Re: Unnatural Axe

[Mike Keene <mkeene@utkux.utcc.utk.edu>]

Howdy folks,

---as an aside, I have the list of summer readings saved, and I'll try to
repost it today---

How did I learn to write?  I read so much when I was a kid, writing two
hundred, even a thousand words seemed instinctive.  It wasn't til I'll
really screwed up the first three chapters of my diss. that I realized I
profoundly didn't know what I was doing.  That (about 1974) began about
ten years of serious scrounging and scraping, trying to learn what I had
allegedly been teaching since 1970.  I had good help, Maxine Hairston and
Greg Cowan and Merrill Whitburn all mentored me, teaching me what "to
intervene in the process" really means.  Starting in '78 I began tutoring
other (usually assistant) professors on their own article and book-length
projects, and helping them helped me a lot. And the editors and reviewers
on my books continue to teach me. Nowadays, tho, it's my co-authors who
teach me--it's really important to me to keep growing in my writing, and
right now it's the co-authors who are handling that.  And as I am able, I
try nowadays to choose more challenging, more different writing
projects--that (at least theoretically, we'll see) keeps me growing too. 
And of course there's reading--David Whyte and Anne Lamott last year,
Gabrielle Rico and Kathleen Norris this year--that shapes me too.

Mike Keene
mkeene@utk.edu

Office Phone: 423-974-6969
Department Phone:  423-974-5401