Post 1: Flow

Too many of my students get stuck in their writing. The words just won't flow out their fingers and onto their screens. All writers suffer from writer's block from time to time, but novice writers seem to suffer more. There are ways to deal with this issue, and developing flow is one of the best. In his post "How to create 'flow' in your writing process", Josh Bernoff gives us some great practical advice. Let's review what he says and, as importantly, how he says it.

First, he defines what he means by flow in writing and tells us why it's important. Flow is that condition where you are being really productive in your writing (the words are flowing--get it?) and you are making great progress. This is also known as being in the zone. Athletes feel the zone when they are running well and show up just where the ball is without thinking about it. It's a great place to be, and writers can get there, too.

But not without some preparation, Bernoff says. He gives three steps for entering the zone and finding the flow:

1. Do the research,
2. create the space and time, and
3. don't destroy what you've created.

I find his first two points particularly helpful. It's amazing to me how many students try to write documents without learning something first. It's a bit like trying to play soccer when you know nothing about it. You just look silly. You can't play well if you haven't first stuffed your mind and body with lots of physical and mental knowledge about soccer--everything from how to touch the ball to how to position yourself on the field. Likewise, if you want to write well, then you first have to stuff your head with knowledge, with something to write about. Learn something first, then write.

Then, after you've learned something, carve out a good time and place for writing. Too many students try to write at the wrong time when they are already exhausted and in the wrong space where they are likely to be distracted. It's like trying to play soccer in a crowded parking lot after you've been binging all weekend. Really? Why should you expect to find the flow? You won't do well if you don't perform in the right place at the right time. You have to own your process if you want to find the flow.

Bernoff also has a good third point about how to approach the writing that comes out of a productive flow: it's a good first draft, but it ain't divinely inspired gospel. It probably needs some revision, so let it sit for a day, then revise it. Magically, your brain will work on your document on the day that you don't attend to it, so that when you return to edit it, you'll see your mistakes better and you'll know how to fix them. This is a very difficult lesson for students to learn as they just want to get the document off their to-do list and onto the teacher's list. Bad move.

So that's Bernoff's advice. Now let's consider how he sets up his post. First, he introduces a topic: flow in the writing process. He quotes a "brilliant psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi" to capture our attention AND to enhance his own authority. After all, Bernoff is not himself a brilliant psychologist. This is excellent advice for academic writers: frame your issue early and use some authority to enhance your own lack of authority. Teachers usually assume that students don't have much authority, so student writers should be careful to find some. You should always find sources that your teacher thinks are authoritative. In English papers, for instance, you should avoid Shmoop and SparkNotes as most English teachers do not consider them authoritative. Rather, you should prefer the scholarly articles and books that teachers themselves read and respect.

Then Bernoff gives you an easy to follow thesis after he's set you up: "In this post I’ll describe three stages that lead to fluid writing: preparing ahead, writing in flow, and preserving fluidity as you edit." The rest of his post is all about these three points in this order and ONLY about these three points. He doesn't distract you with some other stuff. He sticks to his three points in his stated order.

You may not agree with Bernoff, but at least you should have no doubts about what he's writing. This is good writing--exactly the kind you should do.

Post 07: Framing an Audience

Even text messages are better when we think about the audience.

I suspect that because most text messages are to people that we know well, then we don't think about our audience so rigorously when we are texting them, but this is misleading. We are forgetting that we already have a long history of interactions with this particular person. We have already done lots of thinking about them, so we can reliably intuit on-the-fly the kinds of information they need and the level and style of language that they will accept from us. For instance, if I'm texting my wife, then I can casually refer to Maddie, knowing that she will immediately understand that I'm talking about our granddaughter. I cannot rely on my colleagues or students having the same understanding. Maddie simply doesn't mean the same to them as it does to my wife and me.

When we fail to frame our text messages for a given audience, then we run the risk of serious, sometimes damaging, miscommunication. We all know an example of someone, maybe even ourselves, who has sent a text message to the wrong reader with disastrous consequences. Google "misdirected text messages" to find tons of similar text messages:

So what's the lesson here? Always know your reader. In college, you are often writing to a teacher, unless otherwise assigned. You should know what the teacher is looking for in their communication with you. If you don't know, then you should find out BEFORE you submit your document for grading. How do you find out what they want? You could re-read the assignment. You could ask your classmate, who is probably as clueless as you are. 

Or you could ask the teacher.

Post 06: The Complexity of Writing

I like to talk about complexity and writing. In short, I view writing as a complex activity, and that changes the way I teach it.

First, I should define what I mean by complexity. Everyone knows that complex is different from simple, but too many people confuse complexity and complicated. A complex process, for instance, has many intricate steps and usually requires great expertise to competently complete; whereas, a simple process has few steps and does not require great expertise. But complicated processes are also not simple, and many people confuse complicated and complex. They are not the same. For example, a jet fighter—say, an F-18—is complicated. It is composed of hundreds of thousands of parts assembled in intricate patterns to create a marvel that flies at 1,200 miles an hour and can out-fight most anything else in the sky, except the F-35. It takes great expertise to maintain and operate these machines. However, an F-18 is not complex because there are very few ways to configure it so that it will function as intended. There is basically one right way to put it together, and the military spends great energy and money making sure that its people know how to do it.

