Category: Creative Writing

Making Peer Feedback Valuable to You

Jameson Reid and Shelby Cundiff – Writing Consultants

Introduction:

No matter what your peers say about your writing, or even your professors, your writing is ultimately yours. You have the best ideas of what you want your writing to consist of. No one knows better than you the argument that you are trying to make and the effects you want your writing to have. However, many professors are pushing their students to do peer feedback, and are even implementing class time to work in pairs or small groups to look over each other’s work. At times, this will take place in person where you all can have a conversation about the work, and other times, you might read through each other’s work alone and send a document of your thoughts. Or, maybe you are with your friends and you are all working on the same assignment, so you all offer to read through each other’s work. Regardless, these are all considered forms of peer review. Although the writing is yours, there is nothing wrong with a second set of eyes on your work; your peers, who are probably going through the same things as you, are good people to trust. Peers don’t have to be experts on your topic or in the craft of writing, but letting someone with an outside view of your paper experience your writing can be valuable to you.

Using Peer Feedback (Jameson):

When writing, it is very easy to get stuck in your own head. The sentences that you write may start to lose any meaning for you, and your argument may become unclear to anyone except yourself. Feedback can help you see what your argument is and see the structures and patterns that may have formed unintentionally. You can see if your peers are noticing what you are doing in your writing. What is being communicated effectively and what isn’t? Suggestions for improvements may be useful, or they may not be. Trust in your reader but also trust in yourself. If a peer’s comments feel completely off or their suggestions go against what you want to do, then ignore it, but understand why you are ignoring it. Have good reasons for making decisions, and be confident in knowing why you decide to follow a suggestion or disregard it.

It also depends on the amount of peer reviewers you have. Some classes may have you work with a single partner, a small group, or the whole class may be workshopping your paper. You can look for shared opinions across your reviewers and you should be aware that it is likely that some of your reviewers may not be reading very closely or may not be particularly adept at giving feedback. If you have the opportunity to speak with your reviewers, then you can ask them to provide the feedback that is most useful to you. Ask them to describe their experience with different sections of your paper. Push them to try to identify why they don’t understand something. What specifically is in your paper that is causing the various reactions?

Giving Peer Feedback (Jameson):

As a peer reviewer often the best feedback you can give is to describe your experience when reading their writing. For an essay this can mean a few things. You can describe your understanding of the paper’s argument, identify the parts of the argument that you notice, and places that confuse you. You are giving your peer an outside perspective on their paper as someone who has not spent time researching and writing on the topic. Something that may be obvious to the writer, who is deeply entrenched in their subject, won’t be obvious to you and might need to be explained more. If you can find these moments then your feedback will be very useful to your peers. You can also question if your peer’s argument isn’t fully developed. Maybe there is a counterargument that they need to acknowledge. These comments however should always come with your understanding of what the argument is. Nothing is worse for a writer than them seeing criticisms of their argument that don’t make any sense to them.

In creative writing workshops, the feedback to give is fairly similar. Give your reaction to the text. This can include your emotional reaction, your takeaways, or what you think the meaning is. Then, if you can, try to describe what elements of the writing created this meaning. How effective are these elements? Is there something the writer can do to improve these elements? If you have suggestions or ideas, feel free to give them, but don’t feel like you have to if you aren’t sure. Describing your experience is something that anyone can do and will still be very useful to the writer. Also, remember that writing can be very personal, even in scholarly work. Peer feedback is not just criticism and suggestions for improvement. It should also be positive. Describe what you really enjoyed, what was really effective. If you find their argument or topic interesting, let them know. Then when you have to be critical, be only critical and not insulting. Don’t be afraid to use peer feedback to your advantage; it could be helpful to you.

What Peer Feedback Has Done For Me (Shelby):

As someone who has always been a good writer and confident in her abilities to write papers, I never really understood the point of peer review… That was until the first year of undergrad, which hit me like a train. Partially, I thought peer review made me weak, as if I couldn’t write without needing validation from my classmates or friends. The other part of me was just stubborn, and continuously told myself I didn’t need it. However, I began to realize that there is nothing wrong with help, and a second set of eyes is now a must-have for me. During my first year at Centre College, the classes and writing assignments were harder, and combining this with a newfound independence, I learned quickly that I needed to use the resources around me to better myself. Thankfully, I was surrounded by friends who also loved writing, and enjoyed reading through my work, telling me what they liked, didn’t like, or what needed to be worked on. This process continued throughout my undergraduate experience, and has continued to be important to me as I have started graduate school.

My senior spring, I decided to take a risk and take a creative writing class, where a big part of our grade was based on peer review. This class was arguably the most diverse class I had ever been in, and for that reason, I learned more than I ever had from reading my classmate’s works about their experiences and their readings of my work. For example, the first short story I wrote was about a girl who was struggling with her identity as a lesbian, and was therefore struggling to come out to her family and friends. While I am not a member of the LGBTQIA+ community myself, I had a peer reader who was, and assured me that I was doing a good job of conveying the experience of many queer individuals. Thinking back throughout my entire undergraduate experience, the difference in opinions, thoughts, and experiences of both my classmates and friends made me a better writer, thinker, reader, and overall person. With all of this being said, I want to encourage you to be okay with peer feedback, whether it be in your classes or just within your friend group. Just because someone tells you their opinion doesn’t mean you have to listen, but, you might find after reflecting on it, that it will help you in the long run. Other people may be more experienced than you in some areas, and there is nothing wrong with that. Writing is hard. You will never know everything. So, take advice from your peers, and do it sooner than I did. I promise, it helps.

Within the Walls of Western Branch: A Look at Cotter Cup ’23

Liz Soule, Assistant Director

Author and educator Joseph S. Cotter (1861-1949) made an untold number of contributions to Louisville during his lifetime. He fought explicitly for equity in education in a time where the educational resources available to students of color were both separate and unequal. In 1913, Cotter partnered with Louisville Free Public Library’s Western Branch—a Carnegie library that was both run by and served black residents—in order to establish the Cotter Cup, a storytelling contest that encouraged Library patrons to explore literacy and express themselves.

