A Mediated Life

Today I have the pleasure of hosting Elisa Lorello, who is on a blog tour to promote her novel, Faking It. Welcome, Elisa!

Thank you, Susan, for hosting me on your blog. Readers, Susan and her husband Stacey were the first two people I met and befriended when I relocated to North Carolina three years ago; that friendship has been invaluable to me ever since. If I can be half the friend that each has been to me, then I’d say I’m in the win column.

I’m currently on a summer blog tour to promote my novel FAKING IT, a romantic comedy that takes place in New York. Thirty-something Andi, a professor of writing and rhetoric, meets Devin, a handsome male escort (“who apparently gets around the lecture circuit more than we do,” remarks Andi’s best friend Maggie), and proposes an unusual arrangement: lessons in what she knows in exchange for lessons in what he knows. And when they become friends (violating the contract that forbids them from doing so), complications ensue. I pitch it as *When Harry Met Sally* meets *Sex and the City*. But, with my rhet-comp colleagues and friends, I could just as easily pitch is as “When Harry Met Sally* meets *Inventing the University*.

FAKING IT is the perfect summer read. It’s witty, fun, yet also poignant at times. And it’s a must-read for anyone who teaches first-year writing, be it as a TA or a tenured professor. At the time that I wrote FAKING IT, I had read Richard Russo’s Straight Man and loved it because I could so easily relate to it. I imagined my readers being other composition teachers and grad students who would get a kick out of the conversations, or find themselves itching to jump in and say, “You could not be more wrong…” The words are just as much a part of the story as the character and setting. And the idea of a bunch of composition teachers actually using an escort’s services was positively hilarious. Besides, what other romantic comedy novel features Peter Elbow?!

It’s hard to believe that this September marks five years since getting my Masters Degree in Professional Writing from UMass-Dartmouth. I had such aspirations of being one of the rhetoric-composition superstars I’d spent those three years learning about, and find it interesting to see the path my life has taken in such a short time.

I wrote FAKING IT just as I completed my degree, and when I read it today I can’t help but laugh at Andi’s idealism as she teaches Devin about these landmark composition essays by Elbow and Bartholomae. That was my idealism, of course, all that stuff still fresh in my mind. I think it’s consistent with her character in many ways—she has a sort of naïve outlook on the world, the product of having grown up so sheltered. And yet, Andi took the career path I had set upon, and she surpassed my own successes. She’s a PhD, a textbook author, a writing program director, and a rising star in her field. As you’ll see in FAKING IT’s sequel, it isn’t long before the next wave of grad students and scholars are citing her. Career-wise, she’s got it all together, and she’s damn good at what she does.

Much of the rhetorical idealism in FAKING IT is also a parody of my own theoretical beliefs. Andi’s staunch opposition to the modes of discourse, for example, was a poke at my own grad school diatribe when, as a TA, I was confounded by what this whole freshman composition thing was really all about. As if this was the worst thing I’d ever have to encounter as a teacher!

But perhaps the happiest accident to come out of FAKING IT was that it is, in fact, a rather rhetorical novel. Andi and Devin are continually engaged in an ongoing dialectic in pursuit of truth, be it the truth of the text, the truth of the circumstance, or of their inner selves. And they expose each other’s truths by means of language to communicate and persuade. I just love the tagline that proceeds the story: “Prostitution is the oldest profession in the world. Rhetoric is the second oldest.” I used to quip this at conferences and even in classes, but the marriage of the two in FAKING IT worked wonderfully. Ultimately, FAKING IT makes you turn inward to what you believe, and for that I’m grateful.

FAKING IT is currently available on Lulu.com. It’s also available on Amazon Kindle for under two dollars (you can also download it to your iPhone or iPod Touch because “there’s an app for that”). Please buy a copy today!

