How often have you heard that "writing can't be taught"? Well it's not true! Writing can be taught, just like driving, construction, and cooking can be taught. Sure, there are some intangible elements that can't be passed through instruction, but for the most part, writing is a CRAFT, not magic. There ARE ways to learn to communicate more clearly, more expressively, and more efficiently. In class, together we'll work on discovering writing as a learnable craft.

I see writing as both a personal journey and a community-building activity. By this, I mean that one way to use writing is to explore yourself, to discover things within you that you didn't know about before. Writing can be therapeutic, and frightening, and a lot of fun. Writing can be like playing in the sandbox; writing can be a dark journey. Through writing, a writer can discover him or herself. That is one power of writing.

The other power is to connect people. In a society, writing is used to communicate. Language holds our world together, and mastering language allows us great power in the world. Basically said, writing connects people to one another, and to learn effective writing is to learn to be an effective citizen. Literacy is as much a civic obligation as voting and paying taxes. You don't have to be a novelist, or a poet, or a journalist to be a writer. You need to do just one thing: write.