<![CDATA[GLASSWORKS - opinion]]>

<![CDATA[GLASSWORKS - opinion]]>Fri, 06 Mar 2026 22:34:30 -0500Weebly<![CDATA[Mimetic Armageddon and the Modern Plague of “Bad Readers”]]>Sun, 01 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMThttps://www.rowanglassworks.org/opinion/mimetic-armageddon-and-the-modern-plague-of-bad-readersby Dimitrius A. DeMarco

Image by Blaz Photo on Unsplash

People who can’t read are ruining the world, and we’re letting them. If I had a dime for every instance of a title, theme, character, or concept getting bastardized by some barely-literate half-wit, I’d be part of the way across the northern sea on a luxury cruise trying to get a good look at aurora borealis. The sad truth of the matter is that we’re in trouble, and it’s permeating into every aspect of our lives: in classrooms, in media, and in government.

One of my major gripes with being a “student of literature” is that I get whipped back and forth between enriching conversations with my fellow learners-in-arms, to a glorified book club with my peers who either whine, complain, or project themselves on what had otherwise been an excellent read. I’ll sit in a survey class, or a lecture on theory, or even a course dedicated to methodological practices in reading for multiple dimensions—and still, the conversations devolve into echo-chambers chock-full of projections and unethical readings.

I give Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises my personal award for “book best butchered” by my peers, as the nuance and vertical dimensions of narrative (the irony, satire, and authorial critique of Hemingway on a world after war) fall by the wayside. The classroom turns into a straw-manned battleground of moral superiority between green college freshmen vs. a seasoned author of a bygone era. The story gets labeled dated, the language and characters as bigoted, and by extension, so does Hemingway as the author. He couldn’t possibly be delivering an accurate depiction of the “Lost Generation” after World War I, could he? Apparently not.

While vertical reading is a rather tacit tool supposedly employed by those of us in literary circles, it truly is not all that common. For this I name (and blame) two things: Hollywood and primary school. Those bad readers become teachers and they teach their students who also become bad readers. They then get jobs in TV and run the media cycles, or fill in the classrooms yet again in a vicious cycle. In school, we learn to look for main ideas and skip the details beyond the first few, or the “most important” (whatever the hell that means). We preach mimetic reading as the easiest and most holistic method for reading comprehension at the early stages, and while there is some merit to the process (it certainly is integral), we don’t teach beyond the mimetic experience until the collegiate level. Even then, the courses are few and far between if they exist at all. Then there’s my personal cherry on top, which is the literacy rate of the United States taking a less-than-graceful swan dive, which makes me wonder if things would be better if we were all still hooked on phonics…

Image by Tuyen Vo on Unsplash

This is subsequently compounded by the fact that when we’re not in school or working, we park our asses in front of the nearest screen and veg out to easy-to-follow stories with characters tailor made for easy consumption. Hollywood has a habit of pre-chewing IP’s and feeding them like mother birds to newborn chicks in a regurgitated fashion, sucking out all the nuance and nutrients from what would otherwise be (or had been previously) a great story. We’re content to eat our mush: we accept and praise versions of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein that give the creation superpowers or change the thematic complexity of the text to a simple “daddy didn’t love me enough” story. We watch comic book adaptations of superheroes become shells of themselves, and we love it! We gobble up Superman hyperbolic portrayals as either a villain or the embodiment of the “American Way!” Or we take versions of Marvel’s “The Punisher” (an anarchist anti-hero that clearly despises all criminal acts) as a white supremacy icon—you know those skull stickers on the backs of every truck on I-95? Our readings inform our beliefs and vice versa; we are content to see what we want to see in the media, just as we are in politics, which leads me to our most dire situation.

Image by Henry Be on Unsplash

Bad readers make horrendous leaders, and the real world consequence of dimensionless reading is most malignant in our political landscape. Reading and comprehension doesn’t apply exclusively to the page, and having genuine close-reading capability allows us to decode speech and resist manipulation. So when we can’t read, we can’t decode, and when we can’t decode, we are easily fooled by the many bad actors present in the scene. Such is the case with our supposed “best and brightest” of our fine establishments reliving the hollow dream of the Roaring ‘20s with a Gatsby-esque party on the eve of American SNAP benefits being cut off. Who cares if our population can’t eat or can’t read? Have some more caviar and champagne!