At the University Writing Center, we’re proud to say that we have played a role in not only bringing attention to Cotter’s contributions, but in revitalizing his efforts so that a new generation of students might enjoy similar experiences. In 2021, we worked with the Western Branch to re-establish the Cotter Cup as a poetry contest for local K-12 students. As part of the program, University Writing Center volunteers worked with these young poets as they crafted their poems, which were then submitted for judging. We had so much fun that we did it all over again in 2022.

In 2023, the Western Branch held its 3rd annual Cotter Cup. We were there again, this time present in-person to work with Louisville’s young writers. 20 participants, all K-12 students local to Louisville, took part in the contest. This year’s winners are:

Elementary School

1st – Luka Sulkowski

2nd – Gibson Gurley

3rd – Lilly Shetler

Middle School

1st – Elina Sulkowski

2nd – Sufyan White

3rd – Glory Miller

High School

1st – Aiden Vilo

2nd – Jayla Carver

3rd – Audrey Scott

In addition to celebrating all of our amazing participants, I also want to offer a special thanks to the University Writing Center volunteers that worked with these young writers: Clay Arvin, Jessica Gottbrath, Dylan Williams, and Cassidy Witt. Thank you so much for all of the creativity and enthusiasm you shared. This was the first year that we were able to recruit both graduate and undergraduate volunteers, and we’re so grateful that we did. The range of experiences and knowledge that you all brought to the tables of the Western Branch truly helped shape the experience of these writers.

Having had the pleasure of working with several of these winning participants, I can attest to how phenomenal their works were. But truthfully, I think the benefit of the Cotter Cup extends far beyond titles and prizes. This year, more than ever, we were able to engage Louisville’s youngest poets in authentic conversations around literacy and self-expression. We were able to look one another in the eye and share affirming smiles and nods. We were able to pass papers back and forth, and remark upon annotations and scribbles. We were able to create real connections, and this means something! We also were able to achieve a long-standing goal of the Cotter Cup: bringing more individuals to the Western Branch. We hope this introduction to this beautiful, historic space, this beacon of equity and racial advancement, results in them coming back again and again.

This is my last year as an assistant director in the University Writing Center. I’ve had the pleasure of helping run the Cotter Cup for two consecutive years; this experience has helped shape me as a writing center professional. Each and every interaction I’ve had within the walls of the Western Branch has left me feeling increasingly more in awe of the coming generation’s knowledge and talents. I also can’t speak highly enough of the staff at Western Branch, in particular Natalie Woods, who has taught me so much about not just the value of community literacy, but the beautifully messy practice of it.

Although I won’t be a part of leading the Cotter Cup in 2023, I have no doubt that the contest will be in good hands with both the fabulous Western Branch staff, along with my co-worker, Kendyl Harmeling. Kendyl will be stepping into my role next year, and is excited to be involved with the Cotter Cup. She has a long-standing interest in community writing, and a personal love of poetry which she hopes to share with participants and volunteers alike. One impact she hopes the Cotter Cup will have upon participants is that they will come to realize that “what [they] feel and how [they] see the world, and the sharing of [their] thoughts and experiences, are valued and supported and praised.” Suffice it to say, I look forward to helping her spread this message as one of the Cotter Cup volunteers in 2024.

With Writing Always at the Center: Reflecting on a Year of University Writing Center Accomplishments

Bronwyn T. Williams, Director

Each year at the University Writing Center, in the sweltering last days of August, we welcome a new staff of consultants. And each year each staff has its own personality. Temperaments, personalities, areas of expertise, senses of humor, are individually and delightfully varied from one year to the next. The new consultants arrive at the end of summer with much to learn about teaching writing in a writing center, and with much to teach us through their new ideas and new approaches.

Now, as the dogwood and redbud trees start to light up with blossoms, and the season turns toward the closing of the academic year, it’s always a time at the University Writing Center of wrapping up and reflecting. We’re having our last consultations, finishing our own projects, and talking of plans for the summer. I’ve been watching these cycles as director of the University Writing Center for twelve years now and this time of year once again brings with it a mixture of gratitude, satisfaction, and a touch of weary wistfulness. This year will be the last time these cycles at the University Writing Center will include me as I will be stepping down as director after July (more on that later). Still, the cycles go on and it is indeed time for wrapping up and reflecting.

Our Ongoing Work in the Writing Center

For all the differences in personality among various University Writing Center staffs from year to year, what is more important is the consistency. What did not change this year was that the consultants in the University Writing Center engaged in the most interdisciplinary, wide-ranging teaching on campus, working with writers from every grade level, every college and from more than 50 different majors.

Whether working with first-year students or doctoral student writers, our writing consultants helped people at every possible stage of their writing processes – from the brainstorming at the start to the polishing at the end. Our consultants are exceptional teachers who never lose sight of the fact that they are working with individual writers, not just responding to the words on a page. Through their work, consultants help writers feel more confident, not just for the moment, but in navigating unfamiliar writing situations in the future. Such work requires that our consultants be good listeners and resourceful teachers. Working collaboratively, patiently, and focusing on learning, not grading, takes time and energy, but such approaches made significant differences in the lives of thousands of UofL writers this year. From our perspective, this individualized, personal teaching is the best way learning happens and it all depends on the talent and commitment of our consultants. I’m so proud of the work they do, every day and every year.

Collaborative, reciprocal learning also requires the contributions and commitments of writers and we are also grateful for the trust placed in us by the writers who bring their work to the University Writing Center. We are always learning from them as they learn from us. I also thank all the faculty and staff who supported our work by recommending us to their students.

This is my last semester as director and I will be writing more about that on this blog next week week. Today, however, I want to focus on this year’s amazing staff and what they’ve accomplished.

Transitions at the University Writing Center

The most important transition at the University Writing Center this year was the arrival of Dr. Annmarie Steffes to the position of Associate Director. In this full-time position she provides the intellectual core and ethical heart of our work. Annmarie came here from a faculty position at the University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne where she had developed a writing center and made huge contributions to our daily work and long-term planning as soon as she arrived. Annmarie brings to the position energy and innovative ideas that will help move the University Writing Center forward in vital and exciting ways. For example, just since starting her position in September, she has developed a series of workshops for faculty about teaching writing and has many more ideas ahead for how to improve our work as a center of writing on campus.

