writing as innovation

Met with my junior faculty writing group this afternoon for a leisurely lunch and set up our schedule for the rest of the summer. Like blogging, meeting with a writing group builds a structure (and a generative one at that) in which to write. A strategy for overcoming the temptation to delay writing. Being part of a writing group, like blogging, affirms what we know about writing: that innovation happens when we engage the process.

After writing group, I read with interest (my old friend from Arizona) Bill Endres' "Communicative Strategies for Administrative Practices: Evaluating Weblogs, their Benefits, and Uses" in the new WPA journal. Bill spends much energy in the piece foregrounding this idea of innovation--an idea bouncing around my head after today's meeting. Writing about administrative sites, Bill touts blogs' potential for innovation, a potential that grows from the technology's "media richness" (drawing on O'Kane et al). "Media richness" facilitates feedback, the affective components of language use, articulating multiple cues at once, and, really, language use writ large. Bill next turns to work in the diffusion of innovation and what I found interesting here was the idea that so-called "innovators" are those that can "cope" with "uncertainty."

Again, all ideas that jive well with what we tell students about writing. It's all about discovery and that which we find to be generative. Writing innovates. Writing copes with the uncertain. Writing contends with and grows out of media richess.

Less than a week until I leave for the Writing Project. For the past three summers, teaching teachers in this writing-intensive environment has provided me a media-rich environment, a safe place to innovate. I put these four weeks into a category with blogs and writing groups because of their generative possibilities. I anticipate what I might learn, discover, develop...write.