Canned Goods

Welcome to Canned Goods at Blogsome. This is my third blog; the other two lasted a semester each. The second was a msn spaces blog that was part of a blogging assignment for the first-year comp course I taught in the fall: http://spaces.msn.com/members/burnteggs/. Nothing special, but I had lost verve for my first blog on blogger and wanted to be actively blogging with my students, so this blog was about “cool” stuff from my childhood. Being relatively new to the blogosphere, I’ve come to see that what makes blogs exciting for me as a reader of blogs is to see the conversations that take place, and I guess that is the reason why I wanted to start another blog–to have a place where I discuss things (school stuff: readings, papers, courses, research) that interest me, and, hopefully, it becomes a place where people interact.

For my students blogging this semester, I find it difficult to blog, maybe because I haven’t done it for very long. But I think it’s like any writing in that it requires you to make time for it. Professional writers often work on a set schedule. For instance, a couple years back I read the biography of Frank Herbert, and he got up early in the morning, hit the rowing machine, had a bit of toast, and got to work until lunch time. He was dedicated. It works the same for school and nonschool writing. Part of my lack of motivation often come from knowing that no one will see the writing; for instance, I started many a journal–private writing–but after a while I lost the verve. Like I said, perhaps this is because it wasn’t enough for me to be writing merely to myself, and I connect this to school writing. Often we are only writing for the teacher, for a grade. Sounds like fun! (insert sarcasm)

In order to make school writing interesting, I always pretend that I’m in conversation with the sources of my paper, but this semester, you’ll actually be in conversation with each other, the people behind your sources, and me. Further, having a blog means that you are potentially in conversation with people from all over. Last semster, one of my students blogged about an advert for a tanning salon, where the pic used was only the torso of the model–no head. The creator of the advert found her blog post and responded.

Part of writing (or composing/creating in any medium) seems to be this desire to communicate with others, to share with others, to build communities with others–much different from that paper I wrote in 7th grade about Vietnam: pick topic, find encyclopedia, change a few words of the text (it’s got to be my own words!), report info back to teacher for grade. Wash, rinse, repeat.

If you have looked at writing through the lens of the latter, I hope you’ll come to see writing (school and nonschool) throught the lens of the former. Blog away!