Link To Library Resources

Fall 1998

Texts:

Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

Steve Kowit, In the Palm of Your Hand: A Portable Poetry Workshop

Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction

Joy Harjo, The Woman Who Fell from the Sky

Lydia Davis, Break it Down

Course Description

This course is aimed at teaching creative writing at two levels:

First is the discovery of what it means to write "creatively", and an effort to discover what each of us may have to say at a level of genuine creativity and humanity;

Second is the aquisition of skills and understanding with regard to the forms of poetry, short story, and memoir writing.

The texts for the course will aid the student in becoming more sophisticated with regard to the genres of poetry and short fiction, and half of our class periods will be devoted to recognizing and developing writing skills for those genres (with some time also devoted to the creative memoir). There will also be occasional presentation of new materials (in writing or on film) seemingly unrelated to creative writing, to attempt to stimulate new thinking about ourselves, society, and the environment -- partly to counteract the sameness of what we are often presented with in the media. As students progress in their writing, we will also have "workshop" sessions of sharing some of the more interesting pieces or writing (only with the author's permission, and always with an ethic of mutual consideration and active participation in a supportive, intelligent community of writers).

One of my efforts as an instructor for this course is to try to help you past the constriction of our imagination and our thinking which the dominant forces in our society have attempted to impose through homogenized entertainment media and managed news. The creative process is often a meeting of the inner and the outer -- a combination of present stimulus, memory, society, and self that sparks something in the artist or writer, bringing about an opportunity for original expression. For the sake of helping this creative process along, of avoiding cliches and stereotypes, I will accept writing in the traditional "genres" of American entertainment and publishing (the sitcom, the horror novel or movie, the Danielle Steele type romance, the "greeting card" poem) and when you begin writing your short stories, I will encourage you not to kill off your characters as a way of solving their problems. Even though that happens daily in America, it only shuts off possibilities, and in writing it is often a way of avoiding creative thinking.

Course Requirements and Grading:

Each student will be expected to write and turn in a new piece of writing each week. After the first week, all assignments must be typed. There will be regular writing assignments, sometimes quite specific, sometimes entirely free -- but giving you, I hope, some feeling of focus for each week's work. Each student is also exprected to keep a writer's journal. This will not be turned in, for the sake of privacy, but is an important source of writing material for your semester's work. There will also be several scheduled readings by visiting writers this semester, and class members will be expected to attend these as part of their work for the course.

Every class member will be expected to make one presentation in class about a poet, fiction writer, literary journal, or a national literature or folk literature that she or he has encountered for the first time in the past year and feels interested in as a creative writer. All class members should, additionally, become familiar with the literary journals and other creative writing opportunities now available on the Internet. To facilitate that process, we have been scheduled for one class meeeting on September 8, in the Library Computer Classroom, with librarian and computer expert Kay Benjamin.

Each of you will be assigned to a small group that meets together on your own, and also meets with me in regular conferences, where we will work together on revising your work to bring out its best potential, on finding what you most want to write, and on increasing your skills as a creative writer. Individual assignements will not be graded, as this can be fatal to the creative process. However, since a grade is necessary for the course, grading will be based on a combination of factors: the quality of your writing as it improves and changes over the semester (this includes not only creativity, but also mastery of the mechanics of good writing); your willingness to care about what we are doing, to work creatively in class and conference and on your writing itself; attendance at both class and conference, intelligent participation in class, and appropriate competion of assignments are some of the elements that go into the grading process. This sounds very uncreative when all spelled out -- but it is the only way I can convey in advance of some of the pitfalls that might interfere with your earning the grade that you hope for in the class. Ultimately, the best way to do well in a class involving the creative process is to enjoy it, to become involved enough to be eager about the work and what it might mean to you individually -- and that has almost nothing to do with the grade we are forced to bother with. I look forward to working creatively with you!