Habits of the Creative Mind is not another textbook. Instead, Habits of the Creative Mind is a series of guideposts taking your students off the beaten path of five paragraph essays and rote responses. Portable and flexibly arranged, it works beautifully alone or as a supplement to other materials. In this refreshingly conversational volume, your students will learn to trust and refine their own thinking and improve their writing—at all skill levels. They will have access to Richard E. Miller’s and Ann Jurecic’s much acclaimed, truly unique approach to posing and exploring questions, and facing complexity—in which there are no limits to how far a student may go with his or her thinking and writing. Instantly accessible and instantly flexible, all your students need to do is dive in anywhere in the book and be ready to try something new. And throughout, they will benefit from innovative, manageable exercises—which may be completed in any order—to help them along the way.
In the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing, the Council for Writing Program Administrators, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the National Writing Project all affirm the need to shift the emphasis in writing instruction to habits of mind. This book answers that call—and gives your students the tools they need to rise to the occasion.
Richard E. Miller has written and lectured extensively on how digital technology is transforming higher education. He is an award-winning teacher, an avid blogger, an amateur graphic novelist, and a poet.Ann Jurecic is the author of
Illness as Narrative, which examines how writers, both literary and amateur, have used writing to make meaning of illness, loss, and impermanence. Her academic work explores the intersection of writing studies, literary studies, and the medical humanities. Jurecic is also an award-winning teacher and she writes a column for the medical journal
The Lancet.Richard E. Miller and Ann Jurecic teach at Rutgers University.
Preface for Instructors
Orienting
On Habits of Mind: A Letter to Students and Other Readers
On the Origins of Habits of the Creative Mind: A Letter to Teachers
Beginning
On Unlearning
On Confronting the Unknown
On Joining the Conversation
Curiosity at Work: Rebecca Skloot’s Extra-Credit Assignment
Paying Attention
On Learning to See
On Looking and Looking Again
On Encountering Difficulty
Curiosity at Work: David Simon Pays Attention to the Disenfranchised
Asking Questions
On Asking Questions
On Writing to a Question
On Interviewing
Curiosity at Work: Michael Pollan Contemplates the Ethics of Eating Meat
Exploring
On Going Down the Rabbit Hole
On Creative Reading
On Imagining Others
On Motivation
Curiosity at Work: Donovan Hohn Follows the Toys
Connecting
On the Three Most Important Words in the English Language
On Writing by Formula
On Working with the Words of Others
Argument at Work: Michelle Alexander and the Power of Analogy
Reflecting
On the Miracle of Language
On Making Thought Visible
On Thinking Unthinkable Thoughts
Reflection at Work: Harriet McBryde Johnson and the "Undeniable Reality of Disabled Lives Well Lived"
Making Space and Time
On Creative Places
On a Screen of One’s Own
On Solitude
Curiosity at Work: Alan Lightman and the Mind-Bending Multiverse
Practicing On Seeing as a Writer
On Reading as a Writer
On Self-Curation
Creativity at Work: Twyla Tharp and the Paradox of Habitual Creativity
Planning and Replanning On Structure
On Revising
On Learning from Failure
Curiosity at Work: Alison Bechdel and the Layered Complexity of the Graphic Narrative
Arguing On Argument as Journey
On the Theater of the Mind
On Curiosity at Work in the Academy
Argument at Work: Sonia Sotomayor and Principled Openness
Diverging On Writing’s Magical Powers
On Laughter
On Playing with Conventions
Creativity at Work: James McBride’s Serious Humor
Readings Ta-Nehisi Coates,
Fear of a Black President
Jill Lepore,
The Last Amazon: Wonder Woman Returns
Susan Sontag,
Looking at War Index
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