Ordinary Horrors: A Blog - Lowell Mick White

My Second-Greatest Teaching Innovation...

2/24/2018

…is just a collection of PowerPoint slides.

Years ago I was teaching a section of the American lit survey, Colonial through Civil War, and I found myself facing a really common problem: that when at the end of class I said, “Okay, for next time—” and before I could say “we’ll be reading Emerson" or whatever, the room would be filled with the sudden thunder of Young Scholars getting ready to flee—closing their books and laptops, sticking things into their backpacks, moving their desks, talking…and no one—not even me!—could hear the detail of my reminder of the next reading assignment. It really is common—I remember this happening back in my long-ago undergrad days, too.

It was very annoying. But what to do?

I began talking about the assignments at the beginning of class. “Okay, today we’re reading Emerson. On Wednesday you’ll be happy to know that we’re not reading Emerson—we’re reading Whitman.” (I had a lot of sad Emerson-haters in that class).

The oral announcement at the beginning of class worked better at the beginning of class than at the end. But then I had my brilliant innovative idea—put the schedule on slides!

So I did, and it works great. I’ve been doing this now for about six years or so.

But no one ever really acknowledged the greatness until this week, when a Young Scholar said, “I really like your slides.”

Damn. That’s just about the nicest thing anyone has ever said to/about me.

So now I’m sharing my brilliant innovation with the world. Below are the slides for my current ENGL 345 class, “Writers’ Studies: Prose.” I post the previous week, the current week, and the coming weeks, along with anything else the scholars need to know….

(I just noticed a typo on the slide for the 26th--but that just adds to the authenticity of my presentation, no?)

What the Scholars Write About II

1/13/2018

Tropes Themes Things Stuff

I continue to keep a record of what the young writers in my creative writing classes write about. I started this about two years ago and I've found it to be enlightening and fun and sometimes moving. Of course there are some things I'd like to see less of (depression stories and waking-up-at-the-beginning stories) and some I'd like to see more of (real places and jobs). The list is of course highly subjective--someone else reading these stories might come up with different categories. What I've learned since starting this project is that any trope/theme/thing can make for a good story--that the overall quality of a story derives from how it's told. In the end I love them all--good, bad, indifferent.

Based on @670 stories
(Listed as (ranking) (thing) (number of examples))

1          real place       118
2          student          79
3          love/misc      73
4          violence/misc           61
5          drugs/drinking        60
6          job      58
7          meet cute      52
8          cell phone      46
9          depression     39
10        driving           37
11         kids     36
12        kid focal         35
13        eating 33
14        memory         32
15        non-pet critters        31
16        sex/lust         31
17        texting           29
18        car wreck       28
19        weather         28
20       breakup         27
21        waking up      26
22        waking up/beginning          26
23        pet       24
24        cancer/illness/injury          23
25        grief    23
26        nature/outdoors      21
27        knocked on head/Pippen    20
28       friendship      19
29        death/self      17
30       religion          17
31        sports 17
32        death/parent 16
33        death/spouse-fiancé           16
34        light out for territories        16
35        murder          16
36        theft/robbery           15
37        dream 14
38       music 14
39        social media 14
40       death/misc   13
41        gltb     13
42        mental illness           13
43        sexual assault           13
44        aging 12
45        start with dialogue 12
46        abusive parent          11
47        death/child   11
48       death/sibling 11
49        divorce           11
50        ghost 11
51        war/military 11
52        infidelity        10
53        magic realism           10
54        death/friend 9
55        death/suicide           9
56        kidnapping    9
57        stalker            9
58        travel 9
59        vomit/feces/menses 9
60       farming/ranching    8
61        psycho            8
62        fantasy           7
63        computer       6
64        death/grandparent 6
65        games 6
66        generations   6
67        getting engaged        6
67        dystopia         5
69        jail      5
70        motherhood 5
71        politics           5
72        reading          5
73        secret family 5
74        tv         5
75        amnesia         4
76        bad date         4
77        immigrant     4
78        pregnancy      4
79        race/ethnicity           4
80       torture           4
81        western          4
82       abuse/misc   3
83       crime/misc   3
84       drowning       3
85        funeral           3
86       shopping        3
87        writing           3
88       abortion        2
89       art       2
90       birth   2
91        cadaver          2
92        fairy tale        2
93        homelessness           2
94        letters/correspondence      2
95        reincarnation           2
96        trains 2
97        coma 1
98       comedy/misc 1
99        critter POV    1
100     explorer         1
101      false identity 1
102      hospital          1
103      life change     1
104      parenting       1
105      psychic           1
106      revenge          1
107      science fiction           1
108     wedding         1

They Built a Wall Around Texas

10/17/2016

What My Students Write About: A List

9/24/2016

Tropes Themes Things Stuff

A pile of stories

At the end of Fall Semester 2015 I was reading student creative writing portfolios when I noticed a surge—a spate—of stories about young people getting engaged.

