Advice for j-students

Some good advice here, from Innovation in College Media,  for those of you staring in the face of an uncertain economy and tumultuous industry.

Time’s Top 10 Magazine Covers of 2008

It’s end-of-the-year list time! See Time magazine’s best magazine covers of 2008 here. The comments accompanying each are interesting. A sampling:

When will we learn?

Yet another Facebook faux pas, from Obama’s speechwriter, no less.

“30 Inspiring Type Treatments”

The Web site ilovetypography.com has an article on “30 Inspiring Type Treatments.” Much to love for those of you who are fontophiles.

NYT’s “After Deadline”

A New York Times deputy news editor has a weekly blog on nyt.com called After Deadline that explores grammar, usage and style as handled in the Times newsroom.

Recent posts have dealt with that/which/what; split infinitives; cliches; who/whom; dangling modifiers; and so on. All use recent examples from the Times.

If nothing else, it’s reassuring to know that even NYT editors and reporters occasionally stumble on grammar and usage.

Newspaper, Magazine Woes

Please read
“Times Shuts Down Sports Magazine“
“Web Sites that Dig for News Rise as Watchdogs“
“Newspapers Jettisoning Top Talent to Cut Costs.”

Post your reactions by Wednesday at 6 p.m.

After 6 p.m. and before class Thursday morning, please read your classmates’ posts and respond.

Anne Lamott: First Drafts and Perfectionism

Let’s leave this discussion wide open. What did you love or loathe about Lamott?

Although at times she gets a little “new-agey” for me, I am greatly reassured, in an odd way, by how difficult writing is even for gifted writers and those who make a living doing it.

Someone once said: If you think writing is hard, that’s because it is. Sportswriter Red Smith said: “Writing is easy. All you have to do is open your veins and bleed.”

For some reason, we think writing should come easily. Yet we don’t presume that about other crafts or skills – athletics, carpentry, cooking, dance, music. We often have this mystical view of writing, that it somehow happens magically for good writers. Although the effect of writing can be magical, writing itself isn’t. It is a craft that you can learn and improve upon with practice and guidance – just like any other skill.

Does anybody else use Lamott’s strategy of writing pages of garbage (what she calls “the child’s draft”) because only when you do that will you finally reach the point where you want to start? Clark and Fry advise something similar: “So just type a draft. Get it down, then get it right.” Clark admits to “typing two screenfuls of junk.”

The “garbage strategy” has been remarkably effective for me. I can write graf after graf of dreck and not care at all that it’s dreck – no one will read it except me. And always, at the end of the dreck, I arrive at the nugget of what I’ve been trying to say all along. It is magic!

It works for me because my brain can’t separate writing and thinking. I can’t write without thinking, and I can’t think without writing. This is why I am lousy at chess. My “child’s draft” is my stream of consciousness on paper; I wouldn’t even call it “writing.” But I can’t think about complicated things without writing. Somehow, out of my messy, chaotic, frantic typing, clear, coherent thoughts emerge. And then I can truly begin to “write.”

What did you think of what she had to say, about first drafts or perfectionism or anything else?

Even my cat reads the dictionary

But should I be concerned that one of the words on this page is “dismember”?

What are your “little dinosaurs”?

In chapters 8 and 9 in “Coaching Writers,” Clark and Fry outline the writing process: Idea > Report > Organize > Draft > Revise. Within that process, every writer has his or her own peculiar habits. Some of those habits are counterproductive. They are damaging techniques or methods that can hurt speed, accuracy or confidence. Clark and Fry call them “little dinosaurs.”

These “dinosaurs” are different from the harmless idiosyncrasies we discussed earlier. My need to have chapstick nearby doesn’t interfere with my writing. “Dinosaurs,” however, do interfere with our success as writers.

Most writers aren’t aware of and can’t identify their “little dinosaurs.”  But if we analyze our own writing process, we can identify our dinosaurs and figure out either how to change them or how to work around them.

Maybe you get hung up in the idea phase; you have ideas for stories, but they are vague or unfocused. Or, maybe you get hung up on organizing your story; you have a great idea and have reported thoroughly, but can’t figure out how to order the information in your story.

Clark and Fry write: “If you get stuck, look for the problem one step earlier in the process.”

Reflect on your own writing process. What are your “little dinosaurs,” your harmful habits? Where in the process do you get hung up? Can you trace that hang-up to an earlier step in the process?

Diagramming Sarah: Can Palin’s sentences stand up to a grammarian?

We talked a few weeks ago about diagramming sentences and how it’s becoming a lost art. A sentence diagram is a visual representation of the parts of speech in a sentence. Kitty Burns Florey of Slate attempts to diagram Sarah Palin’s sentences in this article. Hmm. I wonder if anybody has tried diagramming Joe Biden’s sentences. Either way, we’ll need one big chalkboard. I just hope nobody tries to diagram mine…