Category: On My Mind

Middle-Class Verbosity

Many of the assumptions, attitudes, and ideas in the 1972 article Academic Ignorance and Black Intelligence by William Labov  are prevalent today. If you’ve ever edited or read a college-level essay or dissertation, you know that verbosity is alive and kicking, and if you step outside the comfort zone of a middle-class university education, the diversity of speaking styles is awesome. But would you buy that the working-class may be more effective communicators than university students? Continue reading →

Creating Time and Sparking Writing Ideas

After checking my email and prioritizing replies, mornings typically involve a tour through internet-land, with brief stops at Google+ or Twitter or LinkedIn. Yes, OR. Each fills a well-defined need, and not very well, I would say. Filtering through the data is a time-suck and the current solutions to this, personalized search results, can’t read my mind or predict what I want. Sometimes even I can’t! Continue reading →

Publishing for Digital South ESL Readers?

Life has been mildly nutty the last few weeks. Between receiving an SMS from my sweetheart announcing the death of his grandmother during one of his business trips in January and weeks of my slowly losing energy and suspecting an ear infection which resulted in running to a primary care physician who prescribed antibiotics, I have temporarily lost that creative spark. It’ll return, but it’s being trumped by more pressing matters that scream for attention. Continue reading →

Revisionary

There’s something about revising a novel that isn’t feeling productive. Perhaps I just want it done and over, no more examination of what does or doesn’t work; let’s move on to the next one, please. Revisions are making me impatient and endlessly grumpy. Yet, editing the work of others thrills me. Continue reading →