Free Online College Courses

Want to take free online college courses?  More and more colleges and universities are offering their courses and lectures for free online.

You won't walk away from these classes with any college credit, but the knowledge is yours for the taking. For free.

Check out these sites for more info and course offerings:

Open Yale Course
Coursera
Open Culture

I've listened to some lecture from the Open Yale Courses, and they were very interesting.  I downloaded just the audio version of the lecture (many/most lectures are video recorded) and listened to them on my phone on my commute to and from work.

Short Stories in the Digital Age

It might be a good time to be a short story writer.

The New York Times published an article about the resurgence of short stories because they work so well on small, cellphone-sized digital screens.

Earlier this year, in an episode of Books & Beer, created by ePublish Unum, Doug Lance leads a conversation on digitally publishing short stories.  See video below.

My Favorite Art Journaling Books!

The art journaling books that got me started:



The new ones that keep me going:

The Kenyon Review Resources for Writers

The Kenyon Review's 2013 Short Fiction Contest is now open.

The Kenyon Review also offers a series of summer writing workshops:

• The Poetry Workshop
• The Creative Nonfiction Workshop
• The Fiction Workshop
• The Literary Hybrid/Book Arts Workshop
• The Novel Workshop
• The Young Writers Workshop
• Writers Workshop for Teachers of Middle and High School

Reading to Children Makes Them Smarter

To confirm what many of us already know, reading to children makes them smarter.

Galley Cat reports that Perspectives on Psychological Science published an article last month that touted interactive reading experiences for children because, based on recent research, “reading to a child in an interactive style raises his or her IQ by over 6 points.”

Interactive reading includes "teaching them how to ask open-ended questions, encourage their children to read, shadow their children’s interests, and so on." 

My mom and dad read to me almost every night.  That must be why I'm so smart. 

Writing = Pain or Pleasure?

“I would quit while you’re ahead. Really. It’s an awful field. Just torture. Awful. You write and you write, and you have to throw almost all of it away because it’s not any good. I would say just stop now. You don’t want to do this to yourself. That’s my advice to you.”

According to "Is Writing Torture?" by Avi Steinberg, established author Philip Roth said this to new novelist Julian Tepper just weeks before Roth announced his retirement.

Tepper published this anecdote with The Paris Review blog, and it caused a stir within the writing community. Roth paints a grim picture of life as a writer, but others, like Elizabeth Gilbert, argue it's a "fucking great" job.

So, writers, which is it?  Pain or pleasure?

As with most debates, I believe the answer falls in the grey area.

Currently Reading: Girl with Curious Hair

After spending all summer reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, I thought I'd had my fill of Wallace for the foreseeable future, but I found myself drawn to his multiple volumes of short stories and essays decorating my bookshelves.

I started reading Girl With Curious Hair, and as of now, I am only part way through the first short story which is about a 20-year-old lesbian who dominated on Jeopardy for hundreds of airings until her autistic brother was invited to the show and the producers rigged it with animal questions. Their mother had abandoned them on the side of the road when they were children - the girl was put in foster care and her brother was institutionalized.  The girl sent her Jeopardy earnings to finance her brother's stay in a group home facility.

The story line is interesting.  DFW's writing style is a little dense, but manageable.  I'm curious about the plot lines of the other stories in the collection.