Improving your Writing with Valpo’s Writing Circle

By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL

This summer, a group of faculty and staff met weekly to work on their writing. In this article Stacy Hoult (FORL), Natalie Krivas (English), Margarita Rayzberg (Sociology), Stefanie Heinrich (Graduate & Online Education), Mike Longan (Geography), and Matthew Ringenberg (Social Work) describe how Valpo’s writing circle helped improve their writing.

Stacy Hoult: Animals in Disney and LatinX Identity

Stacy’s summer project was drafting a proposal for a chapter of an edited volume about Disney depictions of animals and LatinX identity. At the end of the summer her proposal was accepted, so she hopes to work on the chapter with the writing circle this fall.

This summer was Stacy’s first writing circle and she wishes now that she had joined sooner. She says that her colleagues taught her to provide more context, include key sentences, and also gave her the accountability of bringing something every week.

Mike Longan: Authenticity and the Geography of Country Music

For Mike, writing circle gives him an opportunity to workshop parts of his upcoming book.  The chapter he worked on this summer explores the role that space plays in authenticating country music as well as how music authenticates space. Because his work is cross-disciplinary, he values getting feedback from colleagues in different fields. He also views the writing circle as helping to support him in continuing to write. 

Natalie Krivas: Thoughts on Writing Circle

This summer Natalie brought in a broad variety of writing pieces and refined them to the point of launching into additional writing. She worked on smaller pieces from conference presentation proposals to her FLC blurb.  Natalie used the circle to set aside regular times for writing, get feedback, and manage writer’s block. She was also inspired by the projects her colleagues were working on and found the circle valuable for collegial sharing.

Stefanie Heinrich: Evangelical Christianity and Sports

Stefanie is using the writing circle to get feedback on parts of her dissertation.  Her dissertation consists of three articles on the relationship between evangelical Christianity and sports with a focus on 1) law cases, 2) The power of coaches within the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and 3) Sports as televangelism.  Stefanie credits writing circle with helping her work weekly on her dissertation. She also values hearing from diverse colleagues who press her to explain things about sports and faith to non-experts.  

Matthew Ringenberg:  The Education of Alice Hamilton

Matt re-joined VU and the writing circle late this summer.  He recounted how, a few years back, he had brought to writing circle chapters from his book on Alice Hamilton, a co-author and contemporary of Jane Addams.  Hamilton was a pioneer in studying industrial toxins in the workplace and is credited with the founding of OSHA.  Matt says that he benefited from the different perspectives in the  writing circle, which helped him to focus on how his work would be received by the general public.

Margarita Rayzberg: Field Experiments in International Development

Margarita began the summer with zero pages and ended it with a full book proposal!  Her book will talk about researchers doing fieldwork on the effects of various poverty alleviation programs.  She will show the limits, biases, politics, and spillover effects of the methods they use for their fieldwork. 

For those thinking about the writing circle, Margarita urges people to try and try again. She signed up for the writing circle several times before it finally stuck for her.  She thinks that the feedback from her colleagues has helped make her writing more clear and accessible.  She found it helpful to have people read revised versions of previously workshopped work.

FINAL NOTE: If these stories inspire you to join the writing circle, please email cynthia.rutz@valpo.edu.  We are meeting weekly this semester on Mondays from 3:00-4:00 p.m.