Salt Therapy

Looking forward to trying out a stress reduction/detox session at Halo Air Salt Rooms in Chelsea, with an awesome discount from Lifebooker, where I book all my hair, skin, and wellness treatments at amazing prices.

Currently Listening...

...... soundtrack to Kids of the Black Hole by my colleague Dewar MacLeod.  Nothing else like Cherry Bomb .

Now Listening.....

to DJ Richie Cannizzo ... checkout his Classics or From our Bedroom to Yours.

on writing every day

"Will I really write a novel? I'll answer this and only this. I'll proceed as if I were going to write one." -- Roland Barthes

In my last blog, I examined the theory that, if I wrote a page a day, I'd have a book by the end of a year.  So let's just say, my book is about to be several pages shorter.

If you write a page a day.....

According to 365 Attempts (At Life), in order to overcome writer's block, she will write something every day for a year.  No matter what it is. I remember getting this kind of advice when I was writing my dissertation: if you write one page a day, at the end of the year you will have a 365-page monograph.  Same for "how to write a novel" - type books.

But who writes this way? I have the most over-revised first pages of a dissertation--happily, now a book--that ever existed, because it is impossible for me to sit down and NOT revise what I've already written.  Who can just write a page a day and run with it?

It might work for a certain kind of writer--one who isn't compulsive, and who can wait a whole year to revise. But would the writing make any sense? How would it help me overcome writer's block? Does it matter? At the end would I look through it and find a thread that links it together? Or would I just find Virginia Woolf's "diamonds in the dustbin"?

Thinking I might try it.

Document Design, or Why I Hate Times New Roman 12

It's not just me, apparently.

ProfHacker, in this case, Evan Snider, recommends teaching document design as part of teaching writing--liberating us from the standard "Times New Roman, 12 pt., black ink on white paper, 1" margins all around." I don't like it, don't use it, so why impose it on my students? Of course, some guidelines have to be provided--or we'll be getting first-year comp essays in Joker (hot pink!). But teaching the basics of visual design should be part of composition; to convince yourself, read this essay by Anne Wysocki.

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