After 78 posts over more than six years, I’ve decided to end this blog.
That’s big news, I suppose, so I’ll let it sit a minute before I continue.
I’ve enjoyed posting to my blog, A Collection of Thoughts and Ideas, over the past several years. But, as the popular saying goes, all good things must come to an end. Wikipedia explains this saying is thought to stem from Geoffrey Chaucer’s epic poem Troilus and Criseyde, written around 1380, where he wrote in book 3, lines 615-616, “But at the laste, as every thing hath ende/She took hir leve….”
If Chaucer could recognize in the 1380s that all things end, certainly I can recognize it now. And, unlike my extended break from blogging back in 2022, I don’t intend this ending to be temporary. Can I guarantee it won’t be temporary? Of course not. I don’t have ESP so can’t predict the future. But as of now, my intention is for this ending to be permanent.
To anyone who has enjoyed reading my blog or who has sent me feedback on my posts, I appreciate you. And if you ever wonder about my latest thoughts or ideas, please feel free to contact me. I look forward to hearing from you!
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
Monday, February 23, 2026
Thursday, July 31, 2025
How to Make a Pre-Recorded Webinar Using PowerPoint and YouTube
Over the years, I’ve shared writing of various genres in my blog. These have included the following:
But first, some background. In June of this year, I made a webinar for the North Carolina chapter of the Fulbright Association. I serve on the board of the chapter and also as the chapter’s webmaster. Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while already know how impactful I’ve found my involvement with the Fulbright Program. For those who are new to my blog, you can read a two-part blog post about my Fulbright experience as well as a blog I wrote containing information about an article I published in Fulbright Chronicles. I also published a brief story about my Fulbright experience on the Fulbright Association’s website.
The webinar I made focused on the experience of publishing in Fulbright Chronicles. In the webinar, I provided an overview of the journal, outlined the submission guidelines, reflected on my experience publishing with the journal, and called on other Fulbrighters to publish articles with the journal as a way to #StandForFulbright. For those who aren’t aware, the Fulbright Program currently faces extreme challenges, including the resignation of members of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board and proposed steep cuts to the program’s funding. Fulbrighters are doing all they can to advocate for the continuation of the Fulbright Program, and publishing in Fulbright Chronicles is a great way for Fulbrighters to lend their voices to this advocacy effort.
Whether you want to make an informational webinar, a webinar focused on advocacy, or one that achieves both goals, as I did, you can use the following steps to make a webinar in PowerPoint that you can record and post online for your audience to view at their convenience. In my case, because I’ve made videos using these steps before, my webinar took about a weekend to create. You might find it takes you longer or shorter depending on your previous experience.
Without further ado, here are the steps to follow!
- Interview
- Medical writing
- Call for proposals
- Fitness writing
- Listicle
- Travel writing
- Public service announcement
- Poetry
- Review
- Checklist
But first, some background. In June of this year, I made a webinar for the North Carolina chapter of the Fulbright Association. I serve on the board of the chapter and also as the chapter’s webmaster. Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while already know how impactful I’ve found my involvement with the Fulbright Program. For those who are new to my blog, you can read a two-part blog post about my Fulbright experience as well as a blog I wrote containing information about an article I published in Fulbright Chronicles. I also published a brief story about my Fulbright experience on the Fulbright Association’s website.
The webinar I made focused on the experience of publishing in Fulbright Chronicles. In the webinar, I provided an overview of the journal, outlined the submission guidelines, reflected on my experience publishing with the journal, and called on other Fulbrighters to publish articles with the journal as a way to #StandForFulbright. For those who aren’t aware, the Fulbright Program currently faces extreme challenges, including the resignation of members of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board and proposed steep cuts to the program’s funding. Fulbrighters are doing all they can to advocate for the continuation of the Fulbright Program, and publishing in Fulbright Chronicles is a great way for Fulbrighters to lend their voices to this advocacy effort.
 |
Screenshot from the webinar "Publishing in Fulbright Chronicles." (Personal
collection/Karen P. Peirce) |
Without further ado, here are the steps to follow!
1. Open PowerPoint and choose a design for your slides.2. Fill the slides with the visual information you want to share. Keep in mind the following tips:
- Use images to capture your viewers’ attention.
- Use as few words as possible on the slides. Slides are meant to supplement, not replace, your narration, so as much as possible, include only a few keywords on each slide.
3. Write your narration. I did this using the notes portion of the PowerPoint slides I made, but you can write out your script in a separate document if you prefer. If you use a separate document, be sure to indicate in your script which portion of the script corresponds to which slide.
4. Next, record your slide show. In my webinar, I chose to only record only audio narration to accompany the slides, not video, but you can do both. The recording will capture your narration as well as all your slide advancements and animations. Detailed directions are available at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/record-a-slide-show-with-narration-and-slide-timings-0b9502c6-5f6c-40ae-b1e7-e47d8741161c. Here are a few helpful tips to remember while recording:
- You can pause your recording, so if you need a break, that’s fine. You can pause and then re-start after you take a drink of water or the like.
- You can re-record slides, so if you make a mistake, or if your phone rings in the middle of recording, or something similar, you can have a do-over.
5. Next, save your recording in video form. While you can keep your recording in PowerPoint and either play it for your audience live in person or share the PowerPoint file with members of your audience, saving it in video form can be handy. This way, your viewers do not have to have access to PowerPoint to view the show, and it can be streamed on demand online. Detailed directions for saving a PowerPoint show as a video are available at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/turn-your-presentation-into-a-video-c140551f-cb37-4818-b5d4-3e30815c3e83. Here are a few tips to keep in mind:
- Depending on the length of your show, converting the file to a video can take a while. Be sure to plan ahead and give yourself enough time if you’re working to a deadline.
- I chose to save my file as an MP4, but you can choose WMV format instead. Both are commonly used.
6. Create a YouTube channel. Because I already have a Google account and YouTube is owned by Google, I chose YouTube as my video hosting service. You could choose another. If you do choose YouTube and you don’t already have a Google account, you’ll need to start there. Here are the steps to follow to create a Google account: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/161805. Once you’ve made a Google account, or if you already have a Google account, you can proceed to creating a YouTube channel. Directions are at https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1646861. Here are a few tips for creating your channel:
- Decide whether you want a personal channel or a business channel. A personal channel is only accessible by one person, whereas a business channel can be managed or owned by more than one person.
- You’ll be asked to create both a channel name and a YouTube handle. If you later want to change the handle, this is possible.
7. Upload your video to your YouTube channel. This is the final step! Uploading your video to a video hosting service like YouTube means your video can be streamed over the internet on demand. Directions for uploading your video to YouTube can be found at https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/57407. Here are a few tips:
- Don’t forget to publish your video after uploading it.
- There are limits to the file size and length of your videos on YouTube. See details at https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/71673.
That’s it! If you’ve followed these steps, you’ve created a pre-recorded webinar in PowerPoint that you’ve uploaded to YouTube. Your last step is to share it with your audience. Here you can see the webinar I made: https://youtu.be/tbnYUBx7Ozc. I hope you enjoy it!
Saturday, March 1, 2025
Author Spotlight: Katie Karlovitz
I’m pleased to share another post in my author spotlight series. This time joining Daniel Paliwoda, Jen Pitts, Liza Woodruff, Algernon D’Ammassa, Charlie Bertsch, Jayne Conway, and Kristen Welch is Katie Karlovitz. We met through a Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) alumni virtual networking event, and I’m so glad we did!
