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At first, when I couldn’t find a post I had made on Chowhound yesterday morning before I left for work, I chalked it up to my own sloppy surfing. I have been acutely focused on Friday’s talk, as many people from MPOW are coming, which I am finding very stressful to the point of frazzlement and hair-pulling (if I flub a talk 300 hundred miles from home, I can fly home and be done with it; but I see these folks every day).

But then I looked in the cache for Bloglines and found my own Chowhound post and the one that prompted it, in reference to this discussion of Urbane, a new restaurant in Tallahassee.

It’s not even the first Chowhound post of mine that has evaporated into the net-ether. Last week I linked to my review of the Shell Oyster Bar, and that vanished. I thought, well enough: they don’t want bloggers using Chowhound as a honeypot.

But what was wrong with the following posts? (Posting dates refer to Bloglines’ feeds, not to Chowhound’s timeline.) I thought we were having a smart exchange about the nature of expression with respect to food.

And how comfortable are we about living in a world where commercial enterprises calling the shots on intellectual freedom — with nary a word to the authors? Yes, I know they say they can do that — but is that the world we want to live in?

The other poster’s comment (sorry, I don’t remember who it was!), Tue, Feb 12 2008 4:35 PM:

“Coffee & Doughnuts” sounds lifted directly from The French Laundry Cookbook. “Coffee & Doughnuts” is one Thomas Keller’s signature dishes. It is one of my most revered and treasured cookbooks. IMHO it is one thing for a recreational chef to prepare something right from a cookbook, but for a “Chef” who is paid for his creativity, technique, and talent to plaguarize…I would expect more than that. I have followed previous threads on different sites and this topic of chefs plaguarizing has been thoroughly dissected. Bascially, is it right for a chef to put a dish on his menu, take credit for it, when it has been directly lifted from another chef. Take classic dishes for example; Nicoise Salad, Beef Bourgogne, Tarte Tatin, the list is endless. These dishes are constantly replicated, however a good chef will reinterpret. In this case the classic dish is actually a cup of joe with fresh doughnuts. Thomas Keller is world renowned for his whimsical approach to classic dishes. So is it fair for another “chef” to steal his dish, even though it was published in his cookbook (meant for the home cook)?

My response (Wed, Feb 13 2008 9:54 AM):

Well — this was not a cup of joe with doughnuts (which I would not have bothered with); it was a silky mocha semifreddo topped with cream — a fake frozen latte — served with doughnut holes, really very moist, hot quasi-beignets. So if the name is borrowed but the dish is reinterpreted, is that not acceptable? In the literary world, titles of books are not copyrighted; unless someone outright trademarks them in advance, they are not protected. I can’t present the text of Pride and Prejudice as my own, but I can certainly use that title and then whimsically write my own take on this classic. To me this is not “lifting” (let alone plagiarizing) but responding. Food is a conversation. Urbane’s chef replied to Keller, “This is how *I* see this dish.” That to me is not only legitimate but delightful. Riffing on other chef’s interpretations is a way of saying we are all participating in an ongoing discussion about cuisine. Urbane’s interpretation may well be conditioned by the idea that in Tallahassee, palates are far less jaded than in the Bay Area, and a local diner might be acutely disappointed by a dish that would seem cute or whimsical for the culinary Brahmins of the world. I appreciate your erudition here, by the way — I will probably never dine at the French Laundry, but it’s nice to find out that a local dish has more classic roots than I realized. I just hope we never find ourselves dining on “Lamb Shanks French Laundry — All Rights Reserved.”

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In this week of Link Love, I leave you with this YouTube video, Hitler Explains Second Life. I include it in my writing feed because the dubbing is brilliantly witty. I guarantee you’ll find a line or two that sticks with you.

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Writing away

Originally uploaded by freerangelibrarian
This workshop — my first-ever writing class — was blissfully successful for all concerned. The post-class evaluations were the best I’ve ever had in fifteen years of training and teaching. Teaching a writing class has been a goal of mine for a couple of years, and it was better than I ever thought it would be.

I am going to tweak the syllabus ever so slightly (a little more writing time, a few more examples), but by and large, it worked really well.

I’ll be teaching this workshop at least two more times in 2008. I have workshops lined up for two more library consortia: NEFLIN (March 5) and TBLC (May 22). I’ll combine these training trips with visits to local community college libraries; it was wonderful to visit with the librarians of Chipola and Gulf Coast en route to my class site.

This day-long workshop would also work well as an analog/virtual hybrid, where we would meet in person for a half-day and then conclude the workshop online. I’d say it would work as a fully online class except the face-to-face workshop experience is so heady and valuable, not just for attendees but for me; I rushed home invigorated about my writing and filled with new ideas. Face-to-face instruction is one of the great luxuries of this century.

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This is a syllabus-in-progress for a workshop I’m teaching this Friday, “Writing for the Web.”

