Wednesday, November 16

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 13. If you have not written a story post for this week yet, that means today is Story Day (storytelling OR story planning). I hope you will have fun with that! Here is a link to this week's assignments.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Project Stack. Yesterday I managed to reply to all the projects turned in before 3PM on Sunday, and today I will keep working on the projects that were turned in on Sunday. Meanwhile, you can check the stack to make sure I received your assignment.

Wednesday Style: Barney. Each Wednesday, I like to highlight a storytelling style you might want to play with, and today's suggestion is really three-styles-in-one as inspired by Barney of How I Met Your Mother. To see what I mean, take a look at Morghan's Indian Epics project this semester, Barney's Blog. She has three different Barney styles: Findings, Playbook, and Barney's Mail Sack. Especially if you are a fan of HIMYM, you might want to try a Barney style of your own this week!

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Wisdom. Wise words from Neil Gaiman: Start telling the stories that only you can tell — because there will always be better writers than you, there will always be smarter writers than you … but you are the only you.

Writing. I hope you are in the "I ROCK!" phase of the writing process today. :-)

Words from India. This has to be one of the most well known words from India in English: YOGA.

Featured Storybook. This project is from the Indian Epics class: Vpress.com: Blogging for Bad Guys. Even bad guys and gals — Kaikeyi, Ravana, Duryodhana and Karna — need to be part of a community, and so they use VPress to share their lives' ups and downs in their blogs.

Free Book Online: Stories from the Pentamerone of Giambattista Basile. See the Freebookapalooza blog for links and the table of contents. This is one of the earliest collections of fairy tales ever published; you can find out more about the Pentameron at Wikipedia.

Words of Wisdom: Today's saying is Every blade of grass gets its own drop of dew (a Scottish proverb). Find out more at the Proverb Lab. There is a beauty in small things!

Today's Video: The Making of Heal The World. You may remember when I shared Maati Baani's Heal the World cover, featuring young performers from around the world; well, here at last is the "making of" video telling the stories of those performers. It is very inspiring:

Growth Mindset: Today's growth mindset cat is ready to make things happen. You can find out more at the Growth Mindset blog.

Event on Campus: If you see this on Wednesday morning, head on over to the Writing Center and get "Waffles for Writers" from 9AM - 11AM (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

November 16: Alan Watts. Today marks the death in the year 1973 of Alan Watts, a Buddhist teacher, speaker, and writer who was a tremendous influence in the spread of Buddhist ideas in the West. You can read more at Wikipedia, and in his memory, I am glad to share this lovely video: Life From Above, and Beyond.

Check out the Twitter stream for information and fun stuff during the day, or click here for past announcements.