Before I knew her, Katie started her professional life as a stage and screen actor after receiving her degree in drama from CMU. Anyone who knows anything about theater training knows CMU has one of the best drama programs there is. Some of the famous actors to have graduated from the program and who are profiled on its website include Ted Danson, Holly Hunter, Judith Light, Leslie Odom, Jr., Billy Porter, and Blair Underwood. Katie certainly studied among the best, and her talents show it!
Among Katie’s stage and screen acting credits, as listed on IMDb, are the movies Creepshow and Passed Away, and she has also done voice work, including as narrator on the documentary Langmuir’s World, about the Nobel Prize winning chemist Irving Langmuir. Not only has she both acted in movies and done movie narration, but, as noted on her website devoted to her voiceover work, she has also narrated a wide range of television commercials and other videos, as well as several books.
As if this impressive career weren’t enough, Katie is also a public speaking coach. The coaching company she owns and operates is called On Speaking Terms, and this is where Katie and I have a professional overlap. With my background in rhetoric and her background in performance, we’re both interested in communicating with an audience.
In her coaching company, she’s worked with such power-hitting clients as the ACLU, CitiGroup, WebMD, and Campbells, to name a few. She’s also taught public speaking, communication, and script writing courses at the Pratt Institute, The New School, and Chatham University, among others. You can find all of this information and more on the About page of her On Speaking Terms website.
Perhaps most relevant to this blog entry, though, is her authorship of the book It’s Not About You, It’s About Your Message: How to Hook and Hold Any Audience. This book is full of useful advice when it comes to public speaking, such as the importance of rehearsing and how to bring style to your performance. In the interview that follows, which we edited collaboratively, she reflects on her experience with writing this book as well as with writing her blog entries.
If you’d like to know more about Katie, you can reach out to her on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, or her website. I hope you enjoy meeting Katie through her interview and learning about her thoughts on writing. As ever, feel free to leave a comment at the end of this blog entry to let me know what you think!
When did you first know you might become an author?
Good question—it was probably when I realized I’d been taking notes on the same subject for 25+ years!
What or who motivates you to write?
I’m motivated to write by a genuine desire to help people overcome their fear of speaking in public.
What is your favorite part of your writing process and what do you most like about it?
My favorite part of writing is getting into a rhythm and feeling my writing chops getting stronger. Sometimes I’ll read something and say “Oh, did I write this?” (Note from Karen—if you’re not familiar with the term “chops” in this context, the Merriam Webster Dictionary defines it as “the technical facility of a musical performer” or “expertise in a particular skill or activity.” Katie in a follow-up conversation said that “when musicians are playing well,” we might say “their chops are up,” and similarly, when she’s writing well, she feels her “writing chops are up.”)
Where do you do most of your writing and why is that your chosen place?
I start in my back room, which is filled with light. The room is nice because it has a lot of windows, and you see a lot of the sky all around. It’s very sunny when it’s sunny outside, and it has no electronics, so it’s sort of a very pure space. I begin with an artist’s drawing pad, which has no lines. I use colored pencils. Then I move to my desktop.
Whose books do you most like to read and why?
I’ve been in my Book Club for 35 years and enjoy the wide variety of subjects and genres. I’m especially fond of contemporary Irish writers for some reason. Donal Ryan is fabulous. He wrote a book called The Queen of Dirt Island, which I quite like.
What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
Combine your writing with other activities that inspire and fulfill you…good movies, spending time in nature, art, playing/watching sports, cooking. Know your ideal time of day to write and length of time. For me, 3-4 hours of writing at a time is maximum.
Anything else you'd like to share?
A good editor is invaluable.
Before I knew her, Katie started her professional life as a stage and screen actor after receiving her degree in drama from CMU. Anyone who knows anything about theater training knows CMU has one of the best drama programs there is. Some of the famous actors to have graduated from the program and who are profiled on its website include Ted Danson, Holly Hunter, Judith Light, Leslie Odom, Jr., Billy Porter, and Blair Underwood. Katie certainly studied among the best, and her talents show it!
Among Katie’s stage and screen acting credits, as listed on IMDb, are the movies Creepshow and Passed Away, and she has also done voice work, including as narrator on the documentary Langmuir’s World, about the Nobel Prize winning chemist Irving Langmuir. Not only has she both acted in movies and done movie narration, but, as noted on her website devoted to her voiceover work, she has also narrated a wide range of television commercials and other videos, as well as several books.
As if this impressive career weren’t enough, Katie is also a public speaking coach. The coaching company she owns and operates is called On Speaking Terms, and this is where Katie and I have a professional overlap. With my background in rhetoric and her background in performance, we’re both interested in communicating with an audience.
 |
Actor, public speaking coach, and author Katie
Karlovitz. (LinkedIn/Katie
Karlovitz) |
In her coaching company, she’s worked with such power-hitting clients as the ACLU, CitiGroup, WebMD, and Campbells, to name a few. She’s also taught public speaking, communication, and script writing courses at the Pratt Institute, The New School, and Chatham University, among others. You can find all of this information and more on the About page of her On Speaking Terms website.
Perhaps most relevant to this blog entry, though, is her authorship of the book It’s Not About You, It’s About Your Message: How to Hook and Hold Any Audience. This book is full of useful advice when it comes to public speaking, such as the importance of rehearsing and how to bring style to your performance. In the interview that follows, which we edited collaboratively, she reflects on her experience with writing this book as well as with writing her blog entries.
If you’d like to know more about Katie, you can reach out to her on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, or her website. I hope you enjoy meeting Katie through her interview and learning about her thoughts on writing. As ever, feel free to leave a comment at the end of this blog entry to let me know what you think!
When did you first know you might become an author?
Good question—it was probably when I realized I’d been taking notes on the same subject for 25+ years!
What or who motivates you to write?
I’m motivated to write by a genuine desire to help people overcome their fear of speaking in public.
What is your favorite part of your writing process and what do you most like about it?
My favorite part of writing is getting into a rhythm and feeling my writing chops getting stronger. Sometimes I’ll read something and say “Oh, did I write this?” (Note from Karen—if you’re not familiar with the term “chops” in this context, the Merriam Webster Dictionary defines it as “the technical facility of a musical performer” or “expertise in a particular skill or activity.” Katie in a follow-up conversation said that “when musicians are playing well,” we might say “their chops are up,” and similarly, when she’s writing well, she feels her “writing chops are up.”)
Where do you do most of your writing and why is that your chosen place?
I start in my back room, which is filled with light. The room is nice because it has a lot of windows, and you see a lot of the sky all around. It’s very sunny when it’s sunny outside, and it has no electronics, so it’s sort of a very pure space. I begin with an artist’s drawing pad, which has no lines. I use colored pencils. Then I move to my desktop.
Whose books do you most like to read and why?
I’ve been in my Book Club for 35 years and enjoy the wide variety of subjects and genres. I’m especially fond of contemporary Irish writers for some reason. Donal Ryan is fabulous. He wrote a book called The Queen of Dirt Island, which I quite like.
What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
Combine your writing with other activities that inspire and fulfill you…good movies, spending time in nature, art, playing/watching sports, cooking. Know your ideal time of day to write and length of time. For me, 3-4 hours of writing at a time is maximum.
Anything else you'd like to share?
A good editor is invaluable.
Sunday, December 15, 2024
Author Spotlight: Kristen Welch
I’m back with another author spotlight! This time I’m highlighting Kristen Welch, a friend of mine from our days at the University of Arizona. She joins my friends Daniel Paliwoda, Jen Pitts, Liza Woodruff, Algernon D’Ammassa, Charlie Bertsch, and Jayne Conway, all of whom I profiled previously.