An essay, on the other hand, is complex. It, too, is composed of lots of parts (morphemes, words, phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs, division, etc.) assembled in intricate patterns to create a marvel that helps people communicate with one another, but unlike an F-18, an essay can be put together successfully in many different ways. Moreover, changing any element in an essay (for instance, a different reader) changes the entire essay to meet a new demand. Unlike a complicated process or artifact, then, complex processes and artifacts have many more solutions and can restructure themselves to meet new demands. So complex things, such as humans and essays, are complex because they have more than one solution and arrangement (think of the millions of different looking people), and they can morph or evolve to meet new situations and demands.

This complexity makes essays—and people—more difficult to work with and master than an F-18. Lots of us don't like that. We want essays to be simple, or at least merely complicated. So we create little formulas such as the 5-paragraph essay to try to make writing a simple process that anyone can do in 30 minutes, which is about as long as we want to spend on any given writing assignment. This formula seldom leads to an essay that anyone other than your mother wants to read. Most 5-paragraph essays are insufferably boring and maudlin. Believe me—I've read thousands of them.

Good writing is complex: a complex process leading to a complex product. The best essays are always complex, and complexity is damned hard to teach and even harder to master. But it's the only writing worth writing or reading.

Post 05: Fear

The one social issue that I most want to see corrected is our loss of faith in the future.

Too many people around the world believe that society is collapsing and we are all going to hell in a hand basket. We are afraid to go outside our houses. Both as individuals and as a nation, we arm ourselves to the teeth and store up canned goods against the coming apocalypse. If the terrorists don't get us first, then global warming will. Each new government leader is the absolute worst ever for one-half our population, and we are sure our nation is doomed. All we can do is huddle behind our walls and hope/pray the bastards don't break through. This is an awful way to live.

I do not suggest that society doesn't have some real issues—we do—but they are not the end of the world, and if we will quit hunkering down and will get up to face our issues, then we can resolve them or work around them. We can.

Matt Ridley wrote a book called The Rational Optimist that looks at the data from 10,000 years of human history, and he says that by any measure you want to apply, we humans are better off now than at any other time in history. No doubt about it. There is no Golden Age in the past when things were better. We are the Golden Age, and tomorrow is likely to be better. His publisher's blurb summarizes his argument this way:

Over 10,000 years ago there were fewer than 10 million people on the planet. Today there are more than 6 billion, 99 per cent of whom are better fed, better sheltered, better entertained and better protected against disease than their Stone Age ancestors. The availability of almost everything a person could want or need has been going erratically upwards for 10,000 years and has rapidly accelerated over the last 200 years: calories; vitamins; clean water; machines; privacy; the means to travel faster than we can run, and the ability to communicate over longer distances than we can shout. 

Yet, bizarrely, however much things improve from the way they were before, people still cling to the belief that the future will be nothing but disastrous. In this original, optimistic book, Matt Ridley puts forward his surprisingly simple answer to how humans progress, arguing that we progress when we trade and we only really trade productively when we trust each other.

Where has our faith and trust gone? Just 100 years ago, you were far more likely to die a violent death either by attack or accident than today, but we seem more afraid today. Why? It is easy to blame the media who feed us daily with an endless parade of screaming heads telling us how bad things are. Whether you watch Fox or CNN, it's the same awful news with either Obama as the bad guy or Trump, the Muslims or the Russians or the North Koreans.

So what do we do? Well, you scholars are doing the best thing: you are preparing yourselves for the future. You are completing your degree as an act of faith that you will make life better—for yourselves, of course, but also for your families and communities. That's the best antidote to pessimism. Do something positive. Get a new degree. Prepare yourselves to face the future.

I have faith in you.

Post 04: Swarm Writing vs. Traditional Writing

My online friends and I have devised a new way of writing. It ain't your grandma's style of writing, but it is interesting. I call it swarm writing. Let me introduce you.

Back in 2015, my colleagues and I wrote an article called "Writing the Unreadable Untext" for Digital Pedagogy in which we described a group writing project that we stumbled into as we were trying to write an article about a massive open online course (MOOC) that we had all taken. My friend and teacher at The American University in Cairo Maha Bali and I started writing what became the Untext in October, 2014, and soon we had swarm of friends from all over the world writing with us:

• Keith Hamon - Florida (at the time)
• Maha Bali - Egypt
• Rebecca Hogue - California, 
• Kevin Hodgson - Massachusetts, 
• Terry Elliot - Kentucky, 
• Simon Ensor - France, 
• Scott Johnson - Canada, 
• Sandra Sinfield - England, 
• Apostolos Koutropoulos - Massachusetts, and 
• Sarah Honeychurch - Scotland

It was fun as you can see here. If you get through it, then you may question my competency to teach you anything about writing, especially formal, academic writing. Well, welcome to the rabbit hole, Alice.