Introduction

This is a course about writing. It may seem strange that it exists at all. After all, isn’t writing so last-two-millennia, depending on where you live? Are we going to be learning all about hw 2 mak yr sents short? In other words, can I just make use of this syllabus.

In some sense, we won’t be that far off. There are courses a bit like this in universities across the US. Many of them are a thinly veiled attempt to teach English majors and journalists HTML. You will, I suspect, be happy to learn this isn’t that sort of a class. Some are really about layout, and not writing at all. Some teach scriptwriting for the small screen, or interactive fiction. While we may touch on these topics it isn’t our primary concern.

My main focus for this course is on writing. Now, writing happens–or should happen–in most courses, just as it happens in most careers. I worked with someone many years ago named Bill. He was VP of marketing for a subsidiary of a Fortune 500 company. He complained on a weekly basis about writing. He said he got into market analysis to avoid writing, and eventually worked in marketing design for the same reason. He actually learned to write acceptably, though not well. His climb to VP would have been stymied early on without such facility, because regardless of the industry, management requires clear communication. And most of that communication happens in text.

I Already Write Good

I know from previous courses with you, and from students in general, that you come into the class with vastly different levels of experience and comfort in writing. My normal expectation in assessing work is to assume a certain range of expertise and grade accordingly. I don’t usually go in for the “A for effort” or “I know you worked really hard,” sort of grading practices. In some ways this course is different.

People become very anxious about writing, and that tends to make them worse writers. Why? Because there are really only two proven ways to improve your writing: reading and writing. I hope I can make those improvements happen more quickly during our short time together, but generally, the more you write, and the more consciously you try to improve your writing, the better you will become.

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a great writer. I am lucky enough to be in a position to get paid for my writing, and that means that I am also able to get great editors to look at my work. Every year, I become a better writer, and every year I realize how much I overestimated my ability in the past. In fact, I think the two are probably inversely proportionate. I remember thinking in my first year of college that I was an outstanding writer. I tended to title my papers things like “Prof. Petracca is Wrong.” As I’ve had the opportunity to co-author work, and to work with great editors, I’ve realized just how bad a writer I am.

Perhaps that fails to instill confidence. Writing is a craft, one that I am trying to improve myself. What I can promise is to be a fair critic of your work, and to suggest ways in which you might improve. I know that I would be open and thankful for the same sort of criticism from you. If you are open to a bit of coaching, I hope we can make good use of our short time together.

Oh, and the subtitle of this section is a joke. If you didn’t get it, we have some work to do.

Five Weeks!

We are doing a sixteen week course in five weeks. This is, without exaggeration, impossible. There are some things that can be effectively intensified. Intensive, immersive second language courses can work well. Even certain math courses can be accelerated to an extreme degree. But I’m not so sure about writing.

As a practical matter, this means that we are compressing the 144 hour course into five weeks, meaning that we need to devote just shy of 30 hours each week to it. That’s a lot of time, but I know that you are committed to it. The problem is not blocking out time; or rather, that is very much a problem, but not one I can help with much. Rather, the problem is that there is only so much thinking you can do without your brain turning to mush. Caffeine can assist in brain plasticity, but only so much. We want to avoid giving you that “brain-in-a-blender” feeling.

So, there is less writing than there would be in a similar 16-week course, and the writing tends to be shorter. As you will see, some of that writing is very short; I am asking you to Tweet. Even the longer pieces are not the kinds of in-depth analysis I would expect in a longer graduate seminar.

Nonetheless, I want you to make full use of those 30 hours. A significant part of that time will be spent reading and researching. An even more substantial part will be spent thinking. A big chunk should be devoted to revising. In fact, the smallest part of your time in this writing class should be spent actually writing.

Staying in Touch

I’ll keep my Skype and Google Chat clients up as much as I can. So, if you have a question, text or call me. If you are at a sticking point, get in touch with me as soon as possible–the week goes by to quickly otherwise. Likewise, don’t leave everything until Sunday night. It is a plan for certain disaster. Get a start on things as early as you can.

I’m going to try phone-in meetings this semester, for the first time. For those of you who have worked with virtual teams outside of the program, you know that these are pretty common. They are not ideal, but they are a proven technology, and still widely used. Hopefully this will work out for us. I’ll invite you each week, using a free phone conferencing system. There will likely be a long-distance charge, but my hope is that most of us have some sort of free long distance service. These are not at all mandatory, but will provide a chance for us to talk as a group, I hope. If you can, please at least attend the first of these. I will keep them as short as possible, while still addressing any concerns you might have.

Readings

I’ve asked you to buy Zinsser’s “On Writing Well,” and I’m asking you to read several of the chapters. I will refer to it here and there in these posts, but mostly, the two are complementary without being connected. I’ll also recommend that you purchase–if you don’t already own one–a good guide to grammar.

There are some brief readings linked on the schedule that you should look over. In the course of the five weeks, I’ll also link to items, as I have in this introduction, that are of interest, and you should at least check them out, but they are not required readings.

Posting Assignments

You’ll be posting your papers to the web. At this point in the program, you should be able to get something up on the web without too much trouble. With the exception of one assignment, these will be text documents. This can be a fairly simple HTML page, if you like, but the smart move is putting it up on a blog. If you still have access to your 501 blog, you are welcome to use it, or you can make use of Blogger or Wordpress.com. Or you can put it up on a wiki. As long as there is a public URL that I and your classmates can get to, we are in good shape.