My fondest memories of Kristen from our time in the RCTE doctoral program at the University of Arizona involve camping on Mt. Lemmon on the outskirts of Tucson. She and her husband Jerry cooked the best campfire food! And those times together were a welcome respite from the stresses of graduate study. Both Mt. Lemmon and the RCTE program have changed a lot since our time there—Mt. Lemmon was scorched by wildfire and the RCTE program has an almost entirely new faculty since Kristen and I were students—but our friendship remains steady.
My fondest memories of Kristen from our time in the RCTE doctoral program at the University of Arizona involve camping on Mt. Lemmon on the outskirts of Tucson. She and her husband Jerry cooked the best campfire food! And those times together were a welcome respite from the stresses of graduate study. Both Mt. Lemmon and the RCTE program have changed a lot since our time there—Mt. Lemmon was scorched by wildfire and the RCTE program has an almost entirely new faculty since Kristen and I were students—but our friendship remains steady.
 |
Author
Kristen Welch (Facebook/Kristen Welch) |
Kristen is an accomplished author. She has written three solo-authored and one co-authored book, all of which focus on rhetoric, religion, and feminism. She’s also written and had published several academic articles, some of them focusing on the topics of rhetoric, religion, and feminism, and others focusing on writing centers, writing programs, and writing pedagogy. In addition, she’s written a website, Women and Rhetoric, where you can find details about her publications and more.
In addition to her writing, Kristen is a faculty member in the English department at Spartanburg Methodist College where she also directs the writing center, called The Write Place. In addition, she is director of research and archives for the International Pentecostal Holiness Church. She also volunteers as associate publisher for marketing and advancement with the WAC Clearinghouse, where I also volunteer as associate publisher for design and production.
In her personal life, Kristen’s family relationships are important to her. She is a daughter, sister, wife, mother, stepmother, mother-in-law, grandmother, and stepgrandmother. She also enjoys quilting, sewing, creative writing, and travel. You can connect with her through her website, on Facebook, or on LinkedIn.
I hope you enjoy the following interview, which we’ve edited collaboratively.
When did you first know you might become a writer?
I have always used writing as a way to process my world. I had written a whole stack of diaries by the time I was in my 20s. But there came a point where they were too personal and too much a reflection of the past, so I threw them all away. I now keep a lot of journals for creative writing or note-taking. I still process the world through writing, but in a much different way.
What or who motivates you to write?
One of my motivations is I feel like I have to explore something much more deeply than spoken language allows, and I become obsessed with the journey. I am motivated by strong curiosity and a hope that my writing will contribute something helpful to those who read it.
What is your favorite part of your writing process and what do you most like about it?
My favorite part is discovery. Writing is organic, and it emerges. I often feel surprised when I read my own writing. I think: Who wrote that? The answer is that it was me when I was immersed in the beauty of language, when I was trying to create something out of all the pieces of great writing around me. I love research, but I especially love the way that people reveal themselves in the books or articles they write. I love the sense that I’m “meeting” a scholar in a place so important to him or to her that they just had to write about it, they had to polish that writing, and they had to make sure it would one day connect to readers. I like quoting others for that reason. I appreciate their self-revelation through their words so much.
Where do you do most of your writing and why is that your chosen place?
I either write in my bed, my recliner, or my office. I prefer my recliner because the rest of the family tends to leave me alone, but it still allows me to be a part of things if my husband comes out of his office or if my son comes out of his room or crosses through the living room when he comes home from being out. The dogs have their beds in the living room, too, and I don’t feel like I’m still in bed, waiting to start the day. I feel like this is my “work.”
Whose books do you most like to read and why?
For fiction, I love Jennifer Chiaverini. I learn a lot about quilts, but more than that she can really convey memorable characters that I find myself caring deeply about. For research, I love anyone who answers my questions in a way that connects with me. Right now, I’m reading about the story of Christianity by Justo Gonzalez. I heard him speak at a creative writing conference last April, and I bought every book with his name on it. I love how many early Christian leaders were educated in rhetoric. The history of Christianity is incredibly complex, but I feel as if Dr. Gonzalez cared a lot about making it interesting, accurate, and accessible.
What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
For creative writers, please go join a really good creative writing group. Take your work in to be critiqued. Take the advice you are given. If you can find a good group, you’ll figure out where even a single word can tank your prose. I learn as much from critiquing others, and from hearing how others critique them, as I do from when I get feedback. My creative writing group gets together just to write (and to eat tasty snacks), and they bring in published authors as guest speakers. I have learned more from them than from any book written on creative writing. It’s been transformative. If I could devote more time to this, I could really get somewhere with it.
For academic writers, you need time. More time. Review, revise, and give it more time. Get a reader. Revise. Really revise. Don’t get an echo chamber. Find someone with a different opinion, point of view, or even just someone who will honestly tell you what is wrong with either your writing or your research. I’ll never forget when a teacher at the University of Arizona sat me down and explained that my interpretation of something was off target and why. I learned so much from that. If you are contributing to the academic world, you need a reader who understands the ideas as well as one who can comment on your writing. This is a much different type of help than you will get as a creative writer who can be anyone who enjoys that particular genre. Also, when you think you are done with your research, return to it as though you’ve done no research at all. Get some fresh sources. Go through others’ bibliographies to find sources new to you. Revisit your ideas with a fresh perspective after some new research.
Anything else you'd like to share?
I’ve learned to be very much aware of what is needed for each type of writing I might do. If I’m sending an email to someone at work, I’m incredibly careful and I don’t write a lot. If I’m texting one of my kids, I know I can be funny or silly.
I also get out of bed, no matter what time it is, to write down something that I think is important. I have some words of wisdom interspersed in my journals. I know if I wait, I will lose the words. So I choose to write when I have the thought pulsing in my mind.
That being said, finding the best time to write is important. I will often interrupt my morning coffee and prayer time to write. Ideas received from my prayers will be bursting into a thousand points of light, like firecrackers exploding against a blackened sky. I find that my spiritual life empowers my writing life.
On a more practical note, if I’m doing some type of writing that is more formal, I know better than to trust myself. Spell check and a friend to read things over is always helpful. I also know what not to put into writing. At one point, I read a book on insecurity and learned that writing too much is a result of that feeling. I try to be very careful with my words, but I also enjoy not having to be so careful with friends and family. I think—eventually—creative writing will give me a middle ground I will enjoy—a place I can be less formal and really let my style take over. However, academic writing is deeply infused with purpose for me. I will always choose it first when I have free time to write.
In addition to her writing, Kristen is a faculty member in the English department at Spartanburg Methodist College where she also directs the writing center, called The Write Place. In addition, she is director of research and archives for the International Pentecostal Holiness Church. She also volunteers as associate publisher for marketing and advancement with the WAC Clearinghouse, where I also volunteer as associate publisher for design and production.
In her personal life, Kristen’s family relationships are important to her. She is a daughter, sister, wife, mother, stepmother, mother-in-law, grandmother, and stepgrandmother. She also enjoys quilting, sewing, creative writing, and travel. You can connect with her through her website, on Facebook, or on LinkedIn.
I hope you enjoy the following interview, which we’ve edited collaboratively.
When did you first know you might become a writer?
I have always used writing as a way to process my world. I had written a whole stack of diaries by the time I was in my 20s. But there came a point where they were too personal and too much a reflection of the past, so I threw them all away. I now keep a lot of journals for creative writing or note-taking. I still process the world through writing, but in a much different way.
What or who motivates you to write?
One of my motivations is I feel like I have to explore something much more deeply than spoken language allows, and I become obsessed with the journey. I am motivated by strong curiosity and a hope that my writing will contribute something helpful to those who read it.
What is your favorite part of your writing process and what do you most like about it?