I know a lot of instructors consider their syllabus to be closely-guarded goods, but my take is that this syllabus is not much more than “CliffsNotes” for what (I hope) will happen in the classroom — and I’d rather put it out there and get feedback.

Plus, if you’re taking this workshop, you aren’t required to read anything in advance; we will go over short sections in class. But in the immortal words of my paternal ancestors, “It couldn’t hoit.”

1. Administrivia
2. Introductions
3. What this class is about (and why most examples are not from LibraryLand)

2. Welcoming exercise: co-authored story (15 minutes; group exercise, smartboard) 9:15 - 9:30

3. Writing for the Web: what are the genres, and how are they different? (30 minutes; discussion, smartboarding) 9:30 - 10

1. Blogs: Icarus, Hot Coffee Girl , Andrew Sullivan , Broadsheet (group blog)
2. Magazines and Journals: Salon, Slate, Huffington Post, Brevity
3. Cartoons and other mixed media: XKCD , Unshelved
4. Podcasting and video: QandANJ, 23/6
5. Microblogging: Twitterlit; Twitter haiku
6. Simple old press releases, user forms, etc.

4. Tips for writing for the Web (1 hour; lecture, discussion, smartboarding) 10 - 11:00

1. Beginnings and endings: Joel Peckham, “Scream,” from Brevity; Heather Armstrong, “Reading the Fine Print” from Dooce
2. Scaling your work for the web reader: Short posts, Ron Hogan, Galleycat; Short sentences, Chris Rose, Nola.com; short paragraphs, Alexis Wright, “The Disney Look,” Switchback; honing in on the main thing, Tayari Jones, “This is NOT my lucky sweater,” Tayari’s Blog
3. Using an active, first-person voice: “Zen Interlude: Spring Awakening,” from Panopticon
4. Scene, setting: Gail Siegel, “The Telemarketer’s Point of View”, Salt River Review
5. Description: Anne Panning, “Candy Cigarettes,” Brevity
6. Dialog: C.D. Mitchell, “This, Too, is Vanity,” storySouth; Lowell Cohn, “My introduction to Linguistics,” Switchback
   
7. Voice and humor: littera abactor, I Has a Sweet Potato
8. Integrating other media: photo, Zacharek’s review of “Bad Santa,” Salon; food photography, Clotilde Dusolier, Chocolate and Zucchini
   

5. Break! 15″, 11:00 - 11:15

6. Writing time (30 minutes) 11:15 - 11:45

1. Getting started: write, just write! (3″)
2. Blogging a life experience (27″)

7. Reading from our lives (15 minutes) 11:15 - 12:00

8. Lunch! (1 hour) 12:00 - 1:00

9. Group exercise: a sensory image exercise to “regather” our inner artists (15 minutes) 1:00 - 1:15

10. Feedback, editing, and the art of revision (30 minutes; handout: tips for revision) 1:15 - 1:45

1. “But it’s just a blog”: why editing matters; Brevity craft piece on copyediting
2. Feedback: how to ask for it, how to receive it, how to give it, when to ignore it (handout)
3. Shampoo, rinse, repeat: why revision is your friend — and how to revise blog content (otherwise known as, how great blog posts really get written) (handout)

11. Exercise: revising today’s exercise (15 minutes) 1:45 - 2:00

12. Reviewing our revisions (30 minutes; smartboarding, discussion) 2:00 - 2:30

13. Break! 2:30 - 2:45

14. Revisiting the elements of writing (expanding topics from section 4, exploring open questions; topics may change from those listed below) 2:45 - 3:15 (handout)

1. Form and structure: Sheila Squillante, “Four Menus,” Brevity
2. Character: Rebecca McClanahan, “Orbit,” Brevity
3. Telling (summary, exposition, commentary, interpretation): Lisa Harper, “Remnants,” Lost Magazine
4. Conflict
5. Point of view (who is “I” or “we” in a library blog?)
6. Audience (who are “they”?)
7. Research: Marie Fiala, “Inter-Views,” Switchback
8. Full-tilt writing: Melissa Lafsky, “Double Take,” Opinionistas [post no longer online?]
   
9. Full engagement: David Pogue, “Readers Answer some of Pogue’s Imponderables,” New York Times

15. A final grab bag of advice (30 minutes) 3:15 - 3:45

1. Reading your work — out loud
2. Leveraging found content — library-focused
3. Evergreens are ever-useful: A.O. Scott on Mailer
4. How to subdue the Bad Voices telling you not to write
5. Writers are readers
6. Building and maintaining the writing habit
7. Finding a writing buddy
8. Books about writing (and when to close the book and get going)
9. Classes, reading, personal instruction, workshops: Brevity’s essays on creative nonfiction
10. Writers’ associations, lists, and blogs: TWA, AWP, Galleycat
11. Getting published in the library press
12. Getting published in the non-library press
13. When to blog it, when to submit it, when to sit on it for a while
14. Ethics and blogging
15. Kibbles and bits