I am quite literally watching both books and the world burn in real time, and it all points to one culprit—reading! Bad readers are just churning out even worse readers. They are perpetuating a cycle that perpetuates power. But what’s the solution? How do we make sense of a world that has removed itself so far from nuance? Is everything only either good or bad? Right or wrong?

The real answer—quite paradoxically—is no. There are meanings beyond meanings, and things materialized in language that will have a corporeal effect on the world around us. Frankly, it comes down to us, to the ones brave enough to advocate for such a “daring” concept. We need to read more, read often, and read better. Bad readers are ruining the world, and yet, reading is, ironically, the only thing that can save it.

]]><![CDATA[Don’t Take Writing Advice]]>Thu, 01 Jan 2026 05:00:00 GMThttps://www.rowanglassworks.org/opinion/dont-take-writing-adviceby Adam Buckley

Via Aaron Burden on Unsplash

The irony of this statement is not lost on me. By telling you not to take writing advice, I am, in fact, giving you writing advice—however!—if you follow me where I’m headed, you’ll see where I’m coming from. Age-old axioms like “show, don’t tell,” and “good characters have agency,” have kernels of truth to them; that’s why they’re so often repeated, but what comes after? How do writers really get better? My goal here isn’t to rebuke the institutions of writing criticism or education entirely, more so to make the case against generalized platitudes and advocate for contextual and self-motivated methods of improving one’s work.

You want an explanation, so I’ll give it to you: most writing advice is ineffective because it's broad and one-size-fits-all, while the art form is an individual, esoteric experience. Getting this across is difficult on my part because, quite like the generalizations I’m taking to task, there is an exception for every rule—or, in my case, every pedantic argument. Co-writers, workshop groups, online message boards, and threads are all ways that writers can lend each other a hand—and this is good! The help of others will always be instrumental in your journey, but in the end, the buck stops here. Improvement is an individual process, but rarely is advice individualized.

Going into college, I had already been writing for nearly half my life. I knew narrative genre fiction was my main mode of expression, had written enough to know my own habits and preferred methods, and came in ready to be challenged. Of course, I’m not the main character of every class I’m enrolled in, but there’s something to be said about the boiler-plate aphorisms a new writing student must endure. This typically starts at “write every day,” and often, “keep a journal.” While these are well-intentioned, meant to get the fledgling writer to develop some healthy habits regarding workflow and process, they’re emblematic of novice advice focusing more on idea generation, not improvement of craft.

"How do writers really get better?"

So what am I really looking for, anyway? I’m so glad you asked. Firstly, I want to do away with these catchy truisms and make the conversation around craft one about skill. Just because we’re in the arts doesn't mean that discipline isn’t a factor in proficiency. Beyond this, criticism should be knowledge born from experience given from one writer to another when discussing their work. It has to be rooted in the current work and something actionable, something that sees what’s written and seeks to improve not just what’s on the page, but a habit that the author exhibits. A habit, say, like interjecting fourth-wall-breaking asides in a way to rhetorically manipulate your audience. If someone said something like that to me, I’d find that particularly embarrassing. But that’s just a totally fake example, of course.

Without all these qualifiers, the essence of this “real advice,” let’s call it, is that it's contextual. It's not about what other writers have done; it's what you are doing on the page now. It's not about conforming to standards or even making the best thing you can possibly make, but being the best writer you can be, which has a lot more to do with instinct and attitude than it does slavish loyalty to conventional wisdom.

Here’s an example. I was once developing a short story inside an ongoing collection of supernatural detective tales, one of which was about werewolves in prison. One, a female inmate, was inside while the detective, also a werewolf, visited her. They’d spend a beautiful night together before she had to go back to the clink. It’s noir, it's romance, it's tragic. But while planning it, the entire thing felt a little…grotesque? My detective was the protagonist, so it was mostly from his POV, but that felt wrong. This story was about prison. Autonomy. Agency. The POV was hers by right, and the story was better for it.