My favorite part is discovery. Writing is organic, and it emerges. I often feel surprised when I read my own writing. I think: Who wrote that? The answer is that it was me when I was immersed in the beauty of language, when I was trying to create something out of all the pieces of great writing around me. I love research, but I especially love the way that people reveal themselves in the books or articles they write. I love the sense that I’m “meeting” a scholar in a place so important to him or to her that they just had to write about it, they had to polish that writing, and they had to make sure it would one day connect to readers. I like quoting others for that reason. I appreciate their self-revelation through their words so much.
Where do you do most of your writing and why is that your chosen place?
I either write in my bed, my recliner, or my office. I prefer my recliner because the rest of the family tends to leave me alone, but it still allows me to be a part of things if my husband comes out of his office or if my son comes out of his room or crosses through the living room when he comes home from being out. The dogs have their beds in the living room, too, and I don’t feel like I’m still in bed, waiting to start the day. I feel like this is my “work.”
Whose books do you most like to read and why?
For fiction, I love Jennifer Chiaverini. I learn a lot about quilts, but more than that she can really convey memorable characters that I find myself caring deeply about. For research, I love anyone who answers my questions in a way that connects with me. Right now, I’m reading about the story of Christianity by Justo Gonzalez. I heard him speak at a creative writing conference last April, and I bought every book with his name on it. I love how many early Christian leaders were educated in rhetoric. The history of Christianity is incredibly complex, but I feel as if Dr. Gonzalez cared a lot about making it interesting, accurate, and accessible.
What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
For creative writers, please go join a really good creative writing group. Take your work in to be critiqued. Take the advice you are given. If you can find a good group, you’ll figure out where even a single word can tank your prose. I learn as much from critiquing others, and from hearing how others critique them, as I do from when I get feedback. My creative writing group gets together just to write (and to eat tasty snacks), and they bring in published authors as guest speakers. I have learned more from them than from any book written on creative writing. It’s been transformative. If I could devote more time to this, I could really get somewhere with it.
For academic writers, you need time. More time. Review, revise, and give it more time. Get a reader. Revise. Really revise. Don’t get an echo chamber. Find someone with a different opinion, point of view, or even just someone who will honestly tell you what is wrong with either your writing or your research. I’ll never forget when a teacher at the University of Arizona sat me down and explained that my interpretation of something was off target and why. I learned so much from that. If you are contributing to the academic world, you need a reader who understands the ideas as well as one who can comment on your writing. This is a much different type of help than you will get as a creative writer who can be anyone who enjoys that particular genre. Also, when you think you are done with your research, return to it as though you’ve done no research at all. Get some fresh sources. Go through others’ bibliographies to find sources new to you. Revisit your ideas with a fresh perspective after some new research.
Anything else you'd like to share?
I’ve learned to be very much aware of what is needed for each type of writing I might do. If I’m sending an email to someone at work, I’m incredibly careful and I don’t write a lot. If I’m texting one of my kids, I know I can be funny or silly.
I also get out of bed, no matter what time it is, to write down something that I think is important. I have some words of wisdom interspersed in my journals. I know if I wait, I will lose the words. So I choose to write when I have the thought pulsing in my mind.
That being said, finding the best time to write is important. I will often interrupt my morning coffee and prayer time to write. Ideas received from my prayers will be bursting into a thousand points of light, like firecrackers exploding against a blackened sky. I find that my spiritual life empowers my writing life.
On a more practical note, if I’m doing some type of writing that is more formal, I know better than to trust myself. Spell check and a friend to read things over is always helpful. I also know what not to put into writing. At one point, I read a book on insecurity and learned that writing too much is a result of that feeling. I try to be very careful with my words, but I also enjoy not having to be so careful with friends and family. I think—eventually—creative writing will give me a middle ground I will enjoy—a place I can be less formal and really let my style take over. However, academic writing is deeply infused with purpose for me. I will always choose it first when I have free time to write.
Monday, November 25, 2024
Author Spotlight: Jayne Conway
After a brief hiatus in my series of author profiles to blog about the National Day on Writing, I’m back with another author spotlight. This time I’m highlighting Jayne Conway, romance novelist. She joins previous friends of mine I’ve profiled in my blog: literary critic and memoirist Daniel Paliwoda, mystery writer Jen Pitts, children’s author and illustrator Liza Woodruff, journalist and editor Algernon D’Ammassa, and e-zine writer and editor Charlie Bertsch.
Jayne and I met in elementary school when we spent fourth and fifth grades in the same homeroom. We attended a magnet program together called IGE (Individually Guided Education). In an article written for Education & Culture: The Journal of the John Dewey Society, Pyeong-gook Kim outlined the design of this federally-funded education reform movement as follows:
I’m so pleased Jayne agreed to be profiled. She’s written four books, all while working full time as a teacher and being a single mother to three. She has also at times maintained a blog, and she is a skilled photographer. She’s truly multi-talented, a Renaissance woman you might say. You can find synopses of her books along with samples of her photography on her website. Additionally, she has author accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads, and you can contact her via any of those or through her Contact page on her website.
I hope you enjoy learning about Jayne’s writing life! Following is an interview that we edited collaboratively.
When did you first know you might become a writer?
I don’t think I consciously planned to become a writer. I’ve always kept journals and have always been a reader. I love getting lost in another world. When I created a bucket list in my late-thirties, I included writing a book. One day, at a particularly low point in my life, I sat down and the words started flowing.
What or who motivates you to write?
I write because I have a story to tell. Like many people my age, I think about the road not traveled. When I write, I’m exploring alternative realities, the what ifs of my own journey. It’s escapism, pure and simple.
What is your favorite part of your writing process and what do you most like about it?
My favorite part of the writing process is when I finish a chapter or a section of the book and realize it’s all falling into place. The puzzle pieces are fitting and the story is writing itself. I rarely have an outline or plan when I start a project, but I feel when it’s working, and that’s satisfying.
Where do you do most of your writing and why is that your chosen place?
I write at home, usually on the couch or at the kitchen table, but my ideas come to me when I’m driving or taking a walk.
Whose books do you most like to read and why?
Wally Lamb and Curtis Sittenfeld are two of my favorite fiction writers. The topics explored in their books are very different, but their characters are complex and relatable. Other than that, I read a lot of non-fiction. Doris Kearns Goodwin is without a doubt my favorite non-fiction writer. She knows how to transform history into a story and as a history teacher, that’s what I do every day.
What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
Just do it. You don’t need a plan or a fancy set up or even complete silence to write. You don’t even have to start your story at the beginning. I find a lot of people don’t know where to begin and that’s okay. Start in the middle. Dive in and don’t worry about editing until later.
Anything else you'd like to share?
Writing has been a form of therapy for me. It’s something I do because it makes me feel good. It’s also something that will live on long after I’m gone and I find comfort in knowing a piece of me will live on.
Jayne and I met in elementary school when we spent fourth and fifth grades in the same homeroom. We attended a magnet program together called IGE (Individually Guided Education). In an article written for Education & Culture: The Journal of the John Dewey Society, Pyeong-gook Kim outlined the design of this federally-funded education reform movement as follows:
The planners intended that instructional programming for the individual student should not be interpreted to mean that all students engage in the same number or kinds of activities, or reach an identical level of achievement, interest, or motivation….While instructional programming is done for each individual student, instruction…is provided for groups of students with common learning needs. In practice, such grouping of students usually led to instruction on a content unit for two to three weeks, followed by post-assessment, some regrouping of students, and instruction on another content unit.Being involved in this program was one of the highlights of my early learning. I have fond memories of the extracurricular activities my classmates and I took part in, as well as of the teachers and my fellow students, including Jayne!
 |
Author Jayne
Conway (Jayne
Conway: About the Author/Jayne Conway) |
Unfortunately, Jayne and I lost touch over the years, mainly because I left public school to attend private schools starting in the sixth grade. Jayne was active in our community, though, participating in a local theater group in the summers, performances of which I attended regularly. Although I have mixed feelings about Facebook and other social media, I’m glad it allowed us to reconnect.
