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Viewing posts from January, 2010

Sentence Composition Checklist

Posted by: Ross Laird in creativity 3 years, 4 months ago

This is a short list of considerations to use when seeking to write well. Review the following items in order, after writing the first draft of every sentence.

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The Reinvention of Teaching

Posted by: Ross Laird in education 3 years, 4 months ago

Some popular views: the primary school system stifles creativity; high school is a minefield of bullying and conformity; university is a treadmill for earning increasingly irrelevant acronyms. The education system done be broke.

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Words and Wells

Posted by: Ross Laird in creativity 3 years, 4 months ago

My recommendation for beginning writing is as follows: do not start with sentences, with the easy and fluid liaisons of phrases, with the heft of lines upon lines stacking up. Instead, start with words, or perhaps with a single word. Find the words first. Then make of them a haiku. Then write a single sentence that fills the space of your creativity. But words first, always words.

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Literary Traditions and the Modern Writer

Posted by: Ross Laird in creativity 3 years, 4 months ago

Moby Dick was published in 1851. Arguably the first modern novel, Moby Dick is a work of astonishing psychological depth and diversity. It is perhaps the foundational work of the literature of North America. And yet, most of the creative writing students I have worked with in the past few years have not read Moby Dick.

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