Authentic Writing: John Warner | Episode 01

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." - Sylvia Plath If the purpose of writing is to do something bold and creative, does formal writing instruction typically used in schools help learners achieve this?

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

— Sylvia Plath

If the purpose of writing is to do something bold and creative, does formal writing instruction typically used in schools help learners achieve this? Well, actually, the purpose of formulaic writing is to help students pass mandated state writing assessments and I, for one, have never been inspired by any five-paragraph essay. 

So, how do we help students become writers with guts and imagination?

John Warner is a writer, speaker, teacher, and author of Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities. As a teacher of writing, he emphasizes the author’s voice and challenges his learners to break free of formulaic writing. He views writing as a tool to solve problems and calls his prompts “Writing Problems.”

In this episode of Beyond the Curriculum I have the pleasure to learn about how John helps students discover the writer within by moving students away from formulas and think beyond the curriculum.

Follow John:

• Twitter

• Website

Resources:

• John's Books on Amazon

• Creating Confident Writers: For High School, College, and Life

• Bad Ideas About Writing

• John’s Twitter Recommendations

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