how many of you in this room use words
online how many use Facebook Twitter
have a blog right most of us have our
hands up right we are all writers now
all of us and in many ways this is a
fabulous thing we’re hearing points of
view we didn’t hear in the past it’s
wildly Democratic and creative as
someone who was born before the Internet
I still love that I can pick myself up
on a Thursday afternoon by googling puns
and being entertained by the brilliance
of strangers but it’s also true it’s
also true that we’re immeasurably cruel
to one another online we mock each other
we call each other names we’re course
were uncivil and we’re often
dehumanizing in many ways this is
understandable I think it’s really easy
to forget when we’re putting our words
we’re publishing our words online that
there are human beings on the other end
of those words but we can’t because our
words matter
the ones we choose matter we have so
much power with the words we choose we
can make people feel things strongly we
can spur others to action a word can
feel like a punch in the face or it can
lift somebody out of depression with
this power to quote the great writer
Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben
with great power comes great
responsibility I’m here today to share a
little bit of my story with the hopes of
convincing you all that we are all
co-authors of our culture and that the
culture we tolerate online right now is
one that we do not need to tolerate we
have the power to change it
it’ll take taking our words seriously so
my story starts 20 years ago I was in a
Creative Writing Program studying
fiction as a graduate student and the
ethos of the program was tough love the
problem was that there was no
none and that the toughness often felt
like the internet feels today
mocking disdainful and condescending I
barely survived and so when I graduated
I felt passionate about trying to teach
creative writing differently I wanted to
stick with tough love actually but I
wanted tough to be honest rigorous
feedback and I wanted there to be a
whole lot more love and support and
cheerleader earliness among the group so
I put $400 on my credit card which was a
lot of money for me back then and I
created this flyer that I thought looked
really professional at the time although
it has not aged that well and I got on
my bike and I drove up and down Beacon
Street right here in Brookline
advertising to workshops under the name
of grub Street to my complete joy
surprise and slight panic eight people
eight brave souls took me up on this and
grub Street was born the first classes
were taught by me and a friend and we
had really thin credentials we had no
institutional backing and our students
were completely unvetted there was no
admission standards so in many ways we
were just like the Internet is today we
were democratic and open and there was
it was not hierarchical at all so many
ways we ran experiment with what happens
when strangers come together and take
each other’s words seriously in this
culture of rigor and love so what
happened well I’m very proud to report
that 20 years later and almost 30,000
students later thanks to the incredible
talent and hard work of so many local
authors grub Street has grown into the
largest nonprofit Creative Writing
Center in the country
along the way many in our community have
had tremendous literary success but
another thing has happened which is
relevant to what I want to talk about
today and it’s this we have created an
incredibly connected understanding and
kind community and it has everything to
do everything with how we communicate
with one another and what happens in our
classrooms on one level what happens in
our classrooms is very simple strangers
come together they come in with drafts
of novels op-eds memoirs and they share
them with people they wouldn’t meet in
any other setting people that come from
different backgrounds and income
brackets and age groups and they tell
these other people what they’re trying
to accomplish and then the strangers in
the room treat them with respect take
their words seriously and start to help
them edit their work to the novelist
they might say the settings working
really well but these characters are
still pretty flat you need to dig harder
to figure out what that person’s really
going through to round that out to the
person who’s writing the op-ed them I’d
say that’s a really interesting point of
view but you haven’t worked hard enough
yet so we you need to go out and get
more evidence or your logics a little
funky and in this way and this back and
forth the writer learns a tremendous
amount about themselves and what they’re
trying to say they learn from the
perspectives of everybody else in the
room and they get better their writing
gets better and often students will
report to me that they were able by
working in the company of strangers in a
community to produce work they never
would have been able to think possible
to produce something that they thought
was beyond their capacity what I see in
the classrooms really makes me wonder
about what we’re squandering online
today when we have this opportunity to
communicate human-to-human for the first
