RU Writing?

This week, interns Emily, Diana, Anngie, and Laini talk about the things that draw people to writing as a hobby and profession. This episode includes information on the different professions that you can pursue with a Writing Arts major as well as the positive and negative sides of being a writer. 

Emily - 7 Essential Skills for Writers (That Aren’t Writing), 7 Reasons Why Writers Write, and You Should Too

Diana - 24 Awesome Jobs for Writers That Offer Real Opportunities, 7 Reasons Why Writing is the Best Job in the World

Anngie - When Did You Realize You Wanted to Be a Writer?, Discussion: When Did You Know You Wanted to Be a Writer?

Laini - 15 Compelling Reasons to be a Writer, 15 Famous Authors on Why They Write

For the first podcast of the semester, Anngie, Diana, Emily, and Laini explore the good, the bad, and the ugly of tropes. Do tropes make writing inherently bad? Are there good tropes? Can we redeem exhausted ones? Let's talk about it!

Anngie: Book Tropes We’d Like to See Die, Tropes and Clichés in Writing

Diana: 5 Book Tropes That Need To Die, 5 Exhausted Movie Tropes that Need to Die, We've Outgrown the Ugly Duckling Transformation

Emily: Are Tropes Always Bad?, The Good, The Bad & The Overdone: Tropes in fiction

Laini: 9 Common Character Tropes and Tips for Avoiding Them, How Writers Can Reimagine Common Storytelling Tropes

In this episode, the Writing Arts Interns, Marissa, Tara, and Laini discuss the process of writing a novel for the first time. From the many emotions faced to the shared experience of creating, they offer honest insight on the difficulties of taking on such a large project.

Marissa - How To Write Your First Novel, How to Write Your First Book 

Tara - How to Start Writing a Book: A Peek Inside One Writer’s Process, 8 Novel Writing Tips for Beginners, First Drafts Suck 

Laini - How to write a first novel: 10 Do’s and Don’ts, Know thyself… by writing your first novel

In this episode, interns Marissa, Laini, and Tara talk to Professor Mikulski about writing comedy. They talk about cancel culture, sexism in comedy, and the differences between conservative and liberal comedy. 

Marissa - Cancel Culture Is Not Real-- At Least Not In The Way We Think It Is , Grappling Not Only With Louis CK But Sexism and Its Power in Comedy , andWaiting for the Conservative John Stewart

Laini - When It Comes to Comedians, Where Is The Line? 

Tara -Gender and Genre: What It Takes to be Funny and Cancel Culture Isn't Canceling Comedy, Its Improving It

In this episode, Interns Marissa, Tara and Laini discuss common writing myths and myths about writers. Are they completely made up, or is there some truth to them?

Marissa- 14 Myths About Writing , 13 Myths About Writing

Laini-The Glamorous and Unattainable Writing Life: 6 Common Misconceptions About Being  a Writer,4 Myths Keeping You From Being An Amazing Writer

Tara-  Ten Myths About Writing , The Seven Writing Myths

This week, interns Marissa, Matt, Tara, and Connor speak with their guest, Megan Atwood, about marketing yourself as a writer. The episode includes information on how to get started and what marketing strategies you should peruse. Special thanks to Professor Atwood (and her cat!) for joining us today! 

Marissa: 7 of the Most Effective Ways to Market Yourself Successfully

Matt: Shameless Self-Promotion (for Writers)

Tara: Marketing Basics for Writers (Video)

Connor: 4 Ways to Market Yourself as an Author and Writer

This week, Matt, Tara, Connor, Marissa, and student guest Elizabeth Mosolovich, discuss the practice of balancing school and creative project. Each bring their own perspective and strategies to balancing their lives. 

Articles: 

Tara: How to balance full-time work with creative projects

Marissa:School-Life Balance, How To Balance Your Creative Passion With Your College Workload

Connor:The Lazy Manifesto: Do Less. Then, Do Even Less. Manipulate Time With These Powerful 20 Time Management Tips

Matt:9 Tips for Maintaining Your Creative Passion When You Have A 9-To-5 Job, How to balance your creative projects with your day job

This week, Marissa, Connor, and Tara discuss writing strategies that help them in their studies and passion projects! 

Tara:12 habits from successful writers

Marissa -7 Useful Tips for Establishing a Routine

Matt -8 Steps to a Writing Habit

Connor:15 Writing Habits for Author Success,Integrity: Without it Nothing Works

The dreaded writer's block! How do we experience writer's block, and what are some strategies to combat it? And, maybe more importantly, is it real? This week, Connor, Tara, Matt, and Marissa kick the semester off figuring it out!  

Podcast Articles we read

This week, Morgan, Matt, and Connor invite Dr. Jason Luther to discuss the question, is print dead? Dr. Luther teaches Self Publishing; Methods of Analysis and Evaluating Writing; Writing, Research, and Technology; and Introduction to Writing Arts. His research focuses on DIY culture, publishing, publics, and sound writing. Jason has presented at several national conferences and has recently co-edited both a special issue of Community Literacy Journal and the 2017 edition of The Best of the Journals in Rhetoric and Composition. His work and expertise within both digital and print mediums made him a great guest to have for this episode. We hope you enjoy! 

This week, Connor, Morgan, and Matt discuss the world of multimodality! Is there such a thing as a "monomodal" text? How does the Rowan Writing Arts Department teach multimodality? Listen in to find out! 

Here are the resources we used to frame our discussion:

Why We Should Study Multimodal Language

All Writing is Multimodal

Graphic Novels and Multimodal Literacy: A High School Study withAmerican Born Chinese

Earlier this semester, Connor Buckmaster got a chance to talk with Heather Lanier, a new faculty member here in the Rowan Writing Arts Department. Dr. Lanier is the author of Teaching in the Terrordome: Two Years in West Baltimore with Teach For America, and two award-winning poetry chapbooks: Heart-Shaped Bed in Hiroshima (Standing Rock, 2015), and The Story You Tell Yourself (Kent State U, 2012), winner of the Wick Poetry Open Chapbook Competition. Her work has been noted in The Best American Essays Series and The Pushcart Anthology Series. She has published poems and essays in many places, including Salon, The Sun, Vela Magazine, The Southern Review, The Threepenny Review, and more. She has a forthcoming book about raising her daughter with a rare chromosomal syndrome, set to be released in the summer of 2020. 

Connor, Morgan, and Matt dive into the praise and doubts surrounding graphic novels in academia as they try to answer the big question: are graphic novels literature?