mrfitzfinkle

June 7, 2021June 7, 2021mrfitzfinkle

The Power of Writing Collaborative Fiction

The experience of writing a novel together didn’t inhibit individual creativity – it made them all want to go home and write more on their own.

May 3, 2021May 3, 2021mrfitzfinkle

The World’s Most Boring Topics

I tell them that just as a good standup comedian can read out of the phone book and make it funny, a good writer can take a dull topic and make it interesting.

April 5, 2021April 5, 2021mrfitzfinkle

Providing Experience to Write About: the Quicksand River Un-assignment

We often give them common prompts, or common texts sets with common prompts. We give them common pieces of literature to write about. So why not a common experience?

March 1, 2021mrfitzfinkle

Some Doodles About Writing

It’s good for us as writing teachers to try our hand at some form of writing on a regular basis. It can teach you a lot. I think we English teachers sometimes have an urge to make our student writers perfect writers… RIGHT NOW. We sometimes feel that too many errors mean they can’t write. […]

February 1, 2021January 31, 2021mrfitzfinkle

Writing is Not Monolithic

…these students had a very, very limited idea of what writing was.

January 11, 2021January 7, 2021mrfitzfinkle

Tools Over Rules: Writing as Choice-Making, not Compliance

In fact, students often think of writing as an act of compliance – follow the teacher’s instruction, receive a passing grade.

October 9, 2020October 7, 2020mrfitzfinkle

How To Focus a Topic

I find many of of my students have seldom, if ever, been allowed to choose and focus their own topics. They have been, as I often say, “prompted to death.” Yet the work of choosing and focusing a topic are essential writing moves – perhaps the most important writing moves of all, because they involve […]