"Improvement is an individual process, but rarely is advice individualized"

I could easily wax poetic about some unseen force guiding my hand, but in the end, it was my decision. I followed my instinct, one I’ve honed over years of reading and writing, and took a hard look at what I wanted to accomplish with my story so I could make the right call. Ideas are not what make artists, but how they execute those ideas. My minor victory over myself could have been rectified in a later draft, or when a dear friend gave it a read, but not in this reality. In this one, I made the call, and there was no one else to make it for me.

To defend the likes of adages such as “show, don’t tell” and “good characters have agency,” they help the novice find their footing and the veteran stay the course. As you can see, I gave my character agency, and I’m more than happy with how my final piece ended up. Ultimately, my most difficult challenge here is convincing you that just because they are time-honored, they are not good pieces of advice. It might be more helpful to see them as tools, “break glass in case of emergency” methods when you’re in a jam. They are the duct tape keeping the fender on, not the engine keeping this thing running.

I don’t believe in writing advice because there is no replacement for simply writing. Just doing the damn thing is a lot more enlightening than any advice the greatest authors can give you. Honing your own instinct in rhythm is the only actual way to improve because borrowing these pieces of wisdom that have to be viewed as fact only makes you as good as the next guy. They nurture greatness as much as the hammer exalts the nail. I’m not telling you what to do, only hoping you get to work.

]]><![CDATA[AI in the Composition Classroom: Students Aren’t Stupid, They’re Scared]]>Mon, 01 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMThttps://www.rowanglassworks.org/opinion/ai-in-the-composition-classroom-students-arent-stupid-theyre-scaredby Megan Nielsen

It’s 2025, and I work in a college writing center. Of course, AI usage has run rampant in recent years. ChatGPT haunts me at work, constantly looming over me. One day, I’m shown a paper in a document with the AI prompt still sitting at the top of the page. The next day, I ask students a question, and many of them pull up ChatGPT right in front of me, with no shame, and robotically plug the question in for a response. ChatGPT is the new Google, except now when I ask students for sources, they can’t point me to a website or journal. They can only refer me to their all-knowing robot god.

Image by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash

Initially, when this phenomenon began a few years ago, I grew angry at my students and the world in general. I’d read all about AI, discussed it in my classes and with peers, and I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to use it. It steals material from artists and writers without their consent or compensation, it’s ruining the environment with its massive amounts of water usage, and worst of all, it isn’t even right most of the time. It makes up both sources and facts, and I wouldn’t stand for it. I knew I had to stop my students from conferring with the evil machine at any cost.

First, I tried lectures during my weekly sessions with groups of freshmen, a traditional “I talk, you listen” approach that I would quickly learn does next to nothing. Looking back, it’s obvious that starting with “I have the moral high ground and here’s why you’re wrong” wouldn’t work, but I didn’t know that there was any other way to approach it. I was so blinded by my disgust with AI (that I still hold, mind you, but I’m calmer now) that I came to the table with only anger. I would go on and on about the terrible drawbacks of ChatGPT, while never once opening the floor for discussion. I was met with blank stares at best, with most students never even looking up from their laptops.

I quickly got discouraged and depressed. I couldn’t see how I could convince my students to turn away if they knew the ethical implications and simply didn’t care. ChatGPT was here to stay, and it was time for me to accept the inevitable and get with the times. Right?

It was around this time that I realized I’d been going about it all wrong.

Image by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

After my AI-induced existential crisis, I was helping a student struggling with starting her paper. We were brainstorming topics and beginning on an outline, and she was clearly beginning to panic. As predicted, she suggested asking ChatGPT. Despite myself, I asked her why she thought that, barely withholding my annoyance. Her response shocked me:

“Because it’ll be better than what I could do.”