I’m so pleased Jayne agreed to be profiled. She’s written four books, all while working full time as a teacher and being a single mother to three. She has also at times maintained a blog, and she is a skilled photographer. She’s truly multi-talented, a Renaissance woman you might say. You can find synopses of her books along with samples of her photography on her website. Additionally, she has author accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads, and you can contact her via any of those or through her Contact page on her website.
I hope you enjoy learning about Jayne’s writing life! Following is an interview that we edited collaboratively.
When did you first know you might become a writer?
I don’t think I consciously planned to become a writer. I’ve always kept journals and have always been a reader. I love getting lost in another world. When I created a bucket list in my late-thirties, I included writing a book. One day, at a particularly low point in my life, I sat down and the words started flowing.
What or who motivates you to write?
I write because I have a story to tell. Like many people my age, I think about the road not traveled. When I write, I’m exploring alternative realities, the what ifs of my own journey. It’s escapism, pure and simple.
What is your favorite part of your writing process and what do you most like about it?
My favorite part of the writing process is when I finish a chapter or a section of the book and realize it’s all falling into place. The puzzle pieces are fitting and the story is writing itself. I rarely have an outline or plan when I start a project, but I feel when it’s working, and that’s satisfying.
Where do you do most of your writing and why is that your chosen place?
I write at home, usually on the couch or at the kitchen table, but my ideas come to me when I’m driving or taking a walk.
Whose books do you most like to read and why?
Wally Lamb and Curtis Sittenfeld are two of my favorite fiction writers. The topics explored in their books are very different, but their characters are complex and relatable. Other than that, I read a lot of non-fiction. Doris Kearns Goodwin is without a doubt my favorite non-fiction writer. She knows how to transform history into a story and as a history teacher, that’s what I do every day.
What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
Just do it. You don’t need a plan or a fancy set up or even complete silence to write. You don’t even have to start your story at the beginning. I find a lot of people don’t know where to begin and that’s okay. Start in the middle. Dive in and don’t worry about editing until later.
Anything else you'd like to share?
Writing has been a form of therapy for me. It’s something I do because it makes me feel good. It’s also something that will live on long after I’m gone and I find comfort in knowing a piece of me will live on.
Sunday, October 20, 2024
All About the National Day on Writing
I’m interrupting my blog series profiling authors I know—in which I’ve highlighted literary critic and memoirist Daniel Paliwoda, mystery writer Jen Pitts, children’s author and illustrator Liza Woodruff, journalist Algernon D’Ammassa, and writer and editor in the e-zine space Charlie Bertsch—to post an entry about the National Day on Writing (I’ll get back to the author profile series soon). Those of you who work in or have children in the educational system, whether K-12 or beyond, might have heard of the National Day on Writing. Otherwise, you might be unaware of this initiative. Either way, you might not know its origin story or its purpose. This blog entry will fill you in!
History of the National Day on Writing
The National Day on Writing was establisehd by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) in 2009. As noted on its About Us page, NCTE is a professional organization for teachers of English and is “devoted to improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education.” Because writing is an integral part of language use, it is fitting that NCTE should have founded this initiative.
Over the years, in places around the country, participants in the National Day on Writing have engaged in a variety of writing-related activities, a sampling of which are listed in a toolkit developed by NCTE. Additionally, a 2020 blog post by NCTE staff member Lisa Fink reveals that the US Senate “has passed resolutions declaring October 20 the National Day on Writing” in support of the initiative. And, as NCTE explains on its National Day on Writing website, since the first National Day on Writing in 2009, the organization has used the hashtag #WhyIWrite to draw attention to the initiative on social media.
Purpose of the National Day on Writing
As NCTE explains on its website dedicated to the National Day on Writing, the event is meant to “draw attention to the remarkable variety of writing Americans engage in.” I’ve compiled a list of several of these types of writing that I can think of off the top of my head:
My Involvement With the National Day on Writing
I first became involved with the National Day on Writing in 2010 when I started working at North Dakota State University. Prior to my arrival, the day was observed by one faculty member in the Department of English who had her students write on the sidewalks with chalk in response to the #WhyIWrite hashtag. By the time I left NDSU, I had led seven campus-wide observances of the National Day on Writing, in which more than 10 offices and departments participated. I spearheaded several of the events myself, and I assisted others in organizing their events as well. The events that were held over the years included the following:
History of the National Day on Writing
The National Day on Writing was establisehd by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) in 2009. As noted on its About Us page, NCTE is a professional organization for teachers of English and is “devoted to improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education.” Because writing is an integral part of language use, it is fitting that NCTE should have founded this initiative.
Over the years, in places around the country, participants in the National Day on Writing have engaged in a variety of writing-related activities, a sampling of which are listed in a toolkit developed by NCTE. Additionally, a 2020 blog post by NCTE staff member Lisa Fink reveals that the US Senate “has passed resolutions declaring October 20 the National Day on Writing” in support of the initiative. And, as NCTE explains on its National Day on Writing website, since the first National Day on Writing in 2009, the organization has used the hashtag #WhyIWrite to draw attention to the initiative on social media.
 |
An information sheet about the National Day on Writing. (National
Day on Writing Toolkit/NCTE) |
As NCTE explains on its website dedicated to the National Day on Writing, the event is meant to “draw attention to the remarkable variety of writing Americans engage in.” I’ve compiled a list of several of these types of writing that I can think of off the top of my head:
- to-do lists
- shopping lists
- lists of questions to ask your doctor at an appointment
- listicles
- text messages
- emails
- notes in holiday/birthday/thank you cards
- public service announcements
- memos
- briefs
- flyers
- brochures
- blog posts
- calls for proposals
- proposals
- reports
- manuals
- guidelines
- journal articles
- book chapters
- books
- poems
My Involvement With the National Day on Writing
I first became involved with the National Day on Writing in 2010 when I started working at North Dakota State University. Prior to my arrival, the day was observed by one faculty member in the Department of English who had her students write on the sidewalks with chalk in response to the #WhyIWrite hashtag. By the time I left NDSU, I had led seven campus-wide observances of the National Day on Writing, in which more than 10 offices and departments participated. I spearheaded several of the events myself, and I assisted others in organizing their events as well. The events that were held over the years included the following:
- writing retreat
- information table with word games and writing activities
- rotating story, aka “exquisite corpse,” on Facebook
- dissertation writing and thesis defense information session
- presentation on workplace writing by a guest speaker from a local company
- display of library resources related to writing
- writing center open house
- calligraphy lesson
- activity on the intersection of art and writing
- presentation on open access publishing
- found poetry activity on Facebook
- help desk on library resources for citations
- author book talk
- pictures of writing in action posted to social media
- multi-language sidewalk chalking and social media posting about the power of words
- grant writing help desk
- e-publishing workshop
- infographics workshop
- thesis formatting workshop
- writing to learn activities workshop
- open access publishing panel discussion
- free verse poetry activity and display
- letters to the President write-in
- 6-word story writing
- Prezi presentations workshop
- literature review workshop
- breaking writer’s block workshop
- PowerPoint posters workshop
- writing game prize drawing
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
Author Spotlight: Charlie Bertsch
I’m pleased to bring you the fifth in my series of blog posts profiling authors I know. So far I’ve profiled literary critic and memoirist Daniel Paliwoda, mystery writer Jen Pitts, children’s author and illustrator Liza Woodruff, and journalist Algernon D’Ammassa. This time I’m profiling a leading writer and editor in the e-zine space, Charlie Bertsch.
