What Makes Good Writing Good?
To answer this question, let me hazard an analogy -- good writing is much like good food. Good writing tickles our senses the way good food does.
28 February 2020, 18:00 PM
On Writer’s Block
Fairly recently, I was working with two of my colleagues here in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to propose a panel for a conference in North America.
10 January 2020, 18:00 PM
Is Writing a Gift?
If it is, where is this gift coming from? God? Ahem! As off-putting as it might sound, biographies and autobiographies of writers reveal that most so-called gifted writers are scoundrels.
11 October 2019, 18:00 PM
Why Is Writing So Difficult to Accomplish?
Writing is a struggle for everyone. If it seems easy, a writer is not doing it right. Because writing is mired in myths and misunderstanding, most writers – aspiring writers, in particular – consider the essential difficulty in writing as a pathology. They feel
23 August 2019, 18:00 PM
On Writing in a Second Language
Writing entices me. But every time I get down to writing something, I feel like a bumbling idiot. Nothing emerges. Ideas evaporate. Thoughts tangle. Language languishes. My frustration mounts.
26 July 2019, 18:00 PM
On the Craft of Sentencing
I teach English at a private university in Dhaka, Bangladesh, having attended universities on three continents. I’m persuaded to think as such that I know what a university is and does. I wish I did! Joe Moran in First You Write a Sentence claims, “A university is a factory
14 June 2019, 18:00 PM
On Grammar in Writing
I always tell my students that I’m not their language nanny. I’m an educator, and I deal with content. Ironically, however, I blue-pencil as many errors–mostly grammatical–as I can while checking their assignments. Mangled grammar turns me off. That’s understandable. Writing initiates a verbal transaction
17 May 2019, 18:00 PM
On (Dis)connection between Reading and Writing
Back in 2005 in California, I was reading Edward Said’s Power, Politics, and Culture. This book is a collection of twenty-eight interviews
19 April 2019, 18:00 PM
Deconstructing Genre in Writing
Does a piece of writing have a sex? Not really! It perhaps has a gender, which in French is genre. When it comes to distinguishing one
1 March 2019, 18:00 PM