Dr. Tim Johnson, associate professor of English, will become director starting in July. Tim has exceptional insights into approaches for teaching writing across disciplines and in professions. He’s an exceptional teacher and and insightful researcher. He’s friendly and warm and will help energize and inspire both staff and writers in the years to come.

I am excited to see what innovations and new strategies Annmarie and Tim will bring to the University Writing Center in the future. Writing support and teaching at UofL is in excellent hands.

The Best Writing Center Staff Around

It is also essential to thank the fantastic administrative staff who carried us through this year with calm creativity and good humor. In addition to Annmarie, Maddy Decker, handled the front desk and office managing responsibilities flawlessly and was supported in this work by our undergraduate student workers Katelin Wilkinson and Tera Hathcock. Maddy also coordinated our social media, including this blog, with imagination and wit.

The assistant directors were also indispensable this year. Liz Soule, as Assistant Director for the Writing Center, helped both with mentoring new consultants, but also researched and held workshops to respond to the many questions we received about AI in writing, such as ChatGPT. And Kendyl Harmeling, the Assistant Director for Graduate Student Writing, both facilitated the Faculty and Graduate Student Writing Group and engaged in outreach at the Health Sciences Campus.

All of these people make the Writing Center work, day in and day out, and make it a positive, inclusive, and productive place for the UofL community.

Writing at the Center – Community Writing, Workshops, Writing Groups, and More

Community Writing and the Cotter Cup: Our commitment to writing is not limited to the UofL Campus. Once again we worked closely this year with Western Branch of the Louisville Free Public Library (LFPL). This participatory and collaborative partnership, under the coordination of Assistant Director Liz Soule, is an important part of how we understand writing as transcending communities and boundaries. You can find out more about these community writing projects, including how to get involved with them, on our website. We worked with Western Branch to provide workshops and mentoring. But our primary project for the year was the third annual Cotter Cup K-12 poetry contest. This is the third year we have partnered with restoring the 100-year old tradition of this contest. University Writing Center volunteers met at the Western Branch Library with K-12 writers to brainstorm, draft and revise their poems for the contest. We worked with 30 student writers and the contest winners will be announced later this spring. We’re grateful to the contributions of our volunteers: Liz Soule, Jessica Gottbrath, Clay Arvin, Cassidy Witt, and Dylan Williams.

Writing Groups: We continued our commitment to provide UofL writer with safe, supportive communities where they can write and talk about writing. We continued to facilitate our LGBTQ+, Faculty and Graduate Student, and Creative Writing writing groups. We have always believed that writing, and the confidence to explore new ideas in writing, is a social activity as much as a solitary one. Through our writing groups we want people to be able to gather and learn more about the craft of writing, but also build the confidence that comes from writing in a supportive community.

Writing Events: Once again we hosted or took part in a range of writing-related events, including our Halloween Scary Stories Open Mic Night and a Valentine’s Day Open Mic, both hosted with the Miracle Monocle Literary Magazine. Annmarie also organized our annual celebration of International Mother Language Day. We’re always delighted to celebrate writing of all varieties and hope to continue with more such events in the future.

Dissertation Writing Retreat: In May we will hold our 12^th annual Dissertation Writing Retreat. During the retreat, 14 doctoral writers, from 10 different disciplines, will spend a week writing, talking about dissertation writing strategies, and having daily consultations about their writing. This event is the capstone to each academic year and an important moment for us.

Workshops: This year, Annmarie planned and facilitated a series of workshops for faculty both on issues of using writing effectively in their courses, and also on thoughtful and creative ways to respond to the development and use of more sophisticated AI in writing. We also held our regular workshops on issues of graduate student writing, organized through the Graduate School.

Writing Center Staff Achievements

The University Writing Center is also an active, ongoing site of scholarship about the teaching of writing. Staff from the University Writing Center were engaged in a number of scholarly and creative projects during the past year in rhetoric and composition, literature, and creative writing.

Bronwyn Williams, Director. In terms of writing-center focused research, my article, “Writing Centers, Enclaves, and Creating Spaces of Change Within Universities” has been published in Writing Center Journal

Annmarie Steffes, Associate Director, presented ““Instructor Autonomy: Exploring the Role of OER in Composition Classrooms” at the Conference on College Composition and Communication.

Liz Soule, Assistant Director, will be the Assistant Director of Writing in the College of Business next year. She also held two workshops this spring on ChatGPT and writing and also completed her doctoral exams and will be moving on to writing her dissertation.

Kendyl Harmeling, Assistant Director for Graduate Student Writing, had a book review published in Rhetoric Society Quarterly (in press): “Writing Their Bodies: Restoring Rhetorical Relations at the Carlisle Indian School” By Sarah Klotz. She will be the Assistant Director for the Writing Center next year.

Christina Davidson, presented a digital humanities project at the UofL Graduate Student Regional Research Conference (GSRRC). Next year she will be an Assistant Director in the Composition Program.

Braydon Dungan, presented on “American Dreams, Desires, and Deception: Nationalistic Pride and Toxic Heteronormativity in Theodore Roosevelt’s ‘The Strenuous Life'” at the Community in Peril: From Individual Identities to Global Citizenship Conference in Brno, Czech Republic. He also visited Longbranch Elementary School to exemplify how public educators can apply Writing Center techniques to elementary composition curriculum and pedagogy. And he self-published a book of poetry titled Songs for the Public from a Poet Who Can’t Sing.

Katie Fritsche, presented at two conferences, on “Princess Mononoke: Animated Solutions for the Global Climate Crisis”, at The 16th Annual Graduate Student Conference, University of Ottawa, and on “Colliding Forms in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Collin’s The Hunger Games” at The Louisville Conference on Literature & Culture. She also published an article in the St. John’s University Humanities Review titled, “A Freudian Interpretation of Familial Dreams in the Demon Slayer Anime.”

Mahde Hassan served as a Scholastic Awards Juror at SUNY Oneonta for Leatherstocking Writing Project, which is writing contest for secondary students. He also worked as a volunteer with facilitating the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture

Wendell Hixson chaired a panel at the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture.

Andrew Messer will be the Assistant Director Creative Writing in the English Department next year.