I met Charlie when I was a doctoral student at the University of Arizona. He taught one of my favorite classes ever (not just in graduate school), which focused on the philosophy of language. I came across the field of philosophy too late as an undergraduate to make it my major (I took my first philosophy class as a junior), but if I had found it sooner, I think I might have become a philosopher instead of an English major who ended up focusing on the study of writing.
The class Charlie taught introduced me to language theorists I ended up citing in chapter four of my dissertation: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Paul Ricoeur, Judith Butler, J. L. Austin, and Jürgen Habermas. I drew connections between their theories and theories of written composition and rhetoric to propose a new way of teaching academic writing that emphasizes building mutual understanding between people rather than focusing only on persuasion. I was honored to have Charlie serve on my dissertation committee and also to serve as a model for me of one of the strongest interdisciplinary thinkers out there.
Charlie is perhaps best known professionally as a co-founder of the e-zine Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life. One collection of articles from its 25-year run was published by NYU Press and another by Pluto Press. He also co-founded the e-zine Souciant which was published from 2011–2020. He’s currently affiliated with The Battleground, another e-zine, based in Brussels, where he serves as Music & Film Editor. He’s published two book-length collections of his articles from The Battleground. The first, published in 2021, is titled Listening for the Future: Popular Music for Europe, while the second, newly published this month, is called End of Story: European Cinema in a Post-Narrative Age.
I’m so pleased to introduce you to Charlie’s writing life. Following is an interview that we edited collaboratively. If you’d like to connect with Charlie, he’s available on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
When did you first know you might become a writer?
In retrospect, I should have had inklings in second grade when I won a competition in my school district for a short book I’d written and illustrated and got to participate in a county-wide program. But the event was held at a school in a very wealthy school district in Philadephia’s northern suburbs, and I found the experience alienating. I mean, the school had an indoor swimming pool!
I started to get a clear sense of being a writer in high school. During the fall semester of our junior year, I was taking a course with a beloved teacher. He distributed a photocopied handbook covering various topics, including complex ethical quandaries. The English teacher who supervised the humanities became angry at him for not getting permission to distribute this handbook before giving it to us and initiated a disciplinary action that eventually led to him being dismissed, though he was allowed to continue teaching for the remainder of the semester.
Because this man also ran the theater program at our school, he had a lot of support from current and former students. A movement sprang up to protest his dismissal, in the hope of getting it overturned. Even though our school was small and out of the way, this movement was eventually reported in local newspapers, as I recall.
Up until that point, I had been a marginal figure in school. After ending up in the outcast role in seventh and eighth grade, I tried to keep a low profile in high school. But something about this protest movement inspired me to become more visible. My general misery and lack of motivation made me more fearless than the students who had initiated the protest, the sort who are always striving to please and worried about getting into a good college.
After the beloved teacher left, I began to write pieces for our school magazine, which he had founded. I discovered that I had a gift for satire and could critique the administration while still maintaining plausible deniability. Knowing that my pieces were making an impact, even though everything in them was coded, and that they were understood both by my fellow students and by our antagonists in the administration transformed me into a more confident person and someone who was willing and able to take risks in my writing.
What or who motivates you to write?
First and foremost, I am motivated by my passionate belief in the power of the written word to promote change. I know that it is extremely unlikely that anything I write will achieve mainstream success. But more than three decades in the alternative media have taught me that it’s still possible to have a meaningful impact on society without that mainstream success, provided you reach enough people who will, in turn, pass your ideas onto others.
I am especially proud of those pieces I’ve written that have moved readers outside of my usual orbit, such as one I wrote in 2012 about my neighbor across the street, a Promise Keeper whose political views were radically different from my own. Although I agreed with very little this man said, he was still a great neighbor who worked hard to make life better for the people around him. This piece made some of my conservative acquaintances on social media—mostly from my high school—feel seen and also helped like-minded progressives to remember that we shouldn’t reduce individuals to the positions they occupy in the political landscape.
Although I have rarely had a large audience for my work, the readers I do have inspire me. It means a lot to know that I’m reaching the people I want to reach and that they are responding to my writing in ways that please me.
At this point, another motivation to write regularly is my own mental health. During the comparatively rare periods in which I haven’t had regular writing assignments, I’ve drifted in and out of a paralytic state that I now recognize as depression.
What is your favorite part of your writing process and what do you most like about it?
My favorite part of the writing process is the initial stage when I’m doing research and formulating ideas. If I’m in a groove, that work fills me with positive energy and generates enough hope to get me through the most difficult part of the process, which is when I sit down at my laptop and try to come up with a way into my piece.
Where do you do most of your writing and why is that your chosen place?
I do most of my writing at home, in the wee hours of the morning. The official reason for this is that I work for a magazine based in Belgium and need to communicate with my editor when it’s morning in Europe. But I also find it difficult to work when I might be interrupted by my family. Although my kind of ADHD makes it possible for me to focus intently when the setting is right, it also leads me to be easily distracted. Interestingly, during daytime hours I typically find it easier to write in a crowded café, where the ambient noise helps to offset the tendencies of my own brain.
Whose books do you most like to read and why?
These days, I am more likely to listen to a well-narrated audiobook than to read a physical one. I suffer from a kind of dyslexia that makes it difficult for me to match up the end of lines, which often causes me to get stuck in a loop, staring at the same page for minutes on end. Although this dyslexia has always been a problem, it became much worse after I endured a serious health crisis and long hospitalization in 2021.
That is why, when I returned to Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain during my long recovery process, I abandoned my paperback for the excellent Audible version. I typically listen while on the go, which helps me to remember text better than when I am sitting in my chair at home. In the case of The Magic Mountain, I experienced the second half of the book while learning to hike again on my favorite trail in the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson. I wrote a long piece about the novel, broken into three parts, for The Battleground, incorporating photos I had taken during my hikes. Although most pieces of mine attract more readers, that one is dear to my heart.
My type of dyslexia makes it much easier for me to read from flat surfaces than curved ones. As a consequence, I read much faster on screens or photocopies that lie flat. That’s fine for research but feels strange to me when I want to immerse myself in a fictional world. So I generally read non-fiction on my laptop these days and listen to novels.
In terms of what I like to read, detective and espionage fiction are my go-to genres for pleasure reading, which in 2024 usually means pleasure listening. John Le Carré’s Cold War narratives have been a favorite of mine since I was a teenager, and I enjoy revisiting them periodically. One of the reasons why Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer, recently adapted into an HBO mini-series, places high on my list of recent novels is that it takes me back to that mode of storytelling but approaches it from a different angle. Another reason is that he is the only recipient of a Macarthur Genius Grant that I once defeated at Scrabble!
Over the past decade, I have been trying to read classics of world literature in translation, since my professional training left me little time for literature that wasn’t in my fields, nineteenth and twentieth-century American literature. Some, like Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, I read in book form. But I found it much easier to listen to Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust than to tackle it in print and not only because of my dyslexia.
I also read cultural theory because I enjoy it, perverse as that may sound, because I appreciate getting a lot out of a little. The same applies to poetry, though I haven’t engaged with it as much lately as I would like.
What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
The standard advice always seems to be to read widely and as much as you can. I think that’s definitely the case for children and teenagers. But once you are in your twenties, I would argue that it becomes just as important to read well instead of just reading for the sake of reading. That means SLOWING DOWN and reflecting on what you read, rather than rushing to the next book.
One exercise I’ve found valuable is copying down a paragraph that I particularly like by hand, in a notebook, and then writing notes about it. Something about the particular hand-and-brain connection there seems to make the words on the page or screen sink in differently and opens my eyes to details I might otherwise overlook.