Once it is up there, you need to tag the URL. Just bookmark the page in Diigo. I’ll take a look at what you’ve written, and highlight and comment on what you’ve written. You are encouraged to do the same for your classmates.

Generally, there are two “longer” written pieces due each week. What is meant by “longer”? I know it is a bit idiosyncratic, but I really don’t like to assign word counts. I’m strange that way, I know. If you write a magazine piece, they’ll want to know how many words it will be. If you write a book proposal they will want to know the same. I encourage you to set your own word limit, if that helps you. My advice is to begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.

There are, most weeks, ten “shorter” written pieces required. This can be brief descriptions or mini-reviews of web content, written as descriptions on Diigo. They can include recommendations and comments on your classmates work. They can also include tweets on Twitter that make an observation or link to something interesting.

In all your work, content matters–as always. For my courses, I usually favor content to presentation in my evaluation, but here I will look at them equally. I don’t think you can separate the two, in practice, but I will be paying much more attention to how you shape your argument, to the structure of your sentences, to the choice of your words.

If you make a grammatical mistake once, you get off scot-free. If I indicate the mistake, or class of mistake, and you continue to make it, then that will make up part of your evaluation. Basically, I’m trying to encourage you to practice, and to pay attention. Note that everything must be turned in on time, without exception. I realize the pace of the course makes falling behind easy, and I want to make sure that you don’t. For that reason, plan on doing the work early, if at all possible.

Where are my grades!

Half your grade is determined by timely and involved participation in each module. Have you done everything? Are your contributions outstanding or merely perfunctory. IF you send me an email with a self assessment by Sunday of each module, I’ll respond with my assessment of your assessment.

Half your grade is based on two extended and revised versions of things you have written during the semester. These should be posted separately from your original assignment. If you are unsure which of your assignments are best developed, I’d be happy to chat with you about it.

Plagiarism and Policies

The topic of this section is bound to insult some of you in the class who think that in a graduate course we shouldn’t have to talk about plagiarism. I happen to agree, but experience suggests to me that it is probably still necessary.

There are those who think that plagiarism is a dirty little thing that everyone does; akin to speeding or lying about what you were doing last night. Then there are those who think that plagiarism is a considerably worse than burglary, and only marginally better than genocide. I belong to the latter group.

I am incredulous of claims from students that they don’t know what plagiarism is. Plagiarism is when you take someone’s ideas without crediting them. It’s as easy as that. Are you supposed to take other people’s ideas (and words)? Of course! We live in a society, and knowledge doesn’t just come fully formed from your brain. You are expected to borrow ideas from others and re-mix them into something new, interesting, and useful.

So, when you do that, cite the source. For web texts, the easiest way to do this is frequently to link directly to the source. For things that are harder to get at, you need to use textual citations.

There are two schools of thought quotations. Journalists tend to prefer exact quotes to paraphrasing. However, in other forms of writing, you should try to rephrase the idea that you are borrowing in your own words. If the turn of phrase is idiosyncratic, or otherwise important to preserve in its original form, put it in quotation marks. If you’ve just heard a stirring speech and report that Churchill urged us not to be afraid of things, except for our own stifling anxiety–well, maybe you should have quoted in that case.

Paraphrasing does not mean replacing a few words with ones you picked up in a thesaurus. It means understanding the original idea, and restating it in your own words.

The syllabus notes that late work will result in a 10% reduction in grade per 24 hours. No exceptions. Since most of these grades are for participation, if you are contributing well after others are, it reduces the value to everyone. After being soft on such deadlines in past ICM-online courses, I am further convinced it doesn’t help anyone, and particularly because of the short length of the this course, I’m going hold fast to this policy.

The exception to this is the final two revisions. These must be in on time or you will not receive a passing grade in the class.

Don’t hire anyone to write or edit your work, but if you can convince someone to look over your work, or trade papers, I strongly encourage you to do so. If you can’t schedule enough time that you can set your work aside for at least half a day, and come back to it with fresh eyes before you submit it.

You may find that work you do in this class is helpful for later classes. You are welcome to submit some portion of the text you produce here as long as you clearly indicate to that instructor (even if it is me!) that you have submitted this work for credit in another class. For example, you may have a design exercise in which you need some text to use, but that is not directly relevant to the assignment. In that case, you may re-use this work only if you indicate that it has already been submitted for icm 506. Likewise, you should not submit work from another course to this one without my express permission ahead of time. Given the nature of this course, it is unlikely that I will provide such permission.

When in Doubt, Write

Writer’s block does not exist. Or, rather, the only solution for writers block is to write. Sure, there are other ways of concentrating, or of losing inhibitions, but all of these lead to the simply act of putting words to paper or screen. If you are ever stuck, sit down and type. It doesn’t matter what you type, just type. You can always go back and delete afterward, but you need some raw material to work on. Write about your cat, about your favorite colors, about politics, about your girlfriend. Just write.

There’s a chance that you only have one great phrase in your head, but if you don’t start writing now, you’ll never get to it.