- Is this a good time to remind ourselves from week one?: “good writing” is not merely good grammar and structure — it emerges, rather, from ongoing, rigorous, critical & reflective thinking, ideally with other people. Also, “good writing” makes something happen in the world.
- Trust this process: reading, thinking, discussing, brainstorming, deciding on a rhetorical purpose, drafting, revising, editing, revising again, proofreading
- Op-Eds and the Writing Center
- Daily reading as a way to build vocabulary
- Is it interesting to you that reading is both a solitary, individual act — you do it alone, really, in isolation — and a public, community, social act, in class?
- Do you think reading can be an act of composition, too?
- Article II, Section 2
Working with tone:
Let them preach pessimism. You emphasize a warm nationalism — a basic confidence that America is not going down in decline, that it is still the nation best positioned to dominate the 21st century, that confidence is a better guide than anger or fear.
Sanders and Trump have adopted emotional tones that are going to offend and exhaust people over time. Watching the G.O.P. South Carolina debate I got the impression that Trump’s exhaustion moment is at hand.
The candidate who has the audacity to change the emotional tone of this whole election will win the White House and have a shot at rebinding the civic fabric of this nation.
David Brooks: The Roosevelt Approach