Helping Writers Help Themselves

A middle-aged, independent, has it-all woman survives a nearly fatal road traffic accident in March 2004. She then begins a tortuous journey of physical, mental and emotional healing. Stripped of all her friends and family, she is left to overcome these challenges on her own. Yet, all hope is not lost. She finds healing in the most unlikely place, the Physiotherapy department of a local hospital, through simple people doing simple acts of kindness. As the physical landscape changes from winter to spring, she slowly renews herself from deep within while desperately clinging to her most prized possession: her independence.

In this inspiring book, based on her twenty years of research, highly acclaimed author and teacher Louise DeSalvo reveals the healing power of writing. DeSalvo shows how anyone can use writing as a way to heal the emotional and physical wounds that are an inevitable part of life. Contrary to what most self-help books claim, just writing won't help you; in fact, there's abundant evidence that the wrong kind of writing can be damaging. DeSalvo's program is based on the best available and most recent scientific studies about the efficacy of using writing as a restorative tool. With insight and wit, she illuminates how writers, from Virginia Woolf to Henry Miller to Audre Lorde to Isabel Allende, have been transformed by the writing process. Writing as a Way of Healing includes valuable advice and practical techniques to guide and inspire both experienced and beginning writers.

No less than other divisions of the college or university, contemporary writing centers find themselves within a galaxy of competing questions and demands that relate to assessment—questions and demands that usually embed priorities from outside the purview of the writing center itself. Writing centers are used to certain kinds of assessment, both quantitative and qualitative, but are often unprepared to address larger institutional or societal issues. In Building Writing Center Assessments that Matter, Schendel and Macauley start from the kinds of assessment strengths already in place in writing centers, and they build a framework that can help writing centers satisfy local needs and put them in useful dialogue with the larger needs of their institutions, while staying rooted in writing assessment theory. The authors begin from the position that tutoring writers is already an assessment activity, and that good assessment practice (rooted in the work of Adler-Kassner, O'Neill, Moore, and Huot) already reflects the values of writing center theory and practice. They offer examples of assessments developed in local contexts, and of how assessment data built within those contexts can powerfully inform decisions and shape the futures of local writing centers. With additional contributions by Neal Lerner, Brian Huot and Nicole Caswell, and with a strong commitment to honoring on-site local needs, the volume does not advocate a one-size-fits-all answer. But, like the modeling often used in a writing consultation, examples here illustrate how important assessment principles have been applied in a range of local contexts. Ultimately, Building Writing Assessments that Matter describes a theory stance toward assessment for writing centers that honors the uniqueness of the writing center context, and examples of assessment in action that are concrete, manageable, portable, and adaptable.

“Feel better, get done more and become a nicer person” In this age of social media, fake news, individualism and information overload, the certainties we relied on in the past are gone. In our quest for assurance and support, the only seemingly dependable pillar left is other people. So we look to them. But they are unsettled too. And by looking to them, we create and perpetuate our own vicious stress-cycle. As a result, we lose our sensible selves. And we go bananas. But there is good news. If we look around us, there are people who withstand the collective lunacy and stay grounded. They do something that most of us have a hard time doing: they stay themselves. And the best news is that what they can do, you can do too. It doesn’t require any special talents or supernatural powers. It only requires doing. In this amiable, open and accessible book, Jeroen Kraaijenbrink takes you on his personal journey out of Bananaland. Drawing from cognitive psychology, martial arts, Saint Benedict, personal experience, and a wide range of other sources, the book offers a nine-step approach with some remarkably practical advice for keeping a cool head in the collective lunacy. “Free yourself from the collective lunacy and reclaim your calm and sensible self”

The Napkin Manuscripts is a collection of twenty-two engaging prose pieces written over the past several decades by Michael McFee – poet, essayist, editor, and teacher. Taken together, they constitute a wide-ranging exploration of what working writers do, how they do it, and what it means. The book is divided into four parts: Section one is composed of personal essays, and is rooted in the landscape and culture of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where the author grew up and where he often returns for inspiration. Section two gathers essays about the literary life and writing, among them pieces on editing, on teaching, on memorizing poetry, on rejection slips, on typewriters, and on becoming and being a writer. Section three collects seven essays about individual Appalachian writers, among them Fred Chappell, Kathryn Stripling Byer, and Robert Morgan. Section four consists of a public interview conducted at the Michael McFee Literary Festival at Emory & Henry College a few years ago, and recapitulates many of the book’s topics in lively conversational form. The Napkin Manuscripts will appeal to anyone with a connection to Appalachia and the South; to readers interested in contemporary poetry and literature; and to teachers, writers, and students of poetry, essays, and creative non-fiction.

Songwriters/composers/producers Tracey and Vance Marino have been wildly successful placing their more than three thousand music compositions in various media. They are signed with over sixty different production music libraries and music publishers, and their music is heard daily across the globe. This guide brings together—in one book—all you need to know about writing, recording, marketing, and monetizing your music. Getting placements in film, TV, and media is not only about writing good music, it's about writing placeable music. And, after you have written placeable music, what do you do with it? Where do you find the decision-makers? How do you get all the money to which you are entitled? This book delivers the answers. You will discover… The most important quality a piece of music should have to be licensed Tips about crafting music specifically for sync The tools and knowledge needed to create broadcast-quality recordings Where to find the people and companies that can place your music How to present and market your music Why networking and following up with contacts are among the keys to success The pros and cons of working solo or as part of a team The importance of being professional while interacting with other people How being organized and using metadata effectively will get you paid Having music placed in various media is an extraordinarily financially lucrative area of the music business. And the Marinos are willing now to share their tips, secrets, and the steps to follow in order to succeed in the sync world.

A classic handbook for anyone who needs to write, Writing With Power speaks to everyone who has wrestled with words while seeking to gain power with them. Here, Peter Elbow emphasizes that the essential activities underlying good writing and the essential exercises promoting it are really not difficult at all. Employing a cookbook approach, Elbow provides the reader (and writer) with various recipes: for getting words down on paper, for revising, for dealing with an audience, for getting feedback on a piece of writing, and still other recipes for approaching the mystery of power in writing. In a new introduction, he offers his reflections on the original edition, discusses the responses from people who have followed his techniques, how his methods may differ from other processes, and how his original topics are still pertinent to today's writer. By taking risks and embracing mistakes, Elbow hopes the writer may somehow find a hold on the creative process and be able to heighten two mentalities--the production of writing and the revision of it. From students and teachers to novelists and poets, Writing with Power reminds us that we can celebrate the uses of mystery, chaos, nonplanning, and magic, while achieving analysis, conscious control, explicitness, and care in whatever it is we set down on paper.

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times