The stories were all pretty much the same—girl and guy out for dinner, then they take a walk around the neighborhood, and then the guy suddenly drops to his knees and offers the girl a ring, and the girl cries. The end. There were six of them out of one class.

I realized I had noticed similar spates of stories over the years, and so I was inspired to start keeping track of what I was reading. Just a simple list of whatever the writer appears to think is important to their story. And—I love it. All of it—all of the stuff my students write about, good or bad or whatever. Some of what I notice is thematic (boring engagment stories), and some of it is just stuff—things—that gets repeated in multiple stories. I’m aware that it’s a highly subjective list, that a different reader might well notice different things, or classify the things differently. Yet I just find the list fascinating and wonderful. I wish I had been keeping records like this for the past 15 years or so…..

Anyway—here is the list, based on approximately 251 stories my students have written this last year….

(Listed as (ranking): (thing) | (number of examples))

1: real place | 88
2: student | 56
3: love/misc | 52
4: drugs/drinking | 49
5: violence/misc | 44
6: cell phone | 35
7: meet cute | 32
8: job | 31
9: driving | 30
10: eating | 29
11: sex/lust | 28
12: kid focal | 27
13: texting | 27
14: depression | 26
15: weather |25
16: waking up | 24
17: non-pet critters | 24
18: car wreck | 22
19: kids | 22
20: waking up/beginning | 22
21: memory | 18
22: grief | 16
23: pet | 14
24: social media |14
25: breakup | 14
26: death/parent | 12
27: dream | 12
28: music | 12
29: friendship | 11
30: murder | 11
31: death/misc | 11
32: death/self | 10
33: ghost | 10
34: religion | 10
35: war/military 10
36: gltbq | 10
37: light out for territories | 10
38: nature | 10
39: cancer/illness/injury | 9
40: sexual assault | 9
41: sports | 9
42: start with dialogue | 9
43: knocked on head/Pippen | 8
44: death/spouse-fiancé | 8
45: divorce | 8
46: death/child | 7
47: magic realism | 7
48: psycho | 7
49: stalker |7
50: aging | 7
51: games | 6
52: kidnapping | 6
53: mental illness | 6
54: death/friend | 5
55: death/grandparent | 5

56: getting engaged | 5
57: reading | 5
58: tv | 5
59: theft/robbery | 5
60: computer | 4
61: death/sibling | 4
62: death/suicide | 4
63: fantasy | 4
64: vomit | 4
65: farming/ranching | 4
66: amnesia | 3
67: jail | 3
68: infidelity | 3
69: motherhood | 3
70: cadaver | 2
71: jewel thieves | 2
72: politics | 2
73: pregnancy | 2
74: race/ethnicity | 2
75: shopping | 2
76: western | 2
77: travel | 2
78: writing | 2
79: visual art | 1
80: birth | 1
81: coma | 1
82: drowning | 1
83: dystopia | 1
84: fairy tale | 1
85: funeral | 1
86: psychic | 1
87: reincarnation | 1
88: torture | 1
89: trains | 1
90: homelessness |1
91: generations | 1

Student Engagement

1/16/2016

I had terrific students in all four classes last fall--enthusiastic, lively, smart, and hard-working. Here are a few photos I took over the course of the semester....

Don't you wish you were in one of my classes?

A Passage from My CW Syllabus

8/6/2014

Very early in the semester students become aware that I usually begin almost every class by saying something like:

“So—what’s going on today?”

I ask this question with the hope that a student will speak up and tell me something they have done since class last met. Maybe the student will have had an adventure—gotten arrested or fallen in love—or maybe they will have done something as mundane as taking out the trash. If no one volunteers a story I’ll usually ramble on with a story or three of my own.

Every semester there is a student or two who are very annoyed by this in-class storytelling. They really do get mad! I can see it in their eye-rolling in-class faces and I can really see it in their end-of-the-semester class evaluations.

I find their annoyance both amusing and sad.

I find it amusing because these students are apparently unaware that the class will last a mere 50 minutes no matter how many stories get told.

I find it sad because these students are apparently unaware that stories are at the very heart of what we do in class. Whether through poetry or prose, this class is devoted to increasing our individual and collective understanding of the world we live in. And stories are one of the most important ways we gain this understanding.