Anything else you'd like to share?
For a number of years, I taught a class for first-year students in the honors college of a major university. The idea behind this course was to get these students, who were almost always the hard-working and motivated sort, to make their writing less impersonal, since these students often had difficulty later in their undergraduate years writing the kind of self-descriptions required for applications to graduate and professional school.
I came up with a variety of exercises designed to bypass the habits these students had learned in high school, when they were trying to please their teachers instead of themselves, and to help them mobilize personal experiences in their writing. My favorite one of these involved giving them twenty minutes to respond to a prompt in class. I would ask them to leave their name off of these in-class writing assignments. Once they were done, I would distribute them in such a way that each student ended up with someone else’s in-class writing and could not tell who had written it. Then I would ask students to read the in-class writing carefully several times in preparation for presenting it to the class. I told them to imagine that they had experienced what the other student had and would then take volunteers, asking them to read the in-class writing aloud in such a way that it seemed like their own work.
This seemingly simple exercise led to some very powerful moments in my classes. Afterwards, students often reported that it was their favorite thing about the course. Somehow, the work of impersonating someone else would unlock a capacity to write more convincingly about their own experiences going forward.
I mention this because I think that doing a modified version of this kind of exercise can be very helpful for writers. You can read published work, of course. Or you can get in a writer’s group where you do something along these lines
I met Charlie when I was a doctoral student at the University of Arizona. He taught one of my favorite classes ever (not just in graduate school), which focused on the philosophy of language. I came across the field of philosophy too late as an undergraduate to make it my major (I took my first philosophy class as a junior), but if I had found it sooner, I think I might have become a philosopher instead of an English major who ended up focusing on the study of writing.
The class Charlie taught introduced me to language theorists I ended up citing in chapter four of my dissertation: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Paul Ricoeur, Judith Butler, J. L. Austin, and Jürgen Habermas. I drew connections between their theories and theories of written composition and rhetoric to propose a new way of teaching academic writing that emphasizes building mutual understanding between people rather than focusing only on persuasion. I was honored to have Charlie serve on my dissertation committee and also to serve as a model for me of one of the strongest interdisciplinary thinkers out there.
Charlie is perhaps best known professionally as a co-founder of the e-zine Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life. One collection of articles from its 25-year run was published by NYU Press and another by Pluto Press. He also co-founded the e-zine Souciant which was published from 2011–2020. He’s currently affiliated with The Battleground, another e-zine, based in Brussels, where he serves as Music & Film Editor. He’s published two book-length collections of his articles from The Battleground. The first, published in 2021, is titled Listening for the Future: Popular Music for Europe, while the second, newly published this month, is called End of Story: European Cinema in a Post-Narrative Age.
 |
| Author and editor Charlie Bertsch. (Instagram/Charlie
Bertsch) |
I’m so pleased to introduce you to Charlie’s writing life. Following is an interview that we edited collaboratively. If you’d like to connect with Charlie, he’s available on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
When did you first know you might become a writer?
In retrospect, I should have had inklings in second grade when I won a competition in my school district for a short book I’d written and illustrated and got to participate in a county-wide program. But the event was held at a school in a very wealthy school district in Philadephia’s northern suburbs, and I found the experience alienating. I mean, the school had an indoor swimming pool!
I started to get a clear sense of being a writer in high school. During the fall semester of our junior year, I was taking a course with a beloved teacher. He distributed a photocopied handbook covering various topics, including complex ethical quandaries. The English teacher who supervised the humanities became angry at him for not getting permission to distribute this handbook before giving it to us and initiated a disciplinary action that eventually led to him being dismissed, though he was allowed to continue teaching for the remainder of the semester.
Because this man also ran the theater program at our school, he had a lot of support from current and former students. A movement sprang up to protest his dismissal, in the hope of getting it overturned. Even though our school was small and out of the way, this movement was eventually reported in local newspapers, as I recall.
Up until that point, I had been a marginal figure in school. After ending up in the outcast role in seventh and eighth grade, I tried to keep a low profile in high school. But something about this protest movement inspired me to become more visible. My general misery and lack of motivation made me more fearless than the students who had initiated the protest, the sort who are always striving to please and worried about getting into a good college.
After the beloved teacher left, I began to write pieces for our school magazine, which he had founded. I discovered that I had a gift for satire and could critique the administration while still maintaining plausible deniability. Knowing that my pieces were making an impact, even though everything in them was coded, and that they were understood both by my fellow students and by our antagonists in the administration transformed me into a more confident person and someone who was willing and able to take risks in my writing.
What or who motivates you to write?
First and foremost, I am motivated by my passionate belief in the power of the written word to promote change. I know that it is extremely unlikely that anything I write will achieve mainstream success. But more than three decades in the alternative media have taught me that it’s still possible to have a meaningful impact on society without that mainstream success, provided you reach enough people who will, in turn, pass your ideas onto others.
I am especially proud of those pieces I’ve written that have moved readers outside of my usual orbit, such as one I wrote in 2012 about my neighbor across the street, a Promise Keeper whose political views were radically different from my own. Although I agreed with very little this man said, he was still a great neighbor who worked hard to make life better for the people around him. This piece made some of my conservative acquaintances on social media—mostly from my high school—feel seen and also helped like-minded progressives to remember that we shouldn’t reduce individuals to the positions they occupy in the political landscape.
Although I have rarely had a large audience for my work, the readers I do have inspire me. It means a lot to know that I’m reaching the people I want to reach and that they are responding to my writing in ways that please me.
At this point, another motivation to write regularly is my own mental health. During the comparatively rare periods in which I haven’t had regular writing assignments, I’ve drifted in and out of a paralytic state that I now recognize as depression.
What is your favorite part of your writing process and what do you most like about it?
My favorite part of the writing process is the initial stage when I’m doing research and formulating ideas. If I’m in a groove, that work fills me with positive energy and generates enough hope to get me through the most difficult part of the process, which is when I sit down at my laptop and try to come up with a way into my piece.
Where do you do most of your writing and why is that your chosen place?
I do most of my writing at home, in the wee hours of the morning. The official reason for this is that I work for a magazine based in Belgium and need to communicate with my editor when it’s morning in Europe. But I also find it difficult to work when I might be interrupted by my family. Although my kind of ADHD makes it possible for me to focus intently when the setting is right, it also leads me to be easily distracted. Interestingly, during daytime hours I typically find it easier to write in a crowded café, where the ambient noise helps to offset the tendencies of my own brain.
Whose books do you most like to read and why?
These days, I am more likely to listen to a well-narrated audiobook than to read a physical one. I suffer from a kind of dyslexia that makes it difficult for me to match up the end of lines, which often causes me to get stuck in a loop, staring at the same page for minutes on end. Although this dyslexia has always been a problem, it became much worse after I endured a serious health crisis and long hospitalization in 2021.
That is why, when I returned to Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain during my long recovery process, I abandoned my paperback for the excellent Audible version. I typically listen while on the go, which helps me to remember text better than when I am sitting in my chair at home. In the case of The Magic Mountain, I experienced the second half of the book while learning to hike again on my favorite trail in the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson. I wrote a long piece about the novel, broken into three parts, for The Battleground, incorporating photos I had taken during my hikes. Although most pieces of mine attract more readers, that one is dear to my heart.
My type of dyslexia makes it much easier for me to read from flat surfaces than curved ones. As a consequence, I read much faster on screens or photocopies that lie flat. That’s fine for research but feels strange to me when I want to immerse myself in a fictional world. So I generally read non-fiction on my laptop these days and listen to novels.
