Re: secret life of writers

[Mike Keene <mkeene@utkvx.utk.edu>]

I love that phrase Neal came up with, people who say in their writing 
classes "I can't write" but turn out to have very robust secret lives as 
writers.  That merges nicely with Jeanne et al's (not al, but Tishie's, I 
think) "writing in the margins" notion.  I see this in my dissertation 
writing class all the time--people who come in moaning about how terrible 
their writing is, and then turn out to be basically fine.  Maybe one out 
of five writers in that class falls into this category--there's some 
little trick about writing they never learned, or forgot, and once they 
get the hang of that trick, everything is fine.  It may be something like 
"check the length of your sentences when you're revising," or something 
like "don't be surprised if you can't do a first draft starting at 
midnight--try starting at 8 a.m."--nothing profound.  So many of the 
students are in that category I'm trying to figure out how to identify 
them up front and move them into a short course instead--they don't 
really need 15 weeks; a 4 week tune-up would do just as well.

Mike Keene
mkeene@utkvx.utk.edu