time and what would it be like if we
could actually make the online
experience a little bit more like a
really well-run writing workshop and a
little bit less like a game of Thrones
episode what would that take it’s
deceptively simple
I think it would take rigor and love it
would take everybody owning the fact
that we are all now co-creators and
co-writers of this culture we share
online and it would take us holding
ourselves and other people to very high
standards when we publish our words
online we would also use this to help us
figure out how to communicate with
others online so if you’re writing
online you would say to yourself I want
to make sure that every word I publish
online is as accurate honest and
truthful as I can muster and it’s also
written with an intention of being
loving and kind to other human beings
here’s a few things that might change
online if we could all do this these
words except in times of humor would
disappear because we’d know immediately
that the author wasn’t being rigorous
there’s their cliche they’re flat
they’re not telling us anything new and
they’re also not loving we know
immediately that nobody has any
intention of learning anything from the
other side when they’re using these
words statements like all immigrants or
all rural voters would also go away
because all statements are never true
and that just wouldn’t be a rigorous
thing to say it’s not even true that all
Boston drivers are bad drivers it only
feels that way we would also not share
any words or any up ads or essays that
didn’t hold up to the standards so we
wouldn’t share articles that weren’t
sourced or accurate that weren’t written
with the intention to understand the
world and not to tear it down
we wouldn’t share those terrible
articles that make people’s blood
pressure spiked because they have really
alarming headlines that have nothing to
do with the content of the article we
wouldn’t do that but perhaps most
importantly we would stop doing this we
would stop talking to each other this
way calling each other names and
insulting each other online
this took me three minutes to put
together this slide this is what we’re
all reading and getting used to online
to my mind there is no good reason to
insult another human being online
and this includes public officials
celebrities they’re human beings as well
we need to stop this instead we should
do what we do in the classrooms which is
we look at the words and not the person
when we respond to somebody in the
classroom we always we have this
expression keep it on the page and we
interrogate and ask people in a rigorous
loving way what they’re trying to
express and we assume that their
intentions are good we assume that their
motivations are good and we start to ask
them questions we can be very rigorous
with one another if we make the right
approach the other thing is we can have
fun with this the other day I was
reading an article I was reading a post
from a friend and I thought her language
or her logic looked a little strange but
I couldn’t remember exactly why I
couldn’t remember the logic from my
sophomore logic class in college and I
was thinking it would be great if we
could unless those philosophy nerds to
help remind us of the best arguments we
could be using and when we were falling
into using bad language and they could
create emojis they could let us know if
we were using a straw man argument or a
red herring or a slippery slope
it’s imagine what that our experience
online would change if we could pull
this off together now you might think
this sounds pollyannaish but I think we
can do it we have changed our culture
before in the 70s we decided to stop
littering and there was a massive public
PSA campaign and we largely stopped
littering sure there are a couple of
literature still and there will always
be trolls but by and large it’s
insulting to us when we see someone
litter as the co-authors of our culture
we can decide now we are writing this
story we’re in control of the plotline
we can say that calling someone ugly or
moronic online making a claim about all
immigrants or sharing an article with
your peers online that you haven’t
bothered to read we can make that as
offensive as rolling down your window
and heaving a bag of trash onto the side
of the road
we can do that and from my experience at
grub Street I can only imagine the
brilliance the creative ideas the
innovation the insight that we could
help unlock in one another if we were
communicating properly online if we’re
using this historic opportunity to
connect human to human as a way to
connect instead of shoud II – the down
so I’ll be they’ll leave you with this I
hope that the next time you get online
whether it’s in five minutes tonight or
in the morning that you consider taking
these words and putting them somewhere
close to your computer put making them
the wallpaper on your iPhone and
thinking of yourself as a writer holding
that responsibility and imagining that
everybody else in your community online
is also a writer and that we’re all
showing up with really messy first
drafts and that we have the capacity
with rigor and love to help each other
sort it out thank you
you
