Your Attention Please

I write to you as an exquisitely trained, abundantly honored, and vastly experienced academic (PhD, University of Colorado, Communication), now retired from 32 years of university teaching and educational leadership.

With some time on my hands these days, I look back in deep pride at innumerable star students who fill my warm memory. The brightest — or at least, most dedicated — of these include university writing-award winners I sent off to grad school on full rides, attorneys I see quoted in the Denver Post, and other notables, such as a former Public Speaking student — she came in as a marketing major and left my care aiming to switch to sports broadcasting — whom I now see almost every night on TV. It makes a prof proud.

And I think about the writing system I developed, as a theorist of language who teaches communication (especially speech, rhetoric, and writing). My system, which I have named, “The Zizzi Method of Activated Writing,” presents fresh, understandable, and powerful resources to the writer-to-be (better, at least). This system transformed a great many college students from weak at writing (or hating it) to loving it and suddenly getting A’s on everything.

Check me out

I guess that explains the remarkably abundant and uber-positive reviews publicly available on the “professor review site” ratemyprofessors.com. You’d think they were fake.

Most profs hate that site. Of the few reviews they get, most are negative. I consider my glowing reviews there among my very highest career achievements. Maybe the highest. That’s just what I was trying for. I don’t mean to brag. I just want you to know whose hands you’re in, if you hang out here. If you want to check me out, go there and search for Michael Zizzi at the University of Colorado, department: communication.

For the record, across 32 years, I taught – for formal credit and a grade – almost 400 university courses (a Colorado record, possibly a national one!). Regis University put me into about two-thirds of those classrooms, for which I give hearty and life-long thanks. That’s where I first taught writing (with a master’s in speech!) back in 1991. And the fun began.

No textbook for this class

Anyway, as I explained many times on Day One of classes at CU-Boulder, “There’s no textbook in the bookstore for this class because what I am about to teach you isn’t available in any textbook — and won’t be, until I write it! You just saved about $150!” Somehow, they never complained, especially by the end of the term, after rocking the course beyond all their (or anyone’s) expectations — except mine.

They liked knowing that their prof had begun his own academic career (eventually totaling four years of undergraduate study and nine fully funded years of graduate study!) right there on the same campus. I took my classes, freshman year, in the same buildings wherein, 30 years later, I now found myself a popular “prof.” Pretty cool, if I do say.

And we used no textbook, just my own system, handed out in worksheets, week by week. Every semester I tinkered with it, based on what results (their papers) would come back, one tweak at a time. That is what I am presenting to you – for free, even – via this website/blog. No pop-ups even! (There’s no charge of any kind, at least for now. I’m not sure where, if anywhere, this will go.)

Giving it another go

Anyway, almost five years post-retirement now, I’m rested up, can kick some butt in pickleball, have worked on rehabilitating my cars, house, and yard, and am generally luvin’ life, but . . . something in me wants to give it another go — as long as I don’t have to go anywhere, ha ha.

So, though I lack any/all skill in the “web-side” (but I am learning!) of things, I have decided to develop this website/blog to help – yes, for free! — anyone who truly wants to improve in writing clearly, correctly, stylishly, and, most of all authentically.

I am putting up this site (notice, no ads, either!) for language-loving readers: readers who want to become better writers (and communicators).

Maybe you do read a lot

If you spend time on this site, your writing will improve markedly and immediately. Your understanding of your own language will sharpen, which will enable and empower you to find (and/or further develop) your true writer’s voice with which to express yourself, in every context. How fun is that? I’ve done it a thousand times, my friend, and every time, a joy.

If you’re a reader who wants to improve in all phases of communication, you’ve come to the right place. I will give you plenty to read and consider, all tied to how you write — or could write. Yes, totally free!

What will you read? You will read provocative ideas to challenge your understanding (and comfort level, beware) on a number of topics related to writing, language, and communication. You can see my discussion categories (and some sub-categories), on the menu toward the top of this front page.

The freedom of not doing it for the money

Because I hold no profit motive, I can write exactly what I think will help you the most, not what will “attract clicks”! I’m not counting clicks or views or anything else! I don’t care if I gain a million views or two dozen. It doesn’t affect my paycheck, because (IRS, take note) there isn’t one coming! I’m fine with that.

I want quality, not quantity. If you do like to read — at least thoughtful writing with lots of fresh ideas and originality — and you read mindfully, with a learner’s mind and a do-er’s heart — then that’s what I call quality. I will happily teach you.

My 31-year-old son, Burke, knowledgeable in website coding and creation, helped me get this site started and built (else there would be no site). He thinks I might at minimum add a “donate” button, but that’s just because he’s relatively young (ha ha — get it — oops, Dad joke!) and knows about these things.

But, with his help and my low-tech style and needs, this hasn’t cost much money (so far) — just lots of time (!), which I am hereby donating to you. That way, I can write freely and honestly — not strategically. I can focus on authenticity, myself, not obtaining clicks and views (and $).

The “Zizzi Method of Activated Writing”

Across three decades and hundreds of classes, each class, to me, a laboratory, I have developed a unique, powerful, proprietary, and hereby copyrighted system of re-imagining sentence structure, including grammar, punctuation, structure, and style. I loved to clarify to students and others in and around the university that I don’t “teach English.” Rather, I theorize language and teach communication — toward the latter years, mostly writing and rhetoric.

For copyright and other reasons, I presently call the whole of my sequential program of theory-rich, uniquely conceived, and classroom-proven, writing lessons the Zizzi Method of Activated Writing.

I can’t wait to teach it to you. Of course, you’ll have to do all the work, if you really want to improve such that people notice and compliment you and, more importantly, you notice the difference, and I mean right away — starting today, with Lesson 1, which you can read over in Writing Lessons and start practicing immediately (after you’ve read through this introductory essay, please!).

I don’t make claims lightly, and I never promise more than I know I can deliver. I highly recommend both practices — details coming. But I can and do promise this: nothing you read here appears elsewhere on the Web, even though countless (endless?) websites address the topic of writing.

You can just ask your “digital whoever” (new AI “helpers” pop up every day) any question you want. In most cases, you’ll get a prompt answer that will get you nowhere. Details on that topic will come later; for now, I’ll just assert that people don’t noticeably improve their writing by searching grammar sites for semi-clear (or downright confusing) information. The Zizzi Method of Activated Writing (which you are right here getting for free!) does not deal in confusing muck nor piecemeal factoids and rules. Through my system, students learn to write — and so can you!

Help! I Need Somebody

In the words of Ringo Starr, “It don’t come easy,” especially – in these divisive, copycat times – when it comes to authenticity. But if you read, study, and practice my writing system, you will discover the secret to avoid the pit of sounding like everyone else trying to sound like everyone else – or just abdicating their voice whatsoever and just saying, “AI, say it for me.”

But you can do it! If you can follow the rules above, you’re half-way there. As for the other “half” of the learning, I put this site here expressly to HELP!