Elizabeth Pope will have the poem “Coal Camp” published in North Dakota Quarterly. She was also awarded The Annette Allen Poetry Prize sponsored by the UofL Humanities Department and read her work at the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture.

Charlie Ward, presented “Exploring Gender in Tommy Orange’s There There” at the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture and “Black Identity and Performance in ‘Sonny’s Blues'” at the Coast-to-Coast 2023 Conference. They also have two poems accepted for publication, “nightmare.” in Printed Zine and “fire” in Louisville Zine.

Yuan Zhao presented at the 2022 International Conference on Romanticism and the16th Graduate Student Regional Research Conference (GSRRC) at University of Louisville. Yuan also completed his MA Culminating Project titled, “Formulaic Writing and Technology in TOEFL: Algorithm in e-rater and White Supremacist Desire.” Yuan will be joining the UofL Rhetoric and Composition PhD program next year.

On behalf of all the University Writing Center staff, thank you again for another fulfilling and exceptional year. We hope to see you back this summer or in the fall.

Poetry as a Form of Journaling for Inner Peace

Braydon Dungan, Writing Consultant

Journaling has become a common method for many individuals looking to begin a journey of healing and mindfulness. Journaling can be a great way to write down one’s thoughts as they come, removing any unwanted images that revolve around our mind and evicting them onto a sheet of paper. Something about taking the thoughts inside our head and placing them onto something tangible allows us to feel seen, to feel heard, to feel listened to.

Trauma can show itself in many forms and can arise from a variety of different circumstances. I know peers who experience trauma due to the death of a loved one, the effect of a poor mental health diagnosis, or the aftereffects of an abusive relationship. For me, I’ve struggled with speaking out about the trauma I’ve endured at the hands of those who wished to manipulate and abuse me. I’ve been conditioned to compartmentalize the abuse I’ve endured, and I’ve had to learn how to process the pain of the past in a way conducive to my own healing and mental health.

For some, journaling doesn’t have that helpful effect that it does on others. Journaling can seem difficult to maintain on a consistent basis, and it can often seem like an obstacle in a day already filled with plenty of challenges. In result, I’ve attempted to shift from journaling to writing poetry. Now, I don’t see myself as any sort of talented writer of poetry whatsoever; in fact, I’ve never really had much formal training in writing poetry at all. Still, I wanted to give it a shot due to my inadequacy at maintaining a consistent journaling schedule.

I’ve noticed that when I use poetry as a form of journaling, I’m able to ruminate and process the thoughts I have much more carefully than when I journal in a stream-of-consciousness manner. When I journal, I don’t really think about what I’m thinking… I simply recognize the thought in my head, transfer it to paper, and move onto the next thought.

With poetry, I force myself to visualize the words that swirl in my head, and I have to create abstract images and metaphors that relay the emotions I want to communicate to my intended audience. I don’t worry about poetry structure or rhythm; instead, I solely focus on the words, themselves, and the power each word brings to my page.

One of the most common manners I write poetry is directly towards an individual in my life. Sometimes, I write poetry about my family, and I allow myself to process and reflect on the love and positive emotions I have towards them. On the other hand, I also write about people who have pained me in the past, individuals who have taken it upon themselves to incur manipulation, deceit, and hate into my life.

I want to include a short poem I wrote in the middle of the night upon waking up from a trauma-induced nightmare:

my fear of drowning.

there were nights i used to wonder

if the void was worth the risk

of taking that first breath of water

i never wanted to feel it burn

like it did in the nightmares i had

of you with anybody else but me

I wasn’t sure how I could illustrate exactly how I felt. I didn’t want to write down what happened in my nightmare and force myself to relive it; instead, I just wanted to process what had happened, and one of the most effective ways to do this was by comparing my trauma to the painful act of drowning. I didn’t write this to wallow in my sorrows or to draw attention to myself; I wrote this for me, for healing, for the place I want to be, the place I strive to get to every day of my life.

Now, when I talk to those around me who struggle with their own trauma and mental health challenges, I encourage them to use poetry as journaling.

And now, I challenge you; take a moment, close your eyes, and allow whichever thoughts that naturally creep in to be recognized and not shoved away. Take five minutes and write yourself a quick poem; think of metaphors, images, senses. Don’t worry about rhyming or the structure of your poem—just write!

I can assure you that after writing your poem, you will feel more clearheaded than you did before. Let’s all take an opportunity out of our hectic, challenging days to ruminate on our thoughts and turn them into something beautiful, powerful, and tangible.

Healing Trauma Through Writing

Elizabeth Pope, Writing Consultant

Writing is academic, scholarly, and creative in genres of poetry, prose, fiction, or creative non-fiction. Writing is publishable, presentable at conferences, or shoved into a drawer never to look at again. As a woman and first year Ph.D. student with an M.A. in English Literature and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, I value the integrity of writing as an art form. At the same time, I honor writing as an inclusive act of expression that extends beyond degree, career, or publication. Writing held my hand through tough times, and it is this practice of writing as an act of healing that transcends art, craft, or accolade. Writing is primordial as hieroglyphics and essential as meditation. Writing is also a friend, prayer, and eternal question.

On February 11, 2022, I began to write again for the first time since the pandemic began after graduating in the summer of 2020 with my M.F.A. and entering the chaos of new systems of public virtual schooling for my daughters, while my husband worked as an essential worker within Covid-units, Covid-tent construction, and Covid-vaccine construction as an electrical contractor within hospitals. In February, I began a recovery journey with my daughter after her spinal fusion, years of physical therapy with Norton Neuroscience and Spinal Rehabilitation Center, and preparatory surgery appointments at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. When her spinal curve entered a degree that was detrimental to her heart and lungs, during the height of the pandemic, we had to wait until she was of age for vaccines to proceed with the spinal fusion with the intention of limiting possible complications. I was not able to write through this time of preparing for her surgery. It was hard to comprehend her vulnerability, complexity of the surgery, and pain of her recovery. It was not until her time in the hospital that I was able to speak about the actual surgery, ask her team of doctors about anatomy, and specifics of what occurred during her spinal fusion. I began to write about the process of her immediate post-surgery in the hospital during times that she slept without interruption from nurses, pain teams, or doctors. During these quiet and dim moments in the hospital room, I wrote about uncertainties, reliefs from a successful surgery, anatomy of the spine (an aspect that I was unable to confront until post-surgery was successful), and the hardships of seeing someone that I love in immense pain.

