I'm cheating on my blog post today because I have spent all weekend (so far) working on my site. A short back story: Before my trip to...

I arrived home late last night after nearly two weeks away in Costa Rica and Panama. In Costa Rica, I attended a retreat called "Tame...

What is writing, anyway? A way to communicate, sure. But to communicate what? According to Webster's Dictionary, to communicate means...

In Composition 101 at the University of Tennessee, students learn the basic elements of rhetoric and about how it applies to writing they...

I've been thinking about how buildings tell stories. Like novels, buildings tell stories about who we are, what we value, what time...

On the first day of school, after the usual introductions and syllabus review, I ask my students to pull out a sheet of paper and answer...

I've been thinking about the similarities between writing and photography lately. About how you can zoom in or out towards your...

Literature differs from life in that life is amorphously full of detail, and rarely directs us toward it, whereas literature teaches us...

In my last post on writing, I discussed the idea that there is no such thing as writing in general. Writing is always "in particular"...

A few weeks ago, in my post Clutter, I discussed the opening lines of Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler: You are about...

In last week's post, I talked about audience. I said that you should write for yourself first (be passionate) and, secondly, for your...

So we're supposed to be ourselves when we write. But what about audience? If we're supposed to write as ourselves, are we writing to...

So you want to start a blog? And you want to be successful? Good luck. There are more than 600 million blogs on the internet today...

Consider the opening lines of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables: Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England...

In 1942, during World War II, the United States government issued a blackout order: "Such preparations shall be made as will completely...

On the first day of every semester, before going over the syllabus, I ask my English 101 students to introduce themselves. “Tell us your...

I don't actually have writer's block, but I am packing to go to California and don't have time for a normal post today. I originally...