Your Attention Please

Note: You can view almost all of this site without setting up your 100% free account (requires just your name and a valid e-mail address). However, to view the series of posts under the “Writing Lessons” tab/menu (a series of sequential lessons that comprise my original, accessible, and powerful “Activated Writing System,” you will need to set up your free account. No cost, no ads, no cookies, no tracking — just some brain-stretching concepts, lots of specific instructions, a smile here and there, and a hell of a lot of quickly noticeable learning!

As my gift to you — and all lovers of reading, who want to become much stronger writers — I grant 100%-free access to this set of well-proven lessons, which I have developed across 30+ years and almost 400 university classes taught (more than any university faculty, at any school, in any major, ever (!) in my home state of Colorado!

That’s a lot of teaching, testing, and refining. Those students paid a lot of money, and they wrote a lot of papers (and/or delivered a lot of speeches!), every blessed one of which, I personally graded, with detailed feedback and a lot of TLC.  For you, the lessons are free. Your job? Enjoy, learn, and grow!

– – – Why this website?  – – –

Proudly, 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, some published authors, a few notable attorneys I see quoted in the Denver Post, and other shining stars, such as a former public speaking student I now see on TV almost every night. Romi came in, freshman year, as a marketing major, and, after our speech class, promptly switched to broadcasting . . . and now anchors the sports department of Denver’s CBS affiliate. It does make a prof proud.

And, considering ways to make the most of my retirement, 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 now given the name, “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 their work and suddenly getting lots of As — right where Bs, Cs, and worse used to proliferate.

You can check out my reviews!

I guess that explains the remarkably abundant and uber-positive reviews publicly available on the national “professor review site” called ratemyprofessors.com. You’d think they were fake. They’re not.

Most profs hate that site. Of the few reviews they get there, most range from negative to downright nasty. I consider my glowing reviews on that public site 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 on this website/blog. If you do want to check me out, go to that site and search for Michael Zizzi at the University of Colorado, department: communication.

Yes, now in my retirement, I can look back in amazement at the sheer volume of my teaching record. 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 communication!) back in 1990. And the fun began.

No textbook for this class

Anyway, as I explained many times during our first class meeting, “Here’s why you found no textbook in the bookstore for this class: what I am about to teach you isn’t available in any textbook — and it 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.

My CU-Boulder students, especially, liked knowing that their prof had both begun and finished his own academic career (eventually totaling four years of undergraduate study and nine fully funded years of graduate study) right there at CU.

Starting at CU as a freshman and finishing there, with a high-profile doctorate (with three other schools and a lot of publicity in between!), I sweated out many a class in the same buildings (and, often, the same lack of air conditioning!) wherein, 40-some years later, I now found myself a popular “prof.”

Pretty cool, if I do say. If my CU “kids” weren’t too young to remember the ’70s TV show, Welcome back, Kotter, I’m sure I’d have drawn some humorous comparisons.

And, especially at CU, we used no textbook — just my own system, handed out in worksheets, week by week. Every semester, I tinkered with my teaching approach, based on the results (i.e., their papers) that came back. Every semester inched me further along my career-long path of discovery.

That is what I am presenting to you – out of gratitude and love. Get on board now, and learn all you can. In the words of soul singers Ashford and Simpson, “Don’t Cost You Nothing” (at least not yet!).

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” of things (but I am learning — with immense help from my son, Burke), I have decided to develop this website/blog to help – yes, for free! — anyone who loves to read and truly wants to improve in writing clearly, correctly, stylishly, and, most of all authentically.

I am putting up this site for language-loving readers: readers who want to become better writers (and communicators, generally). Have you read an actual book in the last year? If so, this site’s for you!

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 in a few spots here.

For one such place to read Lesson #1  — which is the most likely to immediately improve your writing in both beauty and effectiveness — check out the main menu tab “Big-Picture Concepts” and hover/click your way to the sub-menu, “Foundational Issues.”

You’ll find some pretty amazing stuff there, if I do say, including Lesson #1. If I could somehow force you to do what it says there, then, unless you already write that way, which I find very rare, I could truly promise that your writing would immediately improve. I can’t force you, but I surely can encourage you — do it or else!

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, with unstated emphasis on how to turn your clicks into their money. For them, it’s a business.

You can just ask your “digital whoever” (as new AI “helpers” worm their way onto our devices every day) any question you want. In most cases, you’ll get a prompt answer that will get you nowhere. That’s why you need me!

Details on the harms of letting AI speak for you (or even trusting its “summaries” of this or that) will come later; for now, I’ll just assert that people don’tnoticeably improve their writing by searching AI or grammar sites for information (which comes in semi-clear (or downright confusing). The Zizzi Method of Activated Writing 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!