What I wrote in the late hours of the hospital room was what I was unable to verbalize with doctors, nurses, family, and friends. I wrote about the relief that overshadowed lack of sleep, uncertainty of home recovery, and life after post-recovery. In a pandemic and post-pandemic world the hospital is a healing but isolating place. It provides a quiet introspection that is lonely if an outlet is not provided. Writing was the healing outlet for me as art therapy was a healing outlet for my daughter and other patients. I was not singular in writing as a method of connecting with presence of the tasks at hand, fears of the possibility of what might have gone wrong, what was going wrong, or as a way to connect to support systems who were unable to visit the hospital during the de-escalation of heightened Covid-19 concerns. CaringBridge is a media outlet that is provided to parents, guardians, and caregivers who have patients within hospital settings.

There are nights you can see screens within patient’s rooms glowing from parents updating their CaringBridge accounts for friends, family, or their child’s friends—who are also support systems outside of the hospital. Time seems to evaporate inside rooms of a hospital. Days are nights and nights are days. Moments are fast paced or desolate when the child is resting. It is in those quiet moments that writing in a journal, social media outlet, text, email, or mode of connection like CaringBridge provides parents moments of reflection and expression after hours, days, weeks, months, or years of attempting to remain calm and collected through high-stress environments. The act of putting what is unspoken to paper allows the stress of an experience to transform from what is carried, or what is afraid to be said, into an acceptance that is tangible. Writing, in this way, is a reconciliation with traumas that are unrecognizable and carried through complicated and demanding situations. Writing in this way is also a reflection, retrospection, and method of measuring what is overcome.

Writing, in a recovery or hospital setting, allows for articulate and direct conversations with doctors, teams, and nurses. Writing allowed me to move past emotional responses of worry, frustration, and sadness to arrive at rationality that allowed for focus on immediate questions such as: if her pain management is not working what other option might be enacted immediately? Writing is an act of presence and hope that if the trauma is shared—even if it is an unrecognizable trauma—it is no longer a secret, fear to harbor, or shame to suppress. In this way writing is an act of healing.

I did not keep any of the writings from the surgery, in hospital, recovery, or homecare recovery. I erased it all. Her struggle to process her own traumatic event was not something that I wanted her to relive or that I wanted to relive. Although she is fully recovered and the surgery is a distant memory, there was a time when our inability to communicate shared fears and grief was stalled. After the experience and anticipation of the surgery, writing offered moments of connection to what was difficult, hopes of a better life for someone that I loved, and reflections of strengths that I witnessed in my child. I wrote to remember moments when she encountered specific obstacles with bravery, such as when she began to walk again downstairs (one step, two feet at a time) when she walked long distances outside of a wheelchair, and when she ran and slid into a homerun in her softball league this summer. I wrote to remind her that obstacles in life are inevitable, she overcame them once, so in the future she will overcome them again. I wanted to remember moments that she did not give up, overcame something hard, and moments that it was important to simply listen and not speak except into paper and ink.

Of Course I’m a Writer: How Feedback Helps Shape Writing Identity

Maddy Decker, Program Assistant, Senior

I always hesitate to call myself a writer despite having wanted to be one since elementary school. It feels like I’m pretending to be something that I’m not, but I am a writer. I write. It’s that simple. Sometimes I just need some help reminding myself of that.

This past summer, I attended a week-long workshop as part of completing the requirements for my Creative Writing MFA. I was excited for the opportunity to get back in a workshop, but a part of me dreaded going. Since my program is low-residency, I was nervous about meeting my classmates and professors face-to-face for the first time. Additionally, the last workshop I had participated in made me a little hesitant about putting my work back out there. I dragged my feet while preparing until I finally speed-wrote two new flash pieces to bring with me, stuffing them into my overcrowded backpack and trying to pretend they didn’t exist.

I arrived at Chateau Lesbian (my friend and her wife refuse to let me call their apartment anything else), rolled my suitcase into the guest room, and then immediately left for my first required event. I was joining the second week of the residency, while most people had also attended the first week. It seemed like everyone already knew each other, and while they were all kind and welcoming, I was still intimidated. How would we work together in class? Would they still seem so nice after we picked apart each other’s stories?

I arrived the next day and tried to stay calm, but my efforts were thwarted when I abruptly remembered that my piece was up first for workshop. I was overwhelmed with concern about how weird and rushed and personal my writing was, but it was time to confront my fears. When prompted, I began reading: “This is called The Salami Kids…”

Workshop. Was. AMAZING! My classmates were generous with their feedback, both praise and criticism, and I loved every minute of it. My pen begged for mercy as I scribbled down notes and ideas for revision. Suddenly, I could see how to take everything a little bit further and tighten up the loose ends. My piece became more than just a page of words I’d thrown together to meet the submission deadline: it had potential, and I wanted to keep working on it. I felt a thousand times better. I felt like a writer.

Working the front desk at the University Writing Center, I often hear from other people who insist that they are not writers. I hear things like “I’m not a writer” or “I’m just doing this for class.” When I hear this, I respond, “Of course you’re a writer. You’re writing in here!” This doesn’t always seem to make a difference, but it’s important to me that I say it anyway.

When you visit the Writing Center, you are a writer, no matter what kind of writing you are working on. This is why you will often hear us refer to you as “writers” rather than clients or students. We want to reinforce the idea that you are someone who writes, and that you are allowed to call yourself a writer. In fact, this is something that we cover at orientation at the beginning of the year, because one of our top priorities is helping you to gain confidence and agency in your writing and your identity as a writer.

I have a BA and an MA in English, and I’m halfway through my Creative Writing MFA. I’ve written countless papers and stories of my own, and I’ve helped with so many more during the three years that I worked as a writing consultant. My work has been published, and I’ve even received awards for a couple of my short stories. When I step back and look at it objectively, it seems obvious to me that I’m a writer, but I still regularly face the fear of using that word for myself.

