The Mackerel Wrapper

A weblog for Pete Ellertsen's mass communications students at Benedictine University Springfield.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

COMM 150, 337: Writing Tip of the Week

Copied from my BenU email. Most of the time, these writing tips are geared more to freshman English essays than journalistic writing. But today's has a lot of wisdom behind it. - pe


From: Kauth, Jean-Marie
To: #All Faculty and All Adjunct Faculty; #All Academic Staff; #All Main Campus Student; #All Moser College; #All Springfield Campus Faculty; #All Springfield Campus Adjunct Faculty; #All Springfield Campus Student
Cc:

Check out these 25 tips from professional writers: http://the99percent.com/tips/7082/25-Insights-on-Becoming-a-Better-Writer

Number 10 is my personal favorite:

10. Jennifer Egan: On being willing to write badly...[Be] willing to write really badly. It won't hurt you to do that. I think there is this fear of writing badly, something primal about it, like: "This bad stuff is coming out of me…" Forget it! Let it float away and the good stuff follows. For me, the bad beginning is just something to build on. It's no big deal. You have to give yourself permission to do that because you can't expect to write regularly and always write well. That's when people get into the habit of waiting for the good moments, and that is where I think writer's block comes from. Like: It's not happening. Well, maybe good writing isn't happening, but let some bad writing happen... When I was writing "The Keep," my writing was so terrible. It was God-awful. My working title for that first draft was, A Short Bad Novel. I thought: "How can I disappoint?"
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1 comment:

Kaitlyn Keen said...

I like this one. I like it mostly because I still have a hard time deciphering criticism. Sometimes it is hard for me to remember that criticism is helpful.

'When people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong."
-Neil Gaiman

Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 2:51:00 PM CST

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About Me

Springfield (Ill.), United States
I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.