Free Range Librarian

Pew released a report this week about teens and writing. The report confirmed that texting jargon has crept into traditional writing, and I’m sure some teachers and parents are rending their loincloths and keening over the arrival of “lol” and “brb” into homework assignments.
But the report also points out — directly and quite affirmatively — [...]

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Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things. — Theodore Levitt (quoted in Helene Blowers, “Innovation Starts with ‘I’“)
I revived Twitterprose yesterday, and will try to keep it going for a while.
Twitterprose publishes a line a day (6 a.m. Eastern Time) from the best creative nonfiction. You can follow Twitterprose (at least) [...]

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This is about two women, a blog, and a statewide mentoring program.
I recently had to write a midway review for my participation in the 2007-2008 Sunshine State Library Leadership Institute — also known as the “mentoring program.”
Mentors are like favorite aunts. We can hone in on helping our mentees with a focus that isn’t always [...]

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I scribbled ideas for next year’s Creative Nonfiction conference on an evaluation form before heading to L&M for one last meal that had me squealing over the sustainably-farmed locally-made chorizo, but assuming the forensic scientists at CNF gave up trying to analyze my bad handwriting, I thought I’d also share my ideas here.
Again, CNF 2008 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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These are blogs I more or less follow. . There are many more… this is what I can handle right now.
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