I share this to show that even someone with years of writing experience is still scared of being a “writer.” This is something that I confront daily, both for myself and with the writers who visit my desk. There is no cure-all, but there are steps you can take to grow your confidence and foster your writing identity. One of the most beneficial things that you can do is share your work with others. This helps you to become more involved with your process, as well as to take ownership of your words. Also, it’s exciting! Thinking out loud in collaboration with feedback from others can be so generative, and you’ll come up with ideas you hadn’t thought of before.

Read your work to your friends, share it with a writing group, or visit one of our consultants at the University Writing Center! We welcome all UofL students, staff, and faculty, and we work with all kinds of writing, at any point in the writing process. I hope that you visit and that when your appointment is over, you leave thinking, Of course I’m a writer!

The Shape of Writing: Halloween and Writing Go Hand-in-Hand

Andrew Messer, Writing Consultant

There was a conversation I had with Dr. Bronwyn Williams, the director of our community of writing consultants, where he told me that all spy movies are literacy narratives. Well, that got me thinking, truly thinking—and this may very well have been the first time I had a truly deep thought in months, coming fresh off of summer break at the time—about what other stories are technically literacy narratives. Some other types of action movies, sure. Superheroes? It’s possible to make that argument. However, fate would grant me a serendipitous revelation just as it was time to write up a blog post of my own. What better day to talk about the literacy of horror movies than today, Halloween? And better yet, is there a more apt movie to talk about than John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978)? I think not.

We find literacy in Carpenter’s film in a variety of ways, most notably in the question of why Michael Myers wears his signature mask. There are a myriad of answers, and one of them is that he is trying to hide. The movie begins with Michael hiding from his sister before he, well… you know what happens. Michael isn’t just hiding his face though: he is hiding his ability to be read. He withholds from both the viewer and the other characters of the film the ability to be read and understood. It takes great effort, strife, horror, as well as some sleuthing for the characters to finally track down Michael from his old home to the killings he gets up to throughout the film. It takes a great deal of intellectual and psychological literacy for the doctor to track Michael across Haddonfield to his showdown with Laurie Strode.

Now, you might be wondering—I know I sure was—what has this to do at all with writing or writing center work. Great question! All of these aspects of literacy shown in Halloween started to remind me of something oddly familiar—the writing process itself. Fellow horror buffs may recall, but in the script for Carpenter’s film, Myers is referred to as the Shape; I think this is an apt metaphor for beginning the writing process, for what is the beginning of a draft but a vague shape? The Shape of drafting can be many things: procrastination, intimidation, a confusing prompt or topic, or even something as scary as a new or unfamiliar genre. The Shape finds a way to haunt all of us when we start the drafting process, and it tries to turn us into Bob if we let it.

Starting a paper is much like the events of this film: scary and disjointed without a lot to keep the threads together. Sometimes the meaning and message remains masked, if you’ll excuse the pun. Sometimes it can be something you feel like running from, avoiding it until the last minute. Sometimes you must be Laurie Strode and—metaphorically, of course—stab at your paper wildly with a knitting needle until something comes out loosely approximating what you are trying to accomplish. Either way, the Shape must be confronted to move forward, and often that is done by looking back on what you have accomplished in the past. Relying on your knowledge and the skills in literacy and writing that you have developed over many years of being a thoughtful and insightful human being.

And insightful you are. You are a writer and a reader all-in-one, and just like Laurie you will figure out what the Shape is. Though you may not always unmask it in the end, and sometimes when you think you have finished a draft the Shape will haunt you still. Yet again, just like Laurie, you are not alone. If need be, let the Writing Center be your Loomis: let us help you uncover the Shape of your writing because there is no need to face it alone. Writing, much like surviving a slasher, is a collaborative process—oftentimes taking much more planning and effort to overcome than previously thought possible. But we are here, and we know the Shape just as you do.

This all makes it seem so horrifying, and perhaps this analogy might scare you away from ever writing again. However, dear reader, if you are anything like me, then you will understand that pit in your stomach when you start to write something new. The Shape looming oppressively near you, watching from the corner and remaining masked and hidden from view. Yet, you must remember to always carry the will of Laurie Strode inside you. Clutch tightly to that knitting needle, cower for a moment if you need to, but in the end we all must face the Shape, and more often than not, we win in the end.

Happy Halloween, and happy writing!

Halloween. Directed by John Carpenter, Compass International Pictures, 1978.

Put Your Heart in It: Creative Writing’s Place in an Academic Space

Liz Soule, Assistant director

After a two-year break from creative writing, I stumbled my way back into it through fan fiction this past March. Although I would never judge another writer for finding inspiration in fan works, I confess feeling a bit ashamed by my own admission. Halfway through a 2,000 word story exploring a deeply emotional conflict between two characters that were not my own creation, I started to wonder: shouldn’t my time be taken up by more intellectual pursuits? I could have been reading for a class or starting a paper. Wasn’t this a waste of precious time and mental energy?

Whether you’re writing that crossover fanfic you’ve had percolating in your brain for the past six months or even something more traditional, I am sure that you, too, have wondered where your creative writing endeavors fit in within the grand scheme of your academic journey. In an academic culture that focuses so intently on making the grade, it is hard to see the benefits of any pursuit that does not result in some kind of marked increase in your GPA.

But if writing pedagogy tells us anything, it is that writing processes extend far beyond the context of one assignment, genre, or even discipline. Academic writing and creative writing doubtlessly have a symbiotic relationship. But what does this look like? How can we rationalize our continued pursuit of creative writing?

Hoping to learn more about this, I spoke with two of my colleagues at the University Writing Center, Maddy Decker and Andrew Messer. Maddy serves as the senior program assistant in the University Writing Center, and is pursuing an MFA in creative writing at Eastern Kentucky University. She also leads the creative writing group! Andrew is a writing consultant, and is pursuing an MA in English at the University of Louisville. Both are prolific creative writers! In brief interviews, I asked them how creative writing and academic writing have interacted for them.

For Andrew, writing creatively has revealed new ways to express himself across the board. “Creative writing helped me find a voice,” he explained. That voice carries through to his academic assignments, allowing him room to creatively approach essays and apply his unique style to many different kinds of writing. He intentionally practices this, developing creative ways to complete assignments each time he gets one.

