Blogs with a theme

Student bloggers, some of you despair of finding something worthwhile to write about. Some of you worry that you have to think of something new to say. You wrote about the game, or the movie, or the roommate last week--what to write about this week? Must you pick something entirely new.

Well, not necessarily.

I wanted to point you to a couple blogs to you to suggest that you can write about the same topic every week. In fact, a lot of people create blogs to write about a particular topic they know a lot about or care about.

Say you want to write about fashion. Tavi, a 13-year-old blogger, does that on style rookie.

Maybe you wrote about the Colts last week. You can't write about them again. Why not? Did you know that ESPN has an AFC South blog?

Do you watch a lot of movies? You could blog about what you've seen recently, like this guy. Read a lot of comics? Play a lot of video games?

Do you eat?

Chances are you do something, know something, think about something. Something that you could blog about.

Shuffle

I have 4,051 songs on my ipod, so I sometimes forget about what's on there. I tend to listen to the same music over and over, then switch to something else. Today, playing songs on shuffle I made a fun discovery: "Spongebob and Patrick Confront the Psychic Wall of Energy" by the Flaming Lips.

Patrick,
You see I'm growing a mustache
And though I know, I must ask you,
Does it really make me look like a man?

Woke up this morning . . .

Here is the reference for Wednesday's random comment: "I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer." So, students, please don't write on your course evaluation, "He drank before coming to class."

My kids won't stop singing this

Don't call me a cat lover . . .

We have three cats: Murray (the black one in the background here), Sunshine (pictured), and Sunshine's sister, Tiger. My daughters picked out Sunshine and Tiger when they were kittens. But my 9-year-old insists that she is not a cat lover.

"I'm a cat liker. Cat lovers are lonely. And I'm not lonely."

Stephen King says, "You have to read"

Revising means more than running spell check

This week we are working on revising our memoirs. What do we have to do when we revise to actually make our writing better?

We have to step back and see the writing differently. Revising, as Adrienne Rich famously said, is re-seeing. (Revision as re-vision.) What's the best way to get this new vision? Have someone else read your draft. They may not have any advice for you on how to make improvements, but they can tell you how they respond as readers: how it made them feel, what it made them think, what parts had the biggest impact, what parts were the most confusing. They can ask you questions.

Another way to get another look at your writing is to simply put it away for awhile and come back to it later (hard to do when you're under a deadline--that's why it's important to give yourself time to write). Time can give you the distance you need to see your writing more impartially.

With practice, you can learn to read your own writing as a reader. But all writers, at some point in the process, benefit from feedback and time.

Here is a good handout on revision.