A few former students are taking a communication class and asked if they could interview me about my time outside the U.S. I was thinking recently about the whole genre of interviews and what the website The Nervous Breakdown does with their author self-interviews. Thought I’d give one a shot. It is fun to […]

Why write if you aren’t going to do anything with it?

– Student’s question on William Stafford’s habit of exploratory writing

How do you know you’re not going to do anything with it? Some things you start, you might pick up years later. Writing is a piece of thinking. Do you “do something” with every thought […]

I listened, wrote it down, thought about it, and years later after writing about donkey basketball, I think I have the answer. The answer to this:

“What if you do your best and it don’t do nothing?”

– Kagman High School Senior 2010

It will do something. It is true, of course, that when […]