Similarly, Maddy describes creative writing as granting her “a little bit more flexibility.” Like Andrew, she doesn’t feel locked into a particular formula when it comes to academic writing. Rather, the perspective she’s gleaned through creative writing gives her “a different idea of what forms academic writing can take.” She also brings her own stylistic flare to her academic work through the use of heightened figurative language.

Likewise, the two have found that academic writing can influence their creative processes. Andrew’s experiences with writing academically, particularly in composition courses, made him become much more aware of the role of audience in any piece of writing. “I became a lot more aware of the external audience and now try to be cognizant that people are going to read it and they need to understand,” he said. When it comes to creative writing, this means making what is implicit more explicit.

Speaking on the influence of academic courses in her creative writing, Maddy said: “They feed each other a lot.” She has used the material from courses, such as a forensic anthropology course, to create new content. Some of her current projects stem from past courses she took during her undergraduate career.

Andrew and Maddy aren’t alone in feeling this way. For me, I have found that creative writing helps me gain momentum. I put aside my perfectionism to write silly stories about characters, and it remains suspended as I transition into other activities. Starting an assignment is always a struggle for me, but when I begin with creative writing, I feel like the words fly out of my fingers and onto the page. And, perhaps more importantly, my experiences with creative writing have taught me to be open to revision. I know that I can (and should) write, rewrite, and rewrite again.

In closing out our interviews, I asked both Andrew and Maddy to share any words of wisdom they had for maintaining creative writing endeavors while in school. After all, even if you know the benefits of writing creatively, it can be hard to make the space for it.

Andrew recommended taking literature courses, if possible, because “you’ve gotta read for those courses, so you’re still expanding your repertoire.” He also shared a nugget of wisdom from his creative writing professors: “If you wanna write, then read!”

Maddy insisted that writers make time for creative writing, even if it’s in small ways. She advocated for writing whatever comes to you. “Having that interest stay alive is the priority. Just make sure your heart is still in it,” she said.

I hope that you find validation in what we’ve shared here today. Know that if you’re ever in doubt of the place your creative writing has within your process or program, here at the University Writing Center, we are happy to help you build those connections and find your flow.

Interested in writing creatively? Join us at the Creative Writing Group, led by Maddy! Meetings are held in person in the University Writing Center (Ekstrom 132) from 5:30 – 7pm on the following Mondays:

October 10th

November 14th

December 5th

For more information, please email us at writing@louisville.edu or call us at 502-852-2173.

Positive Vibrations

Tobias Lee, PhD Candidate and Writing Consultant

One of the things I love about working in the University Writing Center is the exposure I get to so much fascinating and important work. I’ve read about entrepreneurship among Rohingya refugees, the impact of sexual health on longevity, green building practices in sports venues, what Afrofuturism tells us about our history…. Pardon my childlike gushing, but it’s so cool! This is why I love academia. People are creating knowledge here! Aaaand that leads me to what I’ve been writing about. Yep, knowledge.

What, really, does it mean to create new knowledge? What is knowledge? Wait! Don’t go away yet! I promise, it’ll be interesting. I won’t put you to sleep. Well I might… but you’ve been needing to catch up on sleep, haven’t you? Knowledge… well, let’s begin with a bromide: they say “knowledge is power.” Get the knowledge, then you’ll have power. Go to school, learn some stuff, and now you’re Captain America. We all want to feel powerful. Nobody’s angling to be powerless. Well yes maybe but… But let’s think this through a bit. Power is the ability to do something, it’s potential. You learn some stuff to empower yourself to do things. But it won’t mean much if you don’t actually ever do. So it’s the doing that matters. You might “know” some things, but it’s what that does, it’s how that shapes your behavior and creates material effects in the world, that has any importance or value. You might know what the capital of Georgia is or how to juggle five balls, but unless and until that brings you glory at your local pub quiz or impresses everybody at the party including that certain someone, it’s uh, purely academic. It’s just information, neutral and inert, until its usage has material effects. And the imperfect predictability of these results and the results of those results and of everything is what elevates knowledge over information.

So maybe the phrase, “knowledge is power,” while pithy, doesn’t quite get us there. A focus on material effects, on application, urges us toward a different understanding of knowledge. I think Wanda Orlikowski (2002, 2006) gets it right when she talks about knowledge as practice. Ah. So it’s doing something. It’s in the doing. Knowing about car engines versus actually getting that car right there to run again. Knowing physics versus actually getting someone to the moon.

Orlikowski elaborates. “Know-how” is a capability generated through action. And this requires repeated actions. These sustain the “know-how” while also, of course, adapting it, improving it, expanding it, in some way changing it. So the idea that knowledge is some inert, stable thing or repository of things is an illusion. It looks that way because we keep repeating it. It’s a bit like how a movie looks real because our mind does that little trick of stitching all those individual images together into a fluid whole. Except in this case the individual images are events, actions, each very similar yet slightly different from the last. Or it’s like how an insect wing looks like it’s not moving but is actually flapping a zillion times a second. Just remember that the wing itself is not stable either. It’s also changing, growing, aging. Did you know that trees vibrate? Knowledge, then, is like a tree, always changing, or okay but really more accurately, knowledge, as practice, is change. There is nor was there ever no stable thing that then changes slightly. It’s always changing. Indeed, this is how we know change, and recognizing change is how we mark time, and for that matter, space. How you like them apples? But let’s not bite off more than we can chew in one blog post…

What does this mean for knowing how to write? That’s what you tuned in for, right? I thought knowing how to write was, basically, you know, learning some vocabulary and nailing down the grammatical rules. That would be nice. Then it’d be a simple matter of collect all twelve! Buy the Happy Meal, get the toy, put it on your shelf, repeat. Trade them with your friends. Trade them for money! But surely thou didst know that language changeth over time and space. Aye, ’tis ne’er so stable a thing as me lord thus willeth thou what okay nevermind. No it doesn’t work that way. The rules are mere conventions, and dig a little and you’ll find considerable disagreement about and variation even within those conventions. Word meanings are always changing (read the etymology of your favorite word on the OED or spend five minutes browsing the Urban Dictionary), sustained through practice and but also thereby always changing. This isn’t a movie, no nice tidy plots. Knowing how to write, like all knowing, is an “ongoing social accomplishment, constituted and reconstituted in everyday practice” (Orlikowski, 2002, p252).

