First in a (no doubt about it) ongoing series. When I had to do my first literature review, and my first big grad school paper, last fall, I asked my mentor, The Indomitable Cassidy, for her advice. Here’s what she said: I actually like starting with a “haphazard search,” but I prefer to start in …
Tag Archives: Writing
“The Midnight Disease”
A few years ago, I read and enjoyed Alice W. Flaherty’s memoir, The Midnight Disease. Suffering from postpartum depression after the death of her newborn child, she began experiencing hypergraphia — the uncontrollable urge to write. She filled pages and pages with her writing, and couldn’t stop — the opposite of writer’s block. Flaherty is …
Write what you feel
Advice for the creative writer, yes. But the student? My manager is taking a summer class and his teacher told the class, “Don’t write down what I say. Write down what you feel about what I say.” Interesting advice for a note-taker who’s thinking about regurgitating the content for the next test. My reporting background …
Done, done, and done
For the last month, just as I thought I was nearing the finish line or reaching a milestone where I could catch my breath, another deadline or commitment loomed, both at work and at school. I spent last weekend binge-grading grant projects submitted by other teams in my Digital Preservation and Archiving class, reading an …
NaNoWriMo ’06 – Lessons Learned
The blog went quiet in November because I decided to once again compete in the National Novel Writing Month competition. I blogged a bit about the comp last year when I dropped out then dropped back in. By then, though, it was too late and I only had about 30-some-thousand words by month’s end. I’ve …
Six-word stories
Catarina.net has a wonderful thread asking people to suggest six-word stories. The lead-off story by Hemingway is poignant, and one of the commenters observes that sad stories seem easier to write in this compressed form. I contributed the history professor story.
Brownstudy's Blog 