Recently one of my novelist friends and I were out to dinner, discussing writing. He happened to mention being stuck at a spot in his most recent story and having called another novelist to talk it through. My first reaction was surprise, to think that one professional novel writer needed to confer with another. It jarred with my image of both these people as masters of their craft, each sitting in a solitary tower, quietly capturing words on paper. I suspect you might have reacted the same, just now.

My oldest daughter called the other day to say that she is reading Of Human Bondage. She picked up a copy at a sale because her best friend in high school had said it was her favorite book, and my daughter figured any novel that could so impress a 17-year-old girl must be worth reading.

“I love the taste of words. They have a taste and a weight and a colour as well as a sound and a shape.” —Philip Pullman A 2008 article from The Washington Post showed how “Students Dig Deep for Words’ Origins.” The article noted that Phil Rosenthal was one of the few high-school instructors in the United States teaching an etymology course. According to Rosenthal, students take the class because they want to brush up on their vocabulary skills before taking the ACT or SAT, and/or because they have a genuine interest in the history of words.

“For many decades high schools and colleges have fostered the ‘research paper,’ which has become an exercise in badly done bibliography, often an introduction to the art of plagiarism, and a triumph of meaninglessness—for both writer and reader.” —Ken Macrorie, author of Searching Writing Some of our most common queries come from high school teachers and students who have concerns about research papers. And most of these queries deal with formatting and documentation style: Do I need a title page? How do I cite a Web article that doesn’t have an author or title?

As the person who usually answers questions (both in-house and out) regarding documenting research reports, let me second Dave Kemper’s most recent post about breathing life into the research process. Dave summarized Ken Macrorie’s I-Search approach to research writing. I’d like to parallel that with a digital-era view of what research is really all about. The first step is to back away from a fixation on whether our references are punctuated correctly. The second is to unlearn the word plagiarism. I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that collective gasp of outrage and will forge ahead.

“To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.” —Anatole France Creativity is the metaphoric power of a nine-year-old who calls her unkempt Shih Tzu a “dirty ol’ dust mop.” It’s the vision of a photographer who sees Easter Island sculptures in a series of back-alley shadows.

With the new school year beginning, I've listed what I’d like to see students accomplishing in the writing classroom. I’d like students… To participate in a writing workshop with students and teachers writing and learning together. To feel good about being in the writing classroom because it gives them an opportunity to explore and shape their own thinking. To understand that improvement will come if they regularly put pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard. To interact with, and feel comfortable around, one another in the classroom. To feel that their presence matters, that they have someth

It’s somewhat ironic; just as I was about to post this about helping struggling writers, I read “Best Practices: Students in the Driver’s Seat” by Anthony Cody. Cody promotes inquiry-based instruction and problem-based learning, two practices that give students a great deal of control over their learning. Certainly, struggling writers and learners need to be thoughtfully engaged in learning, but, unfortunately, just giving them the keys to the car isn’t enough. In an extremely enlightening and helpful book, Strategies for Struggling Writers, James L.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” —Albert Einstein In one of my recent blog entries—“Just Imagine! Cultivating Creative Minds”—I stressed the importance of creative thinking in the classroom. Since then, I’ve done a bit of research on creativity, focusing mainly on the artistic process. I first turned to “Thinking Like an Artist” in Mind Matters: Teaching for Thinking by Dan Kirby and Carol Kuykendall.

Yesterday I stumbled across an article about college students getting miffed when they didn’t get an “A for Effort”: “Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes.” I find it a difficult attitude to understand; it breaks down as soon as it’s applied to the working world. A building doesn’t care whether an architect tried her hardest—the design either stands or falls. A gall bladder doesn’t care that a surgeon did his best—the cholecystectomy is either a success or a failure.