So when you’re learning to write (or more accurately, when you’re writing), you’re participating in and contributing to the way things are (more accurately, appear to be) for a given context (or to be fancy, discourse community), such as your discipline. An interesting little thought exercise, no? It calls into question all sorts of things that we take for granted, and it’s massively inconvenient. It gums up the works. How do we know what’s right any more? Goodness me. But on the other hand and at the very least, it also means you should stop berating yourself, if indeed you were. That whole impostor syndrome. That anxiety. That feeling of inferiority. You can dial that back a bit. You’re not “bad at writing” and they are not always and everywhere good at it. You’re joining a community (such a nice-sounding word), and that community has a way of doing things. They’re a bit anxious to keep it that way ’cause it seems to work, to produce some desirable results. But it is nevertheless changing, a living thing, and it lives, in part, because of you.

References

Orlikowski, W. (2002). Knowing in practice: Enacting a collective capability in distributed organizing. Organization Science, 13(3), 249-273.

Orlikowski, W. (2006). Material knowing: The scaffolding of human knowledgeability. European Journal of Information Systems, 15, 460-466.

Navigating Burnout

Hi, my name is Eli and I am burnt out. I hear my alarm go off in the morning and I say “no”. My loved ones ask me how much work I have to do before the end of the semester and I say, “I’m not comfortable answering that question right now”. As much as I want to lay down right this very minute and take a big fat nap for five or six or seven days, that’s not really an option right now. Instead, I have to write. I like writing. I’m good at writing. As a general rule, writing brings me joy. At this moment in my life, writing has become a chore. My joy from and talent for writing are still there, but I’m having a hard time sifting through the stress and exhaustion from a particularly rough semester (both academically and personally) to find them. As much as I don’t want to write today, but I have to. It’s nonnegotiable. In the spirit of this, I thought I’d take this blogging opportunity to share three ways I try to manage my own burn out and get writing done even when I don’t feel like it:

Pace yourself with structured work time and break time.

When I’m staring down the barrel of a very homework-y day, I organize my time in 20- or 30-minute chunks. 20-30 minutes of reading for class, 20-30 minutes of reading for fun. 20-30 minutes of writing an outline, 20-30 minutes doodling. 20-30 minutes of writing a blog post for the University Writing Center website, 20-30 minutes of taking a walk. Pacing myself and strictly limiting both my work and break time helps me keep my energy up for the day. Also notice that I didn’t say anything about “20-30 minutes on Facebook reading about that person from high school’s really messy breakup” or “20-30 minutes of looking up ‘how long until they finish cloning that Wooly Mammoth they found in Siberia last year?””. I know that once I start goofing off on the internet, then all of the nice discipline I’ve observed throughout the day will go out the window and suddenly four hours will have elapsed, and I’ll still be texting my friends screenshots of articles quoting arrogant biologists claiming that we shouldn’t try to bring back prehistoric mammals with the caption “can you believe this chump?’” And then I will wonder where my day has gone and why I haven’t gotten anything done. Maybe you’re better than me and know how to use the internet in moderation when tasked with something you don’t have the energy to do. Or maybe you and I are more alike than either of us want to admit.

2. Establish physical boundaries between you and your work

Ah, “boundaries”. My second-favorite “b-word”. I don’t know about you, but I love a good boundary. Whether its boundaries with work, friends, or even the cashier at CVS who felt compelled to tell me about what life was like leading up to her most recent colonoscopy, I use boundaries to protect my (waning) energy and (frail) emotions a lot these days. Unfortunately, this this current cultural moment doesn’t really support my affection for boundaries. And that pesky plague we’ve all been surviving for almost 25 months has made the issue worse. Possibly the most effective boundary I have with work is determining where I do my work. I let myself work on the computer or read wherever I’m comfortable –in my office, in my yard, at a coffee shop, even on the couch if that’s what I need that day— while also establishing a few spaces as “no work zones”. My bedroom is one of those places. By making my room a “rest only” area, it is easier for me to shift out of work mode and have more meaningful and effective rest. I know some folks don’t have the luxury of being able to spread out enough to make their entire bedroom a “no work zone”, and when I was in that position as an undergraduate, I made my bed the “no work zone”. Even in a cramped dorm room, I made these boundaries work by dropping $30 on trampoline chair that I could fold up and slide into a corner when not in use. Separating work spaces from break spaces is a trick I have employed since I was in high school and it has helped me to make the most out of my rest, even when I am not getting very much of it.

3. Let yourself be kind of a smart aleck

The other two tips are pretty general “navigate burnout” tips. This one is specifically for writing. Have you ever found yourself staring glassy-eyed at the blinking cursor of a blank Microsoft Word document wondering how the hell you are going to write a paper about an assigned reading that you absolutely despised? A reading that made your stomach spasm a little? A reading that made you question if learning how to read was even worth it? I know I’ve had plenty of those readings in my life as a student and they usually leave me with nothing nice to say. And in those cases, I let the bitterness out. I write the snarkiest intro paragraph I can muster. And by the time I have something vile written down, I’m not staring at a blank Word Document anymore and I’m able to proceed with the paper. Being a smart aleck during the preliminary writing stages doesn’t necessarily get you any closer to hitting your page count, but it will help you exorcise some of your frustration and can help you power through and get it done.

*Please note that your smart-aleck interludes should not be included in your final draft. Do not turn in something rude and unpleasant to your professor. It’s not cute and they are not paid enough to deal with that.

Burnout is a monster. It is also transient and won’t last forever. When I am at the very end of my rope, I like to remind myself (or, more often, let someone else remind me) that being in school is a blessing. An education is one of the few things in the world that nobody can take from you. It is an investment in yourself. This experience is stressful and overwhelming, and we are all so tired. And it’s manageable. Pace yourself, make you physical spaces work and rest-friendly, trust the process and don’t be afraid to indulge in some silliness along the way. Friendly reminder that you’re here for a reason, even if that reason isn’t clear yet. Read your readings, write your papers, and manage your burnout the best you can. I’m right there with you, and I’m rooting for you.