In addition, we’re still using Francine Prose’s book Reading Like a Writer, but this time I’ve also added Anne Lamott’s delightful Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. It may be 25 years old, but I know it will speak volumes to my students about being writers. Seriously, the class is planned, but in the short time frame between closing out J-term capstone class and beginning the spring semester (3 days), I found myself with a few TBDs on the reading schedule that I’ll fill in as we go along.Ĭollege teaching is just sometimes like that. White, John Updike, Flannery O’ Connor), along with diversity (Joy Harjo, Jame McBride, and a few names I’m still researching), plus some YA and fantasy genre pieces (also still researching). What words does the writer use? How are those words making this piece sing? What about sentence structure? Paragraphing? How is this dialogue telling us the story without telling us the story? We’re still using some tried and true greats (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck), but I’ve added a few titles still classic but not as old (Tim O’Brien, E. Instead, we focus on the mechanics, the how, the craft. I have enjoyed recasting this class with some new writing to explore, new pedagogies to try, and five more years of teaching confidence under my belt.Īs I noted in the earlier post, this class does not look at the why of a piece of writing. As it turns out, I’m teaching the same class again this spring semester, five years later. Back in June of 2015, I wrote a post about how excited I was to teach a class in our Professional Writing major called The Writer’s Craft.

Bird by bird anne lamott publisher