My husband, Stacey Cochran, is on a 45-day blog tour to promote his new book, CLAWS. He graciously agreed to stop by my blog today to talk about developing a writing career. And his posting gives me a good reason to get back to blogging…

Amazon link to CLAWS

Thanks so much, Susan, for hosting me on your blog today. As you know I’m in the middle of a 45-day blog tour to promote the release of my new novel CLAWS. It’s been a fun couple of weeks while I’ve been on tour, and I’ve definitely learned a lot of interesting marketing ideas.

It’s been a fun few years since I first wrote this novel, and you’ve gotten to watch this project from its earliest few chapters, through the end of its first draft, to my work with the agent who shopped it around, to this final self-published version of the book.

I guess I’d like to focus today on the topic of the power of a spouse in helping to keep a creative person’s dream alive. I think looking back over the past five years, the general impression I have is how stable we’ve managed to be despite the lack of outward success with my writing.

It’s true that in the past two or three years things have started to take off, but I’m coming around to the realization of how important a long-range view on a writing career is… and how important the kind of security and stability we’ve managed to achieve is in working through the lean years.

It’s interesting because I think a marriage and a family is really built through trust and hard work. That is, a healthy relationship is one with trust and love and highs and lows and ultimately a commitment to one another that shows itself through the continual addition of good memory upon good memory. It’s like building a house or something.

And at the risk of comparing apples and oranges, you know a writing career is not that different. You put in your time, hard work, trust, love, compassion, and stick with it… and maybe trust that the career is what it should be. And at the same time continue to work on improving and getting better and growing and being open.

I’ve never thought about it this way, but a healthy relationship is a lot like a healthy growing writing career or business or non-profit organization. That is, fundamentally, it takes some of the same characteristics to make it work.

At any rate, that’s a little bit of reflection on two seemingly disparate things: a relationship and writing. I’d just like to say thanks so much for all your support these past few years. I see your love in Sam’s smile every day, and I feel it in my heart. I am extremely lucky to be spending my life with you.

Thanks, Susan, for hosting me today at your blog!

There are so many great web-based tools for teaching students argument and research, but I wanted to share two that I found via Alan Levine’s blog: aMap (short for “argument map”) and debategraph. Students can use these tools to visually map complex arguments–very useful for first-year writing classes!

I don’t think I’ve ever had an article written about anything I’ve done before. But, lo and behold, this morning Shelley and I made the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and–I guess–several other papers. Who would have thought that research in college writing classes would be interesting outside of the academy?

CCCC will be offering childcare for the first time at the convention in San Francisco. The deadline for registration for childcare is January 1st, and at this point nobody has registered yet.
The CCCC officers are concerned that if we don’t have much registration then we will have to withdraw childcare for the convention (and CCCC would still have to pay the down payment to the provider). Please spread the word to folks you think might be interested in this service. The Executive Committee is offering childcare on a pilot basis for this convention, and we’d like to make it as much of a success as possible. Our goal is to have about 20 children registered for each of the 3 days of the convention.

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for how to advertise this service best, and I’d be happy to pass these along to the EC.

Here is the information from the CCCC website:

“This year we are offering an on-site activity center for childcare, Camp CCCC, during the convention from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday through Saturday right in the Hilton Hotel. Children ages 6 months to 12 years old are welcome. The center, staffed by experienced CPR and Pediatric First Aid certified professionals, will provide age-appropriate entertaining and educational activities, including storytelling, hands-on crafts, games, the “Build It Zone,” and the “Boogie It Zone.” Infant care stations, rest areas, and “SecurChild®” photo check-in and check-out will ensure a safe, secure environment.”

You can register for half-day or full-day care.  Registration deadline is January 1, 2009.  To get more information about facilities and to register for childcare, go to www.accentoca.com/campcccc09

Thanks to Alan Levine, I found this weather forecast website, which really tells me all I need to know. Forget the pop-up ads and multiple clicks on weather.com. All I really want to know is whether it’s going to rain.

