Writing Is Hard: A Collection of Over 100 Essays

To Writers Everywhere:

Have you ever read a writing and grammar textbook? Most likely, you haven’t. Or if you have, you probably read it only because some teacher forced you. With that in mind, I wrote the following essays in an attempt to teach writing and grammar in a nontraditional and nonthreatening way.

These essays appeared initially in The Hudsonian, the student newspaper at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, New York. As one of the writing specialists in The Writing and Research Center at HVCC, I have observed that many students are intimidated by formal textbooks that attempt to explain the entire writing process or to address all areas of punctuation, grammar, and usage. Thus, I tried to make these essays somewhat informal, and I purposely focused on only a small portion of the writing process or on one small part of the mechanics of writing.

My hope was that students might take a few moments to read the student newspaper, find the essay, and learn something that would stay with them for years. After publication in the newspaper, I reformatted the essays, and now, I use them as supplemental handouts for students who are struggling with commas or fragments or term papers or any other aspect of writing. As you read through the essays, I sure hope you find them a bit more interesting than your grammar textbook.