Missed a day already. Forming a new habit is tricky. Try, try again.
I've been writing, writing, writing a lot nevertheless, mostly syllabi for my classes, those good faith statements of intent we share each semester.

I have spoken about this issue before in conferences and such, but it struck me this morning, especially, as I pasted in my standard policy on plagiarism, just how much of our syllabi are, in fact, plagiarized. Boilerplate language required from the college; course description cribbed from the official one; bits borrowed from colleagues who said it better than I....I wonder if I can, at this point, correctly identify what language is 100% my own, which paraphrased, which stolen (often with permission, but still). I'm not alone in this: stitching together syllabi in this way is standard practice for teachers.

Let me remember this when I discuss attribution and plagiarism with students. We composition teachers sometime make the error of discussing standards of plagiarism in monolithic terms, when in truth they are contextual. I think tomorrow (maybe a good way to procrastinate my other work) I will annotate one of my syllabi, note what is mine, what is not, and attribute where I can. Might be revealing.

I've been debating for sometime what to do with this blog space. I used to write on a blog with my dear colleague, Mysti Rudd, a weird side-by-side writing space we called Mirror Prose, swallowed up by a server accident. Before that, long before that, in the wild first days of Web 2.0, I had a Live Journal. Just did a search and was pleasantly surprised to find that site still exists, though my corner of it has met oblivion. I haven't kept a blog up in some time time, though.

Today, none other than the wild-bearded, brilliant Warren Ellis inspired me to begin again. I subscribe to his newsletter (and if you enjoy the weird ramblings of the uber-creative, you should too). In it, he frequently posts to his own blog-like-thing, Morning, Computer. He makes himself write a bit each morning, freestyle. Today, reading it reminded me that my little Live Journal was called "Never a Day Without a Line."

So, while I'd love to eventually makes this space dedicated to a specific purpose, be organized and professional and impressive, in the meantime, it'll be my own version of Mr. Ellis's experiment: Morning, Laptop. I'm just going to write a bit each morning, over my bowl of coffee. We'll see where it leads me.