Remember this at all times: You have a voice. Your voice is unique. No one knows the stories you know.

Time is limited. Time is running out. Someday, sadly, you will be dead and your untold stories will die with you.

So: seize every chance you get to tell your story....

My Publisher Asks Me Questions

6/26/2014

Interview with Slough Press….

SP: Let’s start at the beginning—before the beginning of the book, actually, to the dedication.

LMW: Sure

The book’s dedicated to your parents. How come?

Professed is a novel about higher education, and it was my parents who introduced me to this world. They were teachers, first in high schools, then in universities. I was conceived in Morgantown when my dad was in grad school at West Virginia University. I grew up in college towns in West Virginia and Nebraska and Minnesota and Texas. Actually, I’ve lived in college towns all my life.

Growing up in the Ivory Tower…

I don’t know about that. Few things annoy me more—or anger me more—than some idiot calling the non-academic world “the real world.”

All worlds are real worlds….

My parents got up every morning and went to work. They voted, they paid taxes. I do the same. Every academic I know does the same. Anybody who says that’s not the real world needs to be punched in the nose.

Maybe people look down on academics because they deal with ideas instead of—I don’t know, pipe fittings, or whatever….

Maybe. Though pipe fittings are based on ideas, too….

And books are objects….

Objects with a variety of meanings. The characters in Professed all get into academia because they love books—they love reading, they love the meanings that books contain, the meaning that books bring to their lives.

But there’s more to the academic world than books.

Of course. Academics work hard. There’s sadly little time for recreational reading. Anyone who teaches at a university is under tremendous pressure—pressure from students, from administrators, from colleagues, from the calendar, from their own idealized teaching self…and the university itself is under tremendous pressure from the contemporary culture at large, from the economy, from the politics. The business of education in the end has little to do with learning and a lot to do with business—and that’s not a good thing for professors or students.

Professed is set at a large unnamed university in Austin, Texas. Your other books are set in Austin, too.

I lived in Austin for a long, long time—I’m haunted by the place, perhaps. The delirious rate of change is sort of a constant—the old golden past is supplanted by a new golden past which is soon forgotten and replaced by another newer golden past, and meanwhile there’s this new new new city rising up around us and stretching out ahead into the future, and this new city is getting—newer. Bigger. Blander. Richer. Stranger. It’s interesting process to watch and to write about.

Your previous novel, That Demon Life, had a protagonist who was trying to isolate herself from the world around her. The characters in Professed are trying very hard to become part of the larger world.

And that world—the world of higher education—is pushing them away, right? In That Demon Life, Linda Smallwood wants to stay at home and watch TV, and her friends—I guess they’re her friends—keep dragging her out of the house and into extreme and ridiculous situations. The three main characters in Professed are forced by the university, by their desires to be a part of the university, into extreme and ridiculous situations—which makes sense, since higher education is itself extreme and ridiculous. And for a lot of people it’s tragic, too, a lot of the time.

But Professed seems to close on a hopeful note….

For an individual or two, sure. There’s always hope. That’s why we teach—that’s why I teach, at least. Education will find a way! We want to believe that. But I also think that if you look close enough, you’ll see that universities are full of broken dreams. And when I look at those broken dreams I find stories....

ABWW14: Total Success

6/4/2014

Seadrift was wonderful, the writers who participated were terrific--superlatives everywhere! I love the intensity and cameraderie of events like this, places where words and ideas flow together and become something new....

And we'll do it again next year. ABWW15--in New Orleans....

Alamo Bay Writers' Workshop!

5/27/2014

It's coming: Alamo Bay 2014, in Seadrift, Texas. May 30-June1, featuring instructors environmental activist/memoirist Diane Wilson, poet Lee Meitzen Grue, and myself.

There is still time to register: http://www.alamobaywritersworkshop.com

It's going to be a great event. I'll be talking about place, and how it affects writers and writing. Come to Seadrift and hang out with us!

Why I am a Writer

11/2/2013

A couple of years ago a guy who said he was from the Harris County Public Library contacted me and said he was asking various Texas writers to make short videos explain why they—we—write. So I agreed to make one….

It was the summer of 2011, in the middle of an eye-poppingly hot heatwave, day after day—weeks!—of temps over 100 degrees. But one day, just as I was getting out of the class I was teaching at the prison, a storm was building up—the first rain in a long time, and the last rain for a long time—and when the big storm broke, I pulled off and parked and made the video.

I don’t know if the library guy ever made use of my little self-interview—I’ve never seen it on the library website. But I was looking for something else on my computer this week, and came across it, and decided to share it with the world….