In terms of what I like to read, detective and espionage fiction are my go-to genres for pleasure reading, which in 2024 usually means pleasure listening. John Le Carré’s Cold War narratives have been a favorite of mine since I was a teenager, and I enjoy revisiting them periodically. One of the reasons why Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer, recently adapted into an HBO mini-series, places high on my list of recent novels is that it takes me back to that mode of storytelling but approaches it from a different angle. Another reason is that he is the only recipient of a Macarthur Genius Grant that I once defeated at Scrabble!
Over the past decade, I have been trying to read classics of world literature in translation, since my professional training left me little time for literature that wasn’t in my fields, nineteenth and twentieth-century American literature. Some, like Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, I read in book form. But I found it much easier to listen to Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust than to tackle it in print and not only because of my dyslexia.
I also read cultural theory because I enjoy it, perverse as that may sound, because I appreciate getting a lot out of a little. The same applies to poetry, though I haven’t engaged with it as much lately as I would like.
What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
The standard advice always seems to be to read widely and as much as you can. I think that’s definitely the case for children and teenagers. But once you are in your twenties, I would argue that it becomes just as important to read well instead of just reading for the sake of reading. That means SLOWING DOWN and reflecting on what you read, rather than rushing to the next book.
One exercise I’ve found valuable is copying down a paragraph that I particularly like by hand, in a notebook, and then writing notes about it. Something about the particular hand-and-brain connection there seems to make the words on the page or screen sink in differently and opens my eyes to details I might otherwise overlook.
Anything else you'd like to share?
For a number of years, I taught a class for first-year students in the honors college of a major university. The idea behind this course was to get these students, who were almost always the hard-working and motivated sort, to make their writing less impersonal, since these students often had difficulty later in their undergraduate years writing the kind of self-descriptions required for applications to graduate and professional school.
I came up with a variety of exercises designed to bypass the habits these students had learned in high school, when they were trying to please their teachers instead of themselves, and to help them mobilize personal experiences in their writing. My favorite one of these involved giving them twenty minutes to respond to a prompt in class. I would ask them to leave their name off of these in-class writing assignments. Once they were done, I would distribute them in such a way that each student ended up with someone else’s in-class writing and could not tell who had written it. Then I would ask students to read the in-class writing carefully several times in preparation for presenting it to the class. I told them to imagine that they had experienced what the other student had and would then take volunteers, asking them to read the in-class writing aloud in such a way that it seemed like their own work.
This seemingly simple exercise led to some very powerful moments in my classes. Afterwards, students often reported that it was their favorite thing about the course. Somehow, the work of impersonating someone else would unlock a capacity to write more convincingly about their own experiences going forward.
I mention this because I think that doing a modified version of this kind of exercise can be very helpful for writers. You can read published work, of course. Or you can get in a writer’s group where you do something along these lines
Sunday, August 25, 2024
Author Spotlight: Algernon D'Ammassa
Continuing my blog series profiling authors I know personally, this time I’m profiling Algernon D’Ammassa. (Previously I profiled Daniel Paliwoda, Jen Pitts, and Liza Woodruff.) Algernon is a journalist, currently serving as the managing editor of the Las Cruces Bulletin in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He’s been in this role since December 2023. Previously, he was editor of the Deming Headlight, reporter and columnist with the Las Cruces-Sun News, and reporter and columnist with the Deming Headlight.
Algernon hasn’t always made a living as a journalist, though. He’s also been an actor, a professor of theater arts at several institutions, a K-12 performing arts teacher, a co-founder of an acting studio, a Zen meditation instructor, and the abbott of a Zen center. He’s also a former board member of the New Mexico Humanities Council.
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Journalist and editor Algernon D’Ammassa (Personal collection/Algernon D’Ammassa) |
I was fortunate to meet Algernon when we went to middle school together at The Gordon School in East Providence, RI. My first year of existence there in the sixth grade passed pleasantly enough, but in seventh grade, for some reason I became the chosen object of the class bully. Algernon, though, stayed a true friend. He performed countless acts of loyalty over the next two years, including performing a soft-shoe duet with me to a rendition of “Me and My Shadow” sung by the class chorus when our music teacher latched on to the idea that I should perform a dance solo once she found out I took dance classes—Algernon came to my rescue. He also phoned me daily with our homework assignments when I was out of school for a surgical procedure. There are many other examples, but you get the idea. Algernon was a gem.
We went our separate ways in high school and completely lost touch for many years, until we reconnected via Facebook. These days we mostly keep in touch through old-fashioned letter writing, of which Algernon is a proponent, or an occasional Facebook message. I’m so glad to be back in touch with him, and I’m glad to introduce you to his life of writing.If you’d like to connect with Algernon, you can find him on Facebook, LinkedIn, and X. You can also reach him through the Las Cruces Bulletin. Following is an interview I conducted with Algernon, which we edited collaboratively.
When did you first know you might become a writer?
I think of my father as the writer in the family, although both my parents wrote. My mother did not write much for publication, but my father turned out book reviews, articles, short stories, and novels. I grew up thinking of writing as an ordinary activity. I wrote letters to the editor, guest opinion pieces, fanzine articles, and plays without any serious ambition most of my life. I was just having fun with it. For decades I thought of myself as an actor and sometimes still do.
What or who motivates you to write?
Most of my published writing is for the weekly newspaper I edit. Plays come to me initially in patches of dialogue, a theatrical image I want to help convey, some way of using live theatre to portray an idea alongside its negation, a theatrical action, or an intriguing relationship.
I try to approach opinion journalism from a nonpartisan angle, sometimes to persuade but often to portray how an ordinary person reasons through problems or propositions that news reporting presents to us. At other times, I feel more reactive, so I use satire instead.
What is your favorite part of your writing process and what do you most like about it?
A few years ago, I reformed my handwriting and got into fountain pens. The tactile pleasure of writing by hand has been a welcome surprise. As a result, I write more personal letters than ever and write notes to myself in journals. My eye, hand, and the flow of the ink work together in a way that pleases me as words and sentences take shape. Sometimes I draft my columns by hand with good results.
Usually, however, I must type, and somehow the process of selecting words and diction are different as I type and watch the words appear on screen.
Either way, I hear a voice and try to direct it to be conversational with the reader.
Where do you do most of your writing and why is that your chosen place?
In my office, people interrupt me constantly, so I do my newspaper writing in cafés or the tiny cabin I rent in town. If working by hand, I have a slanted tabletop writing desk for journaling and writing letters. I have a lovely reading room at my home with a comfortable chair, but I don’t do much writing there. Too much relaxation doesn’t help. I’m kind of a lazy writer.
Whose books do you most like to read and why?
There are certain books or writers who feel like companions, and I enjoy spending time with them. S. J. Perelman makes me laugh and often sends me to the dictionary. Jacques Barzun is such a lovely writer and interesting thinker; I enjoy spending time with any of his books. Plutarch’s biographies are not always good history, but they are good storytelling about the formation of character and values. Joan Didion’s essays. The English playwright Edward Bond is eclectic and fascinating, but it’s his essays I go to repeatedly. Montaigne. Barbara Ehrenreich. Terry Pratchett. There are lots: Books and writers have served as a rich community.
What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
It’s been said a million times because it holds true: Write. Write every day. Even if most of it is garbage in a throwaway notebook, just exercise moving words through yourself onto a surface and then read that output to see what is effective, what expresses you, what might be useful. If it’s for publication, read a draft out loud. Reading to somebody could also be informative.
Anything else you'd like to share?
Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg and Simple and Direct by Jacques Barzun are books I often snatch up at used bookstores and give to people. Feel free to look for them. They might be helpful.