With the promise of sunny skies, soft breezes, and warm weather on the horizon, it’s safe to say winter is finally in our rear-view. Yes, the period of hibernation is coming to a close as people are trading in their cozy sweats for swimsuits and hot cocoa for popsicles. The new season marks the time for change and the possibilities are endless.
Spring is here. The birds are singing, the snow has melted, and flowers are poking up through the dirt, both where they are expected and where they are not. At the beginning of winter term, I wrote a blog post on freewriting with a focus on my notebook as an agent of the writing process. I’d like to come back to this general topic, but from a slightly different perspective: spring.
Picture this. The year is 2018 and you’re walking up the stairs to the second floor of South Campus Hall. You grab some food from Southside Marketplace and head over to sit in Velocity. That’s when you see it…
A wall - full of colours and messages.
You ask yourself, “what is all this?...”
Remember when you were little and just learning how to write? Just writing your name was a huge accomplishment. Yet with practice, it became much easier. The brain is not a muscle; although, in some ways it develops like one. The more you use it in a specific way, the more able it is to perform the task. So what is the brain actually doing while you write? The following are a number of brain areas that work together to form ideas and get them down on paper.
Frontal Lobe
Why is creativity so elusive? We see artists and poets and marvel agape at their powers of creation, but in truth creativity is a learned thing – a practice of insight and introspection. You too have the potential to produce art almost as good as the greats, if only you look in the right places. It doesn’t matter that no one’s listening.
April is national poetry month! It’s that time of year when we celebrate a genre of writing that most people either love or hate. For those of you who do not know me personally, I fall firmly in the “love” category and spend a decent amount of my free time writing in this genre.
Punctuation marks. We use them to form our sentences, to turn our incoherent thoughts into organized prose. But what if these signs and symbols had minds of their own?
When I stepped into my role as a Peer Tutor for the Writing and Communication Centre, I came to a profound realization.
Despite speaking English for most of my life, there is still so much I don’t know.
Have you ever looked at a finished piece of writing and wondered how someone could ever write something that amazing? Have you ever looked at one of your own first drafts and wondered how it could ever be something worth reading? If you answered yes to either of these questions, then this is the blog post for you.