Nonce (n): For the particular occasion; for the time being, temporarily; for once.

From http://www.ncte.org/cccc/conv

Before I jump right into the reason for this entry’s title, I’ll need some set-up first. I write this entry a day after returning from the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCCs, or 4Cs). As always after a conference I am finding myself energized and exhausted at the same time. The dominant themes at work during this CCCCs (or, at least the things I sought out, and found valuable for my current thinking and work as a composition instructor and Writing Center administrator) seemed to be genre, transfer, and meta-cognition (awareness and understanding of one’s own thought process), and (of course) the relationships between these concepts.

There were two panels I found most powerful on these subjects, in part because they served to validate the work we’ve been doing in our Writing Theory and Pedagogy (peer tutor preparation) course, and in part because it has helped me to think more fully about my intentions in my own Composition and Literature (English 101) course (that’s where the “nonce” idea comes into play… but more on that later).

why (adv): In a direct question: For what reason? from what cause or motive? for what purpose? wherefore?

Over at This Recording a recent article, “In Which We Get Down to the Actual Writing” they provide an aggregate of excerpts from a bunch of famous writers talking about writing (that was a messy sentence, but you get my point). It’s always been my obsession to read manifestos and learn about writers’ processes through their own language, but lately it seems these texts are easier to find. There’s a new composition text Writing About Writing (2010) with essays with everyone from Mike Rose to Stephen King, the Paris Review has archived all of their interviews with writers back to the beginning of this series, and this recent web thing are great examples.

I am particularly grateful for these resources not only as a writer, but as an educator.