online how many use Facebook Twitter
have a blog right most of us have our
hands up right we are all writers now
all of us and in many ways this is a
fabulous thing we’re hearing points of
view we didn’t hear in the past it’s
wildly Democratic and creative as
someone who was born before the Internet
I still love that I can pick myself up
on a Thursday afternoon by googling puns
and being entertained by the brilliance
of strangers but it’s also true it’s
also true that we’re immeasurably cruel
to one another online we mock each other
we call each other names we’re course
were uncivil and we’re often
dehumanizing in many ways this is
understandable I think it’s really easy
to forget when we’re putting our words
we’re publishing our words online that
there are human beings on the other end
of those words but we can’t because our
words matter
the ones we choose matter we have so
much power with the words we choose we
can make people feel things strongly we
can spur others to action a word can
feel like a punch in the face or it can
lift somebody out of depression with
this power to quote the great writer
Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben
with great power comes great
responsibility I’m here today to share a
little bit of my story with the hopes of
convincing you all that we are all
co-authors of our culture and that the
culture we tolerate online right now is
one that we do not need to tolerate we
have the power to change it
it’ll take taking our words seriously so
my story starts 20 years ago I was in a
Creative Writing Program studying
fiction as a graduate student and the
ethos of the program was tough love the
problem was that there was no
none and that the toughness often felt
like the internet feels today
mocking disdainful and condescending I
barely survived and so when I graduated
I felt passionate about trying to teach
creative writing differently I wanted to
stick with tough love actually but I
wanted tough to be honest rigorous
feedback and I wanted there to be a
whole lot more love and support and
cheerleader earliness among the group so
I put $400 on my credit card which was a
lot of money for me back then and I
created this flyer that I thought looked
really professional at the time although
it has not aged that well and I got on
my bike and I drove up and down Beacon
Street right here in Brookline
advertising to workshops under the name
of grub Street to my complete joy
surprise and slight panic eight people
eight brave souls took me up on this and
grub Street was born the first classes
were taught by me and a friend and we
had really thin credentials we had no
institutional backing and our students
were completely unvetted there was no
admission standards so in many ways we
were just like the Internet is today we
were democratic and open and there was
it was not hierarchical at all so many
ways we ran experiment with what happens
when strangers come together and take
each other’s words seriously in this
culture of rigor and love so what
happened well I’m very proud to report
that 20 years later and almost 30,000
students later thanks to the incredible
talent and hard work of so many local
authors grub Street has grown into the
largest nonprofit Creative Writing
Center in the country
along the way many in our community have
had tremendous literary success but
another thing has happened which is
relevant to what I want to talk about
today and it’s this we have created an
incredibly connected understanding and
kind community and it has everything to
do everything with how we communicate
with one another and what happens in our
classrooms on one level what happens in
our classrooms is very simple strangers
come together they come in with drafts
of novels op-eds memoirs and they share
them with people they wouldn’t meet in
any other setting people that come from
different backgrounds and income
brackets and age groups and they tell
these other people what they’re trying
to accomplish and then the strangers in
the room treat them with respect take
their words seriously and start to help
them edit their work to the novelist
they might say the settings working
really well but these characters are
still pretty flat you need to dig harder
to figure out what that person’s really
going through to round that out to the
person who’s writing the op-ed them I’d
say that’s a really interesting point of
view but you haven’t worked hard enough
yet so we you need to go out and get
more evidence or your logics a little
funky and in this way and this back and
forth the writer learns a tremendous
amount about themselves and what they’re
trying to say they learn from the
perspectives of everybody else in the
room and they get better their writing
gets better and often students will
report to me that they were able by
working in the company of strangers in a
community to produce work they never
would have been able to think possible
to produce something that they thought
was beyond their capacity what I see in
the classrooms really makes me wonder
about what we’re squandering online
today when we have this opportunity to
communicate human-to-human for the first
time and what would it be like if we
