outstanding writing of SNL students. By submitting your work, you not only share your accomplishment with others but also provide inspiration to your fellow SNL students.

The submission period closes on April 1, 2014, and the winners will be recognized at the Spring Awards Luncheon.

Click here for more information, past winners, and a submission form.

Month of Writing 2013 Wrap-Up

During the month of October, SNL students, faculty, and alumni created over 700,000 words. A special congratulations to Cynthia Stevens, Karen Snyder, and Katie Wozniak, who each met their goal of 50,000 words and created a combined total of over 170,00 words during the Challenge.

Planning for next year's Challenge will begin in August 2014, so check back in with the Digication site next summer for details on how to participate. In the meantime, we now have a full video recording of last month's Craft of Composing panel discussion available, which you can click here to watch. 

Again, congratulations to all the writers, and we hope to see you again in 2014.

An Imaginative Reading List for Writers

When BrainPickings.org’s founder Maria Popova was asked by the New York Public Library to curate a selection of books for its bookstore, she decided to create four reading lists: books on NYC, books on pets and animals, books for young readers, and, last but not least, a collection of wisdom on writing. But rather than simply gather books for a tabletop display, Popova partnered with artist Kelli Anderson to construct a papercraft diorama showcasing each title in painstaking detail. The resulting installation is both beautiful and a fantastic resource for anyone looking to be re-inspired before Autumn Quarter begins.

Click here to see Popova’s write-ups of each book and the full list of titles, which includes works by Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, Henry Miller, and Susan Sontag, as well as several edited collections of essays.

On "Forced Creativity"

In "Forced Creativity Experiences (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly)," teacher and author Michael Jarmer reflects on his recent experience with NaPoWriMo, NaNoWriMo's poetic cousin. Jarmer's take on these "forced" creative experiences is generally positive; ultimately, you're simply using the experience to kickstart the creative impulses you already have. That said, having a successful Forced Creativity Experience does depend on a few conditions: the desire to do it, an invitation to do it, a specific but intensive goal (usually a short period of time), and a supportive community in which to work. When an experience meets all four of these criteria, you're likely to have a positive result. 

As for less-than-perfect experiences, Jarmer looks to his own life: 

"Especially when the rigors of a career and family life take hold–how does one find the motivation and time to write?  And for those of us who are similarly compelled, what are the consequences of not writing? ... I've got some fathering and husbanding to do, and my part of the housework to finish, and a full time job, and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. It’s just not in the cards."

SNL students can likely sympathize; after all, what is the best way to incorporate a creative drive into an already writing-intensive program? SNL's own Month of Writing programs and events are certainly a great place to start (and meet all of Jarmer's criteria, of course). 

For Jarmer, the answer's fairly simple:

"What we need instead is a space to work, some cheering from the sidelines, and at the end, after our 30 poems or 6 songs or draft of a novel, some appreciative nods and smiles.  Maybe a thumbs up."

So What Are You Working On?

In “Draft No. 4,” a recent piece in The New Yorker, author John McPhee offers sage advice on the writing process, all the way from those first torturous days of dealing with writer’s block through to the final line-by-line edit. “So what are you working on?”, well-meaning friends and family ask. For many writers, even professionals, that can be a terrifying question. 

Lucky for us, McPhee begins with a call to take heart: “if you lack confidence in setting one word after another…if you feel sure that you will never make it and were not cut out to do this…you must be a writer.” “How could anyone ever know that something is good before it exists?” he asks.

By extension, how could we know that something is bad? Why should we let ourselves decide that it’s all a mess, that the project is irredeemable, before we’ve gotten to the final page of that first draft? We all know that the first draft is usually the hardest. McPhee advises writers to simply “blurt out, heave out, babble out something—anything—as a first draft.” His advice echoes that of author Anne Lamott, who famously (and in more colorful language) urges writers to embrace the “shitty first draft.” The SNL Writing Guide agrees, and you can find a number of suggestions for getting through this tough stage in the Drafting section. Be prepared for this stage of writing to take the longest; McPhee estimates that he spends about four times as much time on the first draft as each subsequent draft.

After the “first awful blurting,” McPhee moves on to the issue that guides the rest of his essay: revision. “Revision,” he asserts, is “the essence of the process. The adulating portrait of the perfect writer who never blots a line comes express mail from fairyland.” At this point, he’s still focusing on what you might have heard called “global” revision or “higher order concerns." Ideas are still shifting, paragraphs are being cut or expanded, structure is still being worked out. In fact, it’s not until “Draft No. 4” that McPhee feels ready to move on to his strategies for “local” revision, or “lower order concerns.”

And he starts with boxes: boxes around words or phrases that don’t seem quite right, or words that may present an opportunity. “While the word inside the box may be perfectly O.K.,” he says, “there is likely a better word…a word right smack on the button, and why don’t you try to find it?” At first glance, McPhee seems to be recommending what writing teachers have worked long and hard to communicate: that revision is much more, and much harder, than pulling out a thesaurus. But McPhee is quick to caution us: “thesauruses are useful things...They are also dangerous. They can lead you to choose a polysyllabic and fuzzy word when a simple and clear one is better.” (For more on the value of simple words, read Richard Lederer’s excellent—and appropriately short—essay “The Case for Short Words.”)

McPhee’s essay offers some useful examples of the pitfalls of developing a case of “thesaurusitis.” It’s the dictionary, he believes, that we should be reaching for instead. Thesauruses can be helpful, but “they don’t talk about the words they list.” When we’re presented with a slew of synonyms, it’s hard to decide which is truly the best fit (or, le mot juste). The dictionary, on the other hand, can provide us with not only the denotation of a word—its literal meaning—but also its connotation, or what we can use the word to imply. McPhee describes these subtleties as “hues,” similar to the differences we assign to colors. For example, “gleam” appears in a list of synonyms for “flash.” If we want to describe someone who is angry, we might say, “her eyes flashed,” but we’re unlikely to say “her eyes gleamed,” instead reserving that word for a happier person.  

The trick is making sure you have a good dictionary. DePaul’s library provides access to several comprehensive dictionaries, including the gold standard, the Oxford English Dictionary (which, if you’re truly curious, will provide all of the above plus etymology—how the word developed or was first used).

Finally, McPhee discusses the last step in the writing process: the line-by-line, word-by-word edit. Authors like McPhee have expert copy editors for this task. For the rest of us, there are a number of reference books, such as Garner’s Modern American Usage, Fowler’s Modern English Usage, and the Saint Martin’s Handbook, to help us decide whether our sentences are parallel and our verbs agree, whether we need “constitute” or “comprise,” or whether they’re “Dickens’s novels” or Dickens’ novels.” 

And, at last, when the nerve-wracking first draft has been transformed into the carefully, thoughtfully revised final product, we have the pleasure of starting all over. And once again, friends, family, and colleagues ask, “So what are you working on?”