Here’s a great publishing opportunity, especially for those of you who are already in the middle of writing annotations for CRD 704 (hint, hint!)…

From: Gregory R Glau
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2008 3:25 PM
Subject: publication opportunity

Chitralekha Duttagupta and I are working on the 3rd edition of the BEDFORD BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR TEACHERS OF BASIC WRITING, and we need folks to annotate the new entries.

We’ve pasted-in the url of available entries below. If you’re interested in annotating one or more of them, while we cannot pay you anything, Bedford/St. Martin’s will send you a copy of the text when it’s published, and we will owe you our debt of thanks!

Please note:

1/ you must have the essay(s) or book(s) you’d like to annotate in-hand; we cannot supply them to you

2/ annotations should follow the general form, style, and length of those in the 2nd edition (your local Bedford/St. Martin’s sales representative can supply you with a copy, if you don’t have one)

3/ annotations must be sent to us by email by November 17, 2008

If you’d like to annotate one or more of the items in the list below, please send your selection(s) to Greg at Gregory.glau@nau.edu. Please do NOT reply to the whole List. Please note that items in BOLD are available to annotate (as we assign entries, we’ll “unbold” those we assign, so you can always see what entries are still available:

http://oak.ucc.nau.edu/grg37/available.doc

It’d be useful if you can send Greg your “first three choices” (or however many) as we have to assign these first-come, first-served and your first choice might not be available by the time we get to your email. Please indicate if you’d like to do one out of the three, or two, etc. and we’ll do our best to accommodate you.

Many thanks,

Greg Glau
Northern Arizona University
Gregory.glau@nau.edu

Chitralekha Duttagupta
Utah Valley University
Chitralekha.Duttagupta@uvu.edu

I think I’ve figured out why I don’t prefer to read online. I like to read books and articles on paper. This week I’ve been reading a lot of online publications, and I’ve found that the problem for me is not the same as what I’ve heard a lot of teachers say when they protest the idea of designing a paperless classroom, posting readings online and responding to student writing on the screen instead of on paper. I don’t mind reading from the screen. It doesn’t hurt my eyes, and I actually prefer commenting on student writing on a computer than on paper. I type a lot faster than I write, and the older I get, the faster the hand cramps seem to start when I’m writing with a pen.

The problem for me with reading online is the DISTRACTION.

I guess I’m not as good at multi-tasking as I’d like to believe. This week I would start with The Horizon Report, but somehow end up in Facebook (yes, there really is a string of connections that can lead there).
Or I would open up an article, like Prensky’s Digital Natives piece, and wind up with five different tabs open, chatting with a friend while I’m trying to put a blog together and–yes–check Facebook at the same time.

Sometimes it feels like I can spend hours at my computer and get very little done. On the other hand, I might come away with several different ideas to follow up on. I guess online reading can be a kind of invention for me, but I always end up feeling like I need to chastise myself for not staying more focused.

But perhaps I’m missing the point.

I haven’t posted to my blog lately because I self-edit too much. I’ve started dozens of blog entries and then deleted them because I didn’t think that I had anything relevant to add to the blogosphere. Why clutter it up anymore than it already is? And then sometimes I wonder what others will think about what I have to say. Blogging and social networking can bring back tons of self-absorbed middle-school neuroses.

But seriously, why should I care? How many people really find one lonely little blog? And of those who do read it, does it matter whether or not they find what I write to be enlightening? That’s the beauty of the internet, isn’t it? We vote with our mouse. If we don’t like something, we go elsewhere.

This has made me wonder, though: How does blogging cause us to rethink what we write about, who we share it with, how we represent ourselves, and how others might perceive what they read? Why do people blog? What’s appropriate to blog about? Are there things that should just be kept private? But then there are private blogs for that, right? I guess I just don’t get the point of those. Perhaps someone else can help me understand?

In my graduate class, I require my students to keep blogs. But I can’t decide how I feel about the educational potential of blogging–is it inappropriate to coerce someone into blogging? Is there a unique potential learning experience that can only be found through blogging? Maybe I’m overthinking it. Or maybe I’m just too darn skeptical.