could actually make the online
experience a little bit more like a
really well-run writing workshop and a
little bit less like a game of Thrones
episode what would that take it’s
deceptively simple
I think it would take rigor and love it
would take everybody owning the fact
that we are all now co-creators and
co-writers of this culture we share
online and it would take us holding
ourselves and other people to very high
standards when we publish our words
online we would also use this to help us
figure out how to communicate with
others online so if you’re writing
online you would say to yourself I want
to make sure that every word I publish
online is as accurate honest and
truthful as I can muster and it’s also
written with an intention of being
loving and kind to other human beings
here’s a few things that might change
online if we could all do this these
words except in times of humor would
disappear because we’d know immediately
that the author wasn’t being rigorous
there’s their cliche they’re flat
they’re not telling us anything new and
they’re also not loving we know
immediately that nobody has any
intention of learning anything from the
other side when they’re using these
words statements like all immigrants or
all rural voters would also go away
because all statements are never true
and that just wouldn’t be a rigorous
thing to say it’s not even true that all
Boston drivers are bad drivers it only
feels that way we would also not share
any words or any up ads or essays that
didn’t hold up to the standards so we
wouldn’t share articles that weren’t
sourced or accurate that weren’t written
with the intention to understand the
world and not to tear it down
we wouldn’t share those terrible
articles that make people’s blood
pressure spiked because they have really
alarming headlines that have nothing to
do with the content of the article we
wouldn’t do that but perhaps most
importantly we would stop doing this we
would stop talking to each other this
way calling each other names and
insulting each other online
this took me three minutes to put
together this slide this is what we’re
all reading and getting used to online
to my mind there is no good reason to
insult another human being online
and this includes public officials
celebrities they’re human beings as well
we need to stop this instead we should
do what we do in the classrooms which is
we look at the words and not the person
when we respond to somebody in the
classroom we always we have this
expression keep it on the page and we
interrogate and ask people in a rigorous
loving way what they’re trying to
express and we assume that their
intentions are good we assume that their
motivations are good and we start to ask
them questions we can be very rigorous
with one another if we make the right
approach the other thing is we can have
fun with this the other day I was
reading an article I was reading a post
from a friend and I thought her language
or her logic looked a little strange but
I couldn’t remember exactly why I
couldn’t remember the logic from my
sophomore logic class in college and I
was thinking it would be great if we
could unless those philosophy nerds to
help remind us of the best arguments we
could be using and when we were falling
into using bad language and they could
create emojis they could let us know if
we were using a straw man argument or a
red herring or a slippery slope
it’s imagine what that our experience
online would change if we could pull
this off together now you might think
this sounds pollyannaish but I think we
can do it we have changed our culture
before in the 70s we decided to stop
littering and there was a massive public
PSA campaign and we largely stopped
littering sure there are a couple of
literature still and there will always
be trolls but by and large it’s
insulting to us when we see someone
litter as the co-authors of our culture
we can decide now we are writing this
story we’re in control of the plotline
we can say that calling someone ugly or
moronic online making a claim about all
immigrants or sharing an article with
your peers online that you haven’t
bothered to read we can make that as
offensive as rolling down your window
and heaving a bag of trash onto the side
of the road
we can do that and from my experience at
grub Street I can only imagine the
brilliance the creative ideas the
innovation the insight that we could
help unlock in one another if we were
communicating properly online if we’re
using this historic opportunity to
connect human to human as a way to
connect instead of shoud II – the down
so I’ll be they’ll leave you with this I
hope that the next time you get online
whether it’s in five minutes tonight or
in the morning that you consider taking
these words and putting them somewhere
close to your computer put making them
the wallpaper on your iPhone and
thinking of yourself as a writer holding
that responsibility and imagining that
everybody else in your community online
is also a writer and that we’re all
showing up with really messy first
drafts and that we have the capacity
with rigor and love to help each other
sort it out thank you
you
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