I had the sudden revelation that, amidst my crusade, I had never once considered the root problem for why students were turning to AI in such large numbers: they’re terrified of failure. They think that college-level writing is beyond them, and they’ll be ridiculed if they aren’t immediately perfect. They’re terrified of being wrong, and they’re convinced that the computers are smarter than they are. After acquiring this knowledge, I changed my approach to my students, and the improvement was immediate.

When a student appeared to be struggling, I got more involved than ever before. Previously, I’d been worried about being “too much,” in fear of my students thinking that I found them incompetent. However, I found that the majority of students embraced it when I dove into their projects headfirst right along with them. Together, we trudged through brainstorming, first drafts, complete overhaul revisions, proofreading, and any stage of the writing process you can think of. I learned two extremely valuable approaches for when students get stuck, and they’ve helped me get through nearly every situation:

Break every assignment down into parts. As small as possible. When students get overwhelmed and turn to AI, it’s because they can only see their work as a giant, herculean task, and they don’t know where to begin. Show them that a 10-page paper doesn’t get spit out in one go. You brainstorm, and then you draft, and then you change things, and you do it all over again. Even when a student can only stay with me for half an hour, I always make sure to send them off with the next steps. Many students can get going on their own if only they’re given a roadmap.
Emphasize the importance of the writing process. Ensure students that no one expects them to be perfect right off the bat, ESPECIALLY if they’re a freshman. Show them that college isn’t some magical place where geniuses go to perfect their already perfect work. Growth takes time, and it’s okay for your work not to be perfect off the bat. In fact, it’s okay for your work to outright suck. What matters is what you learn from it and how you can take criticism and improve in the future.

Image by Marissa Grootes on Unsplash

Even with my newfound approach, students do still sometimes turn to AI in front of me. When this happens, I no longer immediately turn to critique. Instead, I do the opposite, and find as much to praise about their work as I possibly can (no matter how hard that can be sometimes). I find something that shows them how smart they are, and how much they’re capable of when they put in the work. Nothing is more capable of reaching full potential than a student with newfound comfort and confidence. Nothing is more powerful than a student who believes in their own mind.

]]><![CDATA[What's in a Name?]]>Fri, 01 Aug 2025 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.rowanglassworks.org/opinion/whats-in-a-nameby Alexa Diamant

via flickr by Steve Jurvetson

The enemies have taken over the ship! Quick, Captain, we must board our escape pods and find life somewhere else. But before we go, you’ll need to verify your identity to access the pods. What do you mean you don’t know? What’s that you say—the author changed it again? Damn those writers and their incessant need to constantly change our names!

We’ve all been there—creating new worlds, developing storylines, and even agonizing over the details of our characters’ outfits. But then comes the moment of truth: the name. It’s the detail that really matters, right? In a universe where every protagonist needs that special mix of brooding stoicism and undeniable charm, it only makes sense that authors push the boundaries of creativity, giving us characters with names like Archer Steel-Gunn or Celestia Twilight Obsidian—because how else could we possibly understand they’re tortured souls with secret powers?

As readers, we arrive with expectations shaped by decades of stories. A name like ‘Merlin’ automatically conjures images of a wise and powerful wizard. So, when we’re introduced to ‘James the Normal,’ our brains scramble to make the connection. Did we accidentally pick up a comedic fantasy instead? Or did the author just lose a bet? It’s like when your favorite musician hypes up a new album, but when it finally drops, it sounds like it was written by a group of tone-deaf kindergartners who’ve never seen a guitar. The nerve.

From personal experience, I’ve always thought a name was the ultimate selling point of a story. If I pick up a book and the protagonist’s name is Pamela, I immediately regret picking it up (sorry, Poison Ivy—I still love you!). I mean, how is someone named Pamela going to save the world? If a character has a bland, generic name, I tend to think they’re as ordinary as they come, incapable of anything exciting. Is that a bit much? Maybe, but let’s be real: Harry Potter? Really? As much as I love the books, I can’t help but think, Why not name him Phineas Greymark or something? I get the whole “ordinary kid who turns out to be a hero” thing, but come on. We could’ve done better.

