Prof. Torg talks with comedy writer and producer Dan Abrams whose current project is a mockumentary called False Profit. The discussion ranges from improv writing techniques to indie film financing and distribution. Dan and William Torgerson also discuss Vimeo, YouTube, and Kickstarter.

Three of the writers I work with at St. John's joined me to discuss their own internet reading and writing habits within the context of the literacy autobiography they were writing and Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.

Dr. Lee Skallerup has a PhD in Comparative Literature, teaches composition, and talks about the craft of writing and the freedom that comes with being off the tenure track.  She's the cofounder of an academic TweetChat that brings together writing teachers through the hashtag #FYCCHAT.  She talks about how blogging and online engagement has helped her to think about her teaching pedagogy. 

Horace Dediu has an MBA from Harvard and an MS Engineering Degree from Tufts.  He studies the problems of business through an intense analysis of Apple and their competitors.  I became aware of Horace when he was a guest on the Mac Power Users podcast.  I also listen to Horace's podcast, The Critical Path.  In this episode, Horace discusses his writing process for what became known as the "Big Mac Index" post.  

I was joined by my colleagues Carmen Kynard and Roseanne Gatto so that we could discuss our reading of Adam J. Banks' Digital Griots:  African American Rhetoric in a Multimedia Age. My related blog post can be found here.  Digital Griots is a call to action for every teacher who isn't working to enable students  to enter into the digital space in a meaningful way.  This is a text that connects the role of an African griot storyteller to the leadership role of the modern day DJ.

College writers talk about the craft of writing as related to their English composition course. 

In this weeks' installment we're going to look at the ways in which writers can tell a story to open a piece of writing.

This week’s experiment asks you to open your text by orienting your readers to a specific place.  Because most of the comments I’ve received come from those working on blog posts, essays, or short stories, I’m giving examples from those sorts of texts.

Whether you're looking for future blog posts, a topic for a short story, or perhaps wanting to help others or yourself into a meaningful research topic, I believe that working with these prompts will provide you with something new to think about.  I also find the writing territories as a useful conversational tool that I use with students in individual writing conferences.

Directions:  Respond to the following prompts to create your writing territories.  Perhaps you want to copy and paste these prompts into your blog and post your responses.  If you use the activity, drop me a line at TheTorg.Wordpress.Com