http://engl621.wordpress.com

1. Announcements/Recaps
• Don’t forget: WIDE-EMU!
• Recap: Everything you wanted to know about
graduate school....
• Tonight:
• Faculty Interviews
• Williams (briefly)
• Micciche and Carr
• No Plot, No Problem!
• And the Time Finder/Touch It Everyday Progress Report Challenge

2. Faculty Interview Recap
• What did they say?
• What was it like to write up the
information, transcribe, collaborate?
• What did we learn here?

3. Problems into
PROBLEMS
• Component 1: Destabilizing Condition
• Component 2: Component 1 needs “Conditions
and “Costs”
• Component 3: There has to be a community of
readers who share the Conditions/Costs

4. Problems into
PROBLEMS
• Posing and solving PROBLEMS is what most of us do, but
most of our students seem unaware of not just how to pose
a PROBLEM, but that their first task is to find one. As a
consequence, they often seem just to “write about” some
topic.... (4)
• Conditions and Costs identified by the “so what?” question
(11)
• The number of times one asks “so what?” is a measure of
how they understand the problem (15)

5. Problems into
PROBLEMS
• (But then he gets a little too linguistic-y/
specific about paragraphs for my tastes...).
• Some good examples at the end?

6. Micciche and Carr

7. Micciche and Carr
• “An explicit commitment to graduate level
writing instruction in English
studies...” (478)
• “.... I advocate a critical writing workshop
designed for English graduate students
across specializations” (480).

8. Micciche and Carr
• Figuring out how to “conceptualize and
articulate a problem...” as much about
“....grammar and form as it is about insight and
invention”(483).
• “The paradox of graduate writing is... there is a
fundamental difference between writing for a
seminar and writing for publication”(483).
• “The marginalized location of student writing...
reflects a systematic problem within English
graduate programs...”(484).

9. Micciche and Carr
• In Critical Writing in English Studies, “...
students’ projects in some way focus on
how a text... does something and the
resulting effects” (486).
• “... I was surprised to discover that many of
my sentences were 50-90 words
long” (487).
• In the workshops, described on 490....

10. Micciche and Carr
• “We have to be able to suspend our own
attachment to the writing long enough to
hear and be responsible to what others
make of it”(491).
• “I have learned that badness is just part of
my process, and I love the badness for
helping me get to better-ness” (491).

11. No Plot? No Problem!
• National Novel Writing Month: http://
www.nanowrimo.org/
• “Writing 50,000 10,000 words of fiction a
project really doesn’t take that much
time”(40).
• And, IMO, writing has nothing to do with
“inspiration” and everything to do with
“habit” and “work”

12. No Plot? No Problem!
• The “Time Finder:”
• Log your activities for a week
• Required, Highly Desirable, Forgo-able
(and a little discipline goes a long way)
• 10 hours a week= “a project” in a
semester or less

13. No Plot? No Problem!
• Schedule writing time like anything else, if
possible
• Write with others and/or seek family and
friend support (48-53-- note page 51)
• I wouldn’t recommend boasting or betting,
personally....

14. No Plot? No Problem!
• The pros and cons of writing at home
60-63
• The pros and cons of coffee shops 64-65
• The pros and cons of work and “other”
spaces 66-71
• Tools? Totems? Food and Drink? Maybe....

15. No Plot? No Problem!
• The pros and cons of writing at home
60-63
• The pros and cons of coffee shops 64-65
• The pros and cons of work and “other”
spaces 66-71
• Tools? Totems? Food and Drink? Maybe....

16. Time Finder/Touch It Everyday
Progress Report Challenge
• Do the Time Finder
• “Touch it” every day
• Write about your experience(s) in the first
progress report