And yet, going in the opposite direction with an outlandish name isn’t the answer, either. Some writers search so hard for uniqueness that they end up in a frenzy of spell-sounding names and titles like Zethophyll Valori, which sounds more like a spell ingredient than a person. It’s distracting, and it often pulls readers out of the story just to puzzle over how to pronounce it. But what is it about naming that makes it such a tough, often frustrating process? Storytelling is already hard enough, but once we pick a name it feels like the whole story is either made or broken by it. Maybe we’ve had a name in mind since the first spark of our idea, or maybe we’ve changed it a hundred times as the plot developed to fit some theme we thought sounded clever. Either way, making a name final is one of the most exhausting decisions a writer can face. But there’s a middle ground here. Ideally, a name shouldn’t be so basic that it’s forgettable, nor should it be so excessive that it outshines the character’s journey. There’s a gray area—a space where names can be distinctive without being distracting.

Choosing a name that’s “just right” for a character reflects the balancing act that writing itself often requires. Writers must select names that fit both the character’s world and personality, while also ensuring they don’t feel forced. In genres like fantasy, for example, names can be unusual but still need a touch of familiarity to resonate with readers. Even names that are distinct and memorable, like Frodo or Arya, feel natural despite their uniqueness. Naming isn’t just a creative choice—it’s a reflection of genre-specific expectations. A name can set the tone for an entire narrative: an epic fantasy hero might carry a weighty, mythical name like Alaric or Morgana to signal destiny, while a romance protagonist might have a simpler, more relatable name like Lily or Ben. Straying too far from these expectations, such as giving a modern detective the name “Jonesy Snoopwell” or an ancient knight “Ralph,” risks breaking immersion and alienating the reader. Genre conventions exist for a reason, aligning names with the moods they evoke and shaping how readers engage with the story from the outset. The key is to find that gray area between “too generic” and “too bizarre.”

via Unsplash by Kourosh Qaffari

Some writers dive into the world of the absurd, naming characters after obscure mythological figures or languages that no one speaks. Suddenly, instead of a relatable hero, we have a protagonist named Dracari Xenoxylda, whose backstory becomes secondary to the challenge of pronouncing their name in a book club meeting. But go too simple, and you might end up with a name like Justin, which could leave readers questioning whether they're reading a superhero tale or finding themselves in the puke-stained living room of a Podcast Bro discussing why they just can’t get back into the whole superhero thing anymore. There’s a balance to strike: a name needs to be distinctive enough to stand out, but it shouldn’t overshadow the character or become a distraction in the narrative.

What I’m really trying to say here is that there’s no story without a calculated naming process. Unless you’re a literary legend like C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, or George R.R. Martin (initialism kings), your character’s name won’t be known throughout the world. Naturally, a strong name ties immeasurably into the effectiveness of allusion. For instance, when someone tells you not to be cranky, they say, “Don’t be a Scrooge!” No one ever says, “Don’t be a Michael!” Because that’s not a character trait—it’s just a name.

In the end, it’s up to us to give our characters the justice they deserve. Whether that be cursing them with alliteration (I’m looking at you, Peter Parker) or gracing them with old money (because ‘Bruce Wayne’ screams playboy) we hold the power to shape their identities. Let’s remember, though, that while a name can be a defining trait, it shouldn’t overshadow the depth of their stories. So, as we embark on this literary journey, let’s aim for names that resonate—ones that spark intrigue rather than induce eye rolls. Because if we’re going to dive into the complex web of heroism and villainy, we might as well do it with a character name that doesn’t sound like it was pulled from an outdated baby name book or the reject pile of a fantasy generator. After all, a well-crafted name can be the first step in leaving behind a story people will remember for decades to come.

]]><![CDATA[I Built Lit Camp on the Cheap, and You Can Too]]>Tue, 01 Jul 2025 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.rowanglassworks.org/opinion/i-built-lit-camp-on-the-cheap-and-you-can-tooby Stephen Harrison

Late night Starbucks lights are just enough to let you move around and know that you’re not meant to nap here. The customers typically look harried at 2 a.m., and the menu is limited. But Starbucks is open nonetheless. Fluorescent white lighting and soft talking mixed with honestly pretty shitty coffee served as a launchpad for the rest of my academic career.

