Monday, September 28, 2009

BU's Lou Ureneck on teaching writing

In today's Globe, the chairman of BU Journalism Department, Lou Ureneck, offers his thoughts on teaching and writing  He's also the author of the well-recieved memoir, “Backcast: Fatherhood, Fly-fishing, and a River Journey Through the Heart of Alaska."

As someone who teaches his future students how to write a clean sentence and the difference between its and it's, I appreciate this. (I'm in room 215 in an hour if he wants too see how it's done in his building.)

Looking back, I can see that the class writing exercises were miniature studies in description, exposition, and narration. I discovered in the class that writing was something that I could learn, its mysteries could be unlocked through an understanding of technique and that I thoroughly enjoyed the task of making sentences that snatched and then conveyed the ideas, feelings, and images that were slopping around inside of me like water in a bucket.

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