MPW 910 The Literary Marketplace Class #39210 Units: 3 Spring 2008 Tuesdays 4:00–6:40 p.m. From: January 15, 2008 Until: April 29, 2008 WPH 104

Instructor: Shelly Lowenkopf [email protected]

Office hours/consultation by arrangement. Instructor will answer all e­mails and phone calls within 24 hours. Literary Marketplace Syllabus, Spring 2008 Shelly Lowenkopf ———————————————————————————————————————————

Introduction and Purposes

THE PURPOSE OF THIS INTERACTIVE LECTURE course is to examine relevant information and techniques that can speed you on your way to publication in book, magazine, and periodical format. It defines the author’s proprietary interests in creative material, explains the legal and financial aspects of publication, and familiarizes you with the publisher’s expectations of the writer as well as the writer’s obligation to a project and to the publisher.

The course also introduces two of the most significant professional presences in the writer’s career—the editor and the literary agent—by showing you what each does and how each functions in the world of publishing.

As a major thrust of the course, we will:

• Identify the types of book publishers in the United States today. • Define what these publishers are likely to publish, who among them are most likely to take on book­length works of fiction, and which of them tend to be sympathetic to writers who have not previously published books. • Examine some of the rationale publishers use in their decisions to take on publishing projects. • Investigate the possibilities for publication of short­form work (short stories and essays). • Find places to submit short­form work. • Define reasonable standards by which to determine the relative worth of a nonfiction project. • Investigate the ways of presenting editorial queries, proposals, and complete manuscripts to literary agents in order to secure their representation, or to editors for subsequent publication. • Examine the skills necessary to embark on a career as a professional writer or editor. • Investigate the slippery paths of self­publishing and the increasingly significant aspects of electronic publishing and blogging. • Learn how to set up a blog and why the blog is a helpful tool

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:

• Deal effectively with publishers. • Assess the relative artistic, intellectual, and financial worth of a project before embarking on it. • Understand the business aspects of being a professional writer. • Prepare for a career in book publishing and/or writing for periodicals.

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• Understand what other professionals expect from a professional writer. • Access the necessary tools of the professional writer. • Assess the function of the literary agent in the publishing process. • Approach a literary agent with the intent of securing representation. • Make contact with individuals in the publishing community. • Sidestep the conventional wisdom that seems to propel many publishing houses and confuse so many beginning and intermediate writers. • Understand the need for developing your own voice, and identify how to do begin doing so. • Read published fiction and nonfiction in ways that will enhance your own creative performance.

These are things the professional writer needs to know; they are the necessary tools for a career in the publishing profession. The other courses you will take on your way to earning your Master’s in Professional Writing will focus primarily on the art of writing. This course stands apart from the rest of the MPW curriculum in its focus on the business of being a professional writer.

The instructor has been the editor­in­chief for literary, scholarly, general trade, and massmarket book publishers, as well as the executive editor for a range of magazines. His comments on your writing will be the equivalent of reader reports provided by publishing houses, initiating with you a sense of the type and manner of response and assistance publishers are likely to give authors.

THE COURSE BEGINS with an introduction and overview of the markets for fiction and nonfiction books as well as short­form fiction and nonfiction, followed by a presentation of the basic choices for the semester project. During the first class, you will be given copies of book proposals that actually produced contracts for publication. You will also be given an annotated list of 100 published and readily available short stories, each chosen by your instructor because it demonstrates one or more points of short­fiction dramatic technique. On the second week of class, you will be given a similar annotated list of 100 novels, selected by your instructor because they demonstrate the range of subject matter, point­of­view, and narrative approaches available in the novel. By the third week, you will be given an annotated list of works of nonfiction demonstrating the multifarious approaches of voice, narrative technique, and creative use of source material.

This three­week segment will be followed by a presentation of copyright and ownership concepts, an investigation of how writers earn income from their work, the types of publishers and publishing opportunities available, and what publishers look for in writers. Handouts during these classes will include copies of book contracts, royalty statements from hardcover and massmarket book publishers, letters of agreement between authors and publications and as well between authors and literary agents.

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This will be followed by a two­week focus on revision, followed by segments on how to format a manuscript, how to write a query letter, and how to keep records of your submissions. Subsequent materials will focus on work habits and necessary attendance at writers’ conferences and book shows.

Statement for Students with Disabilities If you need academic accommodations based on a disability, you must register with Disability Services and Programs (DSP) each semester. A letter of verification for approved accommodations can be obtained