Photo by Stefen Tan on Unsplash

During my education as a journalism major, I spent many evenings visiting an open all night location near Rutgers University, but I didn’t spend my time there alone. The three of us—Dan, Carl, and I—all aspiring writers, needed someplace where we could work together. The importance of this was lost on me at the time, but in retrospect, it was critical to my development. Somewhere in the late night coffees and arguments about the merits of this piece or that piece, something was brewing for me.

Writing is, by necessity, a solitary activity. I can’t imagine trying to write while simultaneously socializing or being surrounded by distractions. But workshops are less about focusing and getting into “the zone” and more about bouncing ideas off of each other. It’s not just about another set of eyes, as helpful as that is, but about being inspired by your contemporaries' work.

Unfortunately, there is another side of writing that I’m familiar with as a graduate student. There can be an elitism about who is successful, who makes money, and perhaps most importantly, who has the resources to become successful. Time and money can be in short supply for anyone pursuing a career, and is perhaps especially precarious in the creative arts where the path to success isn’t so well defined as other professions. Accounting or business has a clearer path to financial stability, while the creative arts are less certain.

Janis Cooke Newman’s op-ed on lithub.com “What Happens When Your Writers Retreat Burns to the Ground?” sends all the wrong messages to young writers who might happen to read her piece. Baked into the article is an element of glamour and exclusivity that I think many aspiring writers can only dream of: “Writers in the hot tub, washing down their workshop feedback with a good California red under a vault of stars” she writes of the retreat “For four days, forty writers (chosen from more than 200 applicants) workshopped each other’s pages in the cool morning sunshine. Flexed their chair-stiffened bodies in a yoga room with a view of green hills. Drank a great deal of good California wine (and beer) in the hot tub, well past the time the property wanted them back in their rooms.”

For a writer in training like myself, this sounds very rock and roll. But the unspoken part of this is how much time and money it takes to attend such a glamorous retreat. Now hosted in San Miguel, Mexico, the current iteration of “Lit Camp” runs between $1,295 and $2,595. To be fair, there is nothing wrong with going if you have the resources to attend such a camp. But as the article boasts, “Half-a-dozen of them got book deals—one for seven figures. And many of the rest published in literary magazines and signed with agents.” Such success evidently comes with a price.

I don’t have any evidence that what I’ve experienced will lead to the kind of success Cooke Newman speaks of with Lit Camp. But I can speak to the experience of myself and friends who don’t have access to those kinds of resources trying to navigate the path towards what seems like an insurmountable summit. The goal at the top: becoming a “writer.”I would have given up much sooner if I hadn’t stumbled upon camaraderie and the back and forth between contemporaries before I even got to graduate school.

As Cooke Newman writes, “Better still, everybody got community… Thanks to Lit Camp, the writing life got a little less isolated.” This is the key component of Lit Camp, not so much the wine or the hot tubs, but the community. It’s the coming together and sharing of ideas and feedback that is valuable, the rest is window dressing. It can be intimidating trying to figure out what resources you have to attempt to become successful in writing. and there’s no denying that higher education is expensive regardless of where you go. There’s no need for trepidation to extend to whether you can afford or even be accepted to a swanky writer’s retreat or an academic program.

It’s important for young writers to understand that you can get the Lit Camp experience without spending Lit Camp money or time. You can have your own Lit Camp anywhere you want, you just need to find other writers interested in experiencing sharing their work, in getting feedback and providing it. I had my own first Lit Camp without realizing it as three friends labored over a community college newspaper deep into the night under the fluorescent Starbucks lights.

For me, it was an all-nighter with sleepy baristas and inscrutable co-occupants, but it just as easily could have been a cafeteria, a park, or anywhere else people can gather. The important part is the community. If you want to start your own Lit Camp it begins with finding other writers who want to share the experience. If there’s anything that stops you from writing, don’t let it be lack of access to places like Lit Camp.

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

]]>