16. Wrap-up (15 minutes) 3:45 - 4:00

1. Review of the day’s topics
2. Revisiting today’s co-authored story
3. Sharing our writing goals

• Several writing examples are courtesy of Doug Martin of the Department of English at Indiana State University, who with Kim Chinquee is publishing what promises to be an invaluable book, Online Writing: The Best of the First Ten Years (Snow*Vigate Press). Another source was The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 1, edited by Lee Gutkind, including a blog post no longer in… um… print?: Melissa Lafsky’s “Double Take.”
• Other examples were suggested by readers on my blog, emailed by shy librarians, or hoovered up by me in the course of my efforts to read as much as possible for my whole entire live-long life.
• Also see my del.icio.us collection about writing for the web and my haphazard blogroll of blogs about writing and writers.
  Two books on writing I enthusiastically recommend are Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, and Stephen King, On Writing. There are many, many more… whatever gets you writing and revising and carries you through the dark nights of the soul when you know your writing blows chunks and you feel guilty for deserting your family for another damn story/essay/poem you know, just know that no one in their right mind will publish, is a “good” writing book.
• Find more books at Tom Christensen’s post and ensuing commentary at rightreading.com about best books for writing and publishing.
• If you’re wondering what a “smartboard” is, it’s not scary and like waterboarding, and it’s not as hard to learn as surfboarding; it’s an electronic whiteboard, and a pretty nifty tool for teaching.
• Call me a funky old fundamentalist, but I will be strictly enforcing a no-email/surfing rule during class. There will be breaks where you can touch base with the mothership, and it’s actually fine with me if your cell phone is on and you dash out to take an urgent call (if I’m distracted by an occasional ringing phone, what would I be like in a traffic jam?), but writing is in part about learning to focus.
• N.b.: This list is bulleted because WordPress 2.3.1 is driving me insane with editing problems.

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Three weeks from today I’m leading an all-day workshop for Panhandle Library Access Network, “Writing for the Web.” I’m looking for examples of the very best online writing.

Admittedly, the very best online writing is hard to distinguish from the very best writing, period, and my workshop will bear a startling resemblance to any-old-writing-workshop (and what a day-long romp it will be — a retreat from otherness, a day devoted to the craft). But still I soldier on: I’m looking for born-digital writing that particularly suits the medium — and for that matter, any other resources that would be good to share in a day-long workshop. I’ll give you credit in my del.icio.us set, if that helps.

I found several examples in the ambitiously-titled “The Best Creative Nonfiction Volume 1.” I was relieved to see this hadn’t quite rated a 4 on LibraryThing, because if you read creative nonfiction, you absolutely need this book on your shelf, and yet it is flawed; it strains too hard to be “alternative” (like squares of the 1960s straining to be “relevant”), and I suspect the editors were a wee bit dazzled by digital sparkle. (A traditional-print essay, “The Woot Files,” was competent but otherwise unremarkable in everything except its subject matter, “technology’s impact on verbal communication.” Yes, I know that’s not how one spells w00t…)

The online examples are good, but only a couple had the full-tilt sensibility of one of my favorite online pieces, I Has a Sweet Potato. Further, the online works are weirdly marred by how they are cited in the index and within the book by the blog name and not the author. “hotcoffeegirl.squarespace.com” is not an author; it’s a blog title. The authors’ names are properly acknowledged in the “contributors” section at the back of the volume, but this error reinforces my suspicion that the editors are awkwardly wading in to uncharted waters and trying too hard to be hip.

Incidentally, I’m now officially a (writing…) bigamist, as I share work not only with my smart and lovely writing friend Lisa, but also with a local critique group. Like my workshoppin’ with Lisa, it’s hardcore: we submit well in advance, submit written critiques, and no looky-loos need tap at our door. We met for the first time last night, and it was great: the perfect blend of observational skills, and exactly the right tone (frank but supportive).

In my work life I may be fully self-actualized and self-starting, but my quavering writing self needs deadlines and feedback and thumps on the head, like four people saying “the time sequence is muddled.” The time sequence IS muddled, and I sort of knew it, but it was like knowing that having Tater Tots in the freezer means I will eventually eat them; that doesn’t stop me from buying them. I need an outside force to connect fact A with fact B. That’s why the Episcopalians get it right about public confession.

Finally, out of frustration I began revising Wikipedia’s entry for creative nonfiction; nothing about writing should be poorly written. The good parts are mine. You can see my plans for this article’s future in the discussion section.

Oh, and speaking of confession, I … ah… mumble mumble… was supposed to let MPOW staff know they could attend at a discount. But this is my maiden voyage with this class, and I’d be mortified if it didn’t go well. I’ve been asked to teach this two more times, so perhaps I can be Truly Sorry and Humbly Repent, and get them whuffies for the next classes, assuming this succeeds the “proof of concept” stage.

So where was I? Ah yes. Best examples of writing for the Web: what would you recommend? All genres welcome.

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