Work by Heather M. Madden

  1. The Cookbook Model: One Way to Circumvent Students’ Writing Anxieties

    Posted in Learning Annex, September 2009

    “In a lec­ture on Zen Buddhism, Shunryu Suzuki explained, “In beginner’s mind we have many pos­si­bil­i­ties, but in expert mind there is not much pos­si­bil­ity.”1 As a writer, I am pleased by this notion; it seems true that every time I sit down to write, I am thump­ing across the field (some­times bat­tle­field) of the imagination’s pos­si­bil­i­ties, where I’ll encounter—in some order—both the oh! of won­der and the oh! of frus­tra­tion.2 Each time I sit down to write, I am learn­ing to write.”

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