Read without ads and support Scribd by becoming a Scribd Premium Reader.
See Premium Plans
 
College Composition Lesson Plan: Advice to Writers
by Travis Poling, November 2011, http://www.digitext.net/This lesson is to be used after the class has written at least two larger papers, or enough to be able toreflect with at least some experience on the writing process.
Reading “Writing In The Age Of Distraction” by Cory Doctorow
(5-7 min)Depending on the nature of your class, read the essay out loud, or have the students read itindependently or in groups.
Reflection on the Reading
Guide class discussion around the following questions:(5-10 min)1.What parts of this essay resonated with your experience with the writing process?2.What parts of this essay are different from your experience?
Reflection on the Writing Process
(15-20 min)Briefly review the components of the writing process, reminding students that the order and length of each part can change depending on the personality of the writer and the purpose of the writing.Here's the writing process as I present it in my classes: Write “writing process” in the middle of theboard, and the following components around it, with a straight line connecting each to the center:Prewrite, draft, research, collaborate, revise, edit, share.Ask students to discuss the questions below in pairs/trios, then report back to the whole class. Writetheir responses on the board, and ask for explanation/conversation. (Write each heading on the boardas you get to the question:
Helpful, Challenges, Advice
)1.As you've written your last two papers for this class, what part of the writing process has beenthe most helpful?2.What part of the writing process has been most challenging?3.What advice would you give to people who are starting out in a composition class to overcomethese challenges?
Freewriting
(20-30 min)In freewriting, students write about a prompt for a set amount of time with no concern for grammar,mechanics, or complete sentences. The point is to simply keep writing, getting their ideas onto thepage.Read the following prompt to the class and provide 20-30 minutes for them to write:In his essay, Cory Doctorow gives advice to his fellow writers based on his own experience.Following Doctorow's example, what advice would you give to writers and students in collegecomposition courses, based on what has worked for your own writing process?Following the freewrite, you may decide to ask students to read their writings to the class as a way of sharing their advice with one another.
"College Composition Lesson Plan: Advice to Writers" by Travis Poling is distributed under a CreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license. Visit http://digitext.net or contact sudo@digitext.net for more info.
 
Writing In The Age Of Distraction – by Cory Doctorow
from
Context: Further Selected Essays on Productivity, Creativity, Parenting, and Politicsin the 21st Century 
(2011)We know that our readers are distracted and sometimes even overwhelmed by the myriad distractionsthat lie one click away on the internet, but of course writers face the same glorious problem: thedelirious world of information and communication and community that lurks behind your screen, onealt-tab away from your word-processor.The single worst piece of writing advice I ever got was to stay away from the internet because it wouldonly waste my time and wouldn’t help my writing. This advice was wrong creatively, professionally,artistically, and personally, but I know where the writer who doled it out was coming from. Every nowand again, when I see a new website, game, or service, I sense the tug of an attention black hole: atime-sink that is just waiting to fill my every discretionary moment with distraction. As a co-parentingnew father who writes at least a book per year, half-a-dozen columns a month, ten or more blog postsa day, plus assorted novellas and stories and speeches, I know just how short time can be and howdangerous distraction is.But the internet has been very good to me. It’s informed my creativity and aesthetics, it’s benefited meprofessionally and personally, and for every moment it steals, it gives back a hundred delights. I’d nosooner give it up than I’d give up fiction or any other pleasurable vice.I think I’ve managed to balance things out through a few simple techniques that I’ve been refining for years. I still sometimes feel frazzled and info-whelmed, but that’s rare. Most of the time, I’m on top of my workload and my muse. Here’s how I do it:●Short, regular work scheduleWhen I’m working on a story or novel, I set a modest daily goal—usually a page or two—andthen I meet it every day,
doing nothing else
while I’m working on it. It’s not plausible or desirable to try to get the world to go away for hours at a time, but it’s entirely possible to makeit all shut up for 20 minutes. Writing a page every day gets me more than a novel per year—dothe math—and there’s always 20 minutes to be found in a day, no matter what else is going on.Twenty minutes is a short enough interval that it can be claimed from a sleep or meal-break(though this shouldn’t become a habit). The secret is to do it every day, weekends included, tokeep the momentum going, and to allow your thoughts to wander to your next day’s pagebetween sessions. Try to find one or two vivid sensory details to work into the next page, or a
bon mot 
,
1
so that you’ve already got some material when you sit down at the keyboard.●Leave yourself a round edgeWhen you hit your daily word-goal,
stop.
Stop even if you’re in the middle of a sentence.Especially if you’re in the middle of a sentence. That way, when you sit down at the keyboardthe next day, your first five or ten words are already ordained, so that you get a little pushbefore you begin your work. Knitters leave a bit of yarn sticking out of the day’s knitting so theyknow where to pick up the next day—they call it the “hint.” Potters leave a rough edge on thewet clay before they wrap it in plastic for the night—it’s hard to build on a smooth edge.●Don't ResearchResearching isn’t writing and vice-versa. When you come to a factual matter that you couldgoogle in a matter of seconds,
don’t 
. Don’t give in and look up the length of the BrooklynBridge, the population of Rhode Island, or the distance to the Sun. That way lies distraction—an endless click-trance that will turn your 20 minutes of composing into a half-day’s idyllthrough the web. Instead, do what journalists do: type “TK” where your fact should go, as in“The Brooklyn Bridge, all TK feet of it, sailed into the air like a kite.” “TK” appears in very few
1
bon mot 
: French for “good word”
Search
Search History:
Searching...
Result 00 of 00
00 results for result for
  • p.
    • Notes
    Load more