Writing

For almost as long as I've been writing myself, I've been collecting what other writers have had to say about their craft. Some of their most affecting and useful comments are available on my Writers on Writing Page. They come mostly from my own reading, not from other people's quotation collections. These are the best of them, the thoughts I go back to at regularly intervals.

The last couple of years of my library career, back in the mid-1990s (when, I suppose, they didn't quite know what to do with me), I became heavily involved in helping to set up the Main Library's new public computer and online access center. This meant training a lot of middle-aged librarians with minimal experience on the Internet -- and often not a lot of interest in it, either -- so they could help the patrons get started online. (Though not the teenagers, of course. . . .)
So I did a lot of stand-up instruction, wrote a lot of manuals and policy statements, and answered a lot of questions from my colleagues. One of the things I wrote as a hand-out to my classes was "Netiquette: Basic Guidelines for Net Behavior," which seemed to be well received. I recently re-read it and it seems to have held up pretty well after seven years or so. None of the thoughts behind what I have to say in it are at all original, naturally, but it makes a compact package for the online novice.

Most writers have adopted some sort of routine exercise to get themselves started. This collection of Wake-Up Writing is mine.

Okay, I admit it: I've actually attempted the writing of poetry. So take a look at my Poetry Page and decide for yourself if I should have have kept this peculiar practice a secret!

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Please direct comments and inquiries to: Michael K. Smith