Welcome to English 70A and B! My name is Susan Schulter, and I am your instructor for this class. I’d like to use this first posting to introduce myself, and share a few thoughts on the writing process. As you log in to introduce yourselves, please feel free to share your own writing tips.

I have an MFA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. I have taught writing at the college level for the past sixteen years. From 1984-1987, I was Managing Editor for the Disabled Students Newsletter at San Jose State University. While working at San Jose State, I taught courses in Career, Technical and Creative Writing, and served four times as Managing Editor for the Career Writing Program newsletter: The Writing Life. My own publication efforts are modest, but a few of my poems have appeared in Range of Motion: An Anthology of Writing By Disabled Americans, Hard Row To Hoe: A Book Review Newsletter For Rural America, Albatross (a nature journal) and Forum: a creative arts publication of the California Community Colleges Academic Senate. My essay "Offending Phrases" appeared during the 1980s in the San Jose Studies Journal, and an excerpt from my novel Zyante’s Time was published in With Wings: An Anthology About And By Disabled Women, (Feminist Press, 1987). All of the aforementioned publications are anthologies, and my writing voice is but one of many within a community of voices. I am a strong advocate for anthologies, small presses, and the broadest definition possible for the word "publication." Sharing one’s writing with a friend is publication. So is reading your work aloud, posting it it on the Internet, or photocopying it for a workshop. Whenever we write to be read or heard by an audience of one, or an audience of a million, we are writing to publish. If we think of our writing as that which communicates, that which connects us with others, then we are according it its highest value. We are acknowledging our smallest, as well as our most momentous efforts. That said, there is no harm in endeavoring to reach as large an audience as possible, if that is one’s wish. Here are a few recommendations that have served me well as a writer. May they help you also as you embark on your writing journey in this course:

1. Establish a writing routine. Great flutists spend long hours practicing scales, and guide dogs are good leaders as a result of months of training followed by daily workouts with their blind handlers. The same discipline is necessary if you want to be a writer. Whether you set aside ten minutes a day to write, or two hours, be sure you make the time! When you read Burroway chapter 1, you’ll learn about finding the writing habits that work best for you. Think of your writing as a child, friendship, marriage, or animal companion. If you don’t feed it, nurture it, it will languish.

2. You must read well in order to write well. I can’t tell you how often I’ve talked with people who say they like to write poetry, but they never read it. We read to know what moves us. We read to know what kind of work we want to write. I find it helpful to keep an ongoing reader’s journal where I comment on what I read, sometimes briefly and sometimes at length.

3. Network. This means seeking support from and giving support to other writers. Our class provides us with a built in writing network. We are a support network, encouraging each other to keep writing. Other ways of networking include joining community writer’s workshops, participating in or attending public readings, taking classes, and publishing in anthologies.

4. Learn from everyone you read. Whenever I’m reading, I try to make a point of asking myself, "What has this writer done here that I’d like to be able to do in my own work?" Some times you’ll read a writer whose work does something you know you want to avoid doing in your own work. This is valuable too.

5. The small stuff matters. It is essential that any manuscript you submit to a publisher be polished, and free of errors! Even if you write the most riveting feminist detective thriller in the world, no editor, -and no casual reader either- will stick with your manuscript if it’s riddled with spelling, typographical, and grammatical errors. If you have a language, learning, or other disability that makes attending to these details more difficult, hire an editor when you reach the stage of sending out your work to a potential publisher. If, like many of us, you can’t afford an editor just now, ask a friend for help in exchange for doing something for her. My first written language is Braille, and Braille contains many shorthand symbols that for years interfered with my ability to spell. Speech technology and my own perseverance are helping me lick this problem, but I definitely sympathize with others who are also struggling with the nuts and bolts of the writing process. Let’s work on the small stuff together. Short writing exercises and responses to discussion topics don’t need to be all that polished, because in those writing situations, you are thinking aloud. But whenever you submit a piece of writing to the class workshop process, imagine that your classmates and your instructor are an editorial board at a magazine that is considering publishing your work. In this context, you will want to deliver as polished a product as you possibly can.

6. Know your audience. You wouldn’t show up for a job interview at a Fortune 500 company wearing your gardening duds, nor would you arrive in the community garden on Saturday morning decked out in a three-piece suit. Every piece of writing has its respective occasion, audience, purpose, and form. A story about a life-changing experience encountered while traveling in Israel will adopt a markedly different tone, prose style, voice, and structure than a poem about visiting the grave of a recently deceased friend. Furthermore, readers of the poem will have different expectations than readers of the story. Therefore, make it your business to know your audience, purpose, form, and occasion, and write to all four.

7. Be humble. No publication venue Should be beneath you. When submitting manuscripts, go ahead and send to big name magazines like The New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly. But don’t overlook small presses and magazines, school and business publications, community and special interest newsletters. Nor should it concern you initially if the only payment you receive for your writing effort is a copy of the document in which your work appears. What matters at first is building your portfolio, accumulating places where your work has appeared in print. Volunteer editing jobs are great ways to gain experience. I volunteered for two years as newsletter editor for the Nike AnimalRescue Foundation. I love animals, so this was easy enough to do. Perhaps you like reading the book reviews posted at Amazon.com. Did you know that amazon.com welcomes book reviews written by people like you? Where my own writing is concerned, I think of myself simultaneously as both an apprentice intern, and a professional. I take my work seriously, but I try to take myself with a grain of salt.

8. Don’t let any of the comments found here paralyze you into writer’s block. When you first embark upon a piece of writing, you don’t have to know who it is for, what it is, or what it wants to do. More than half the fun of writing lies in the attitude of mystery and discovery that it requires. So while you are a learner in this class, give yourself permission to wander, speculate, try new techniques and styles. Above all else, give yourself permission not to always know the answers. Even as you shape your writing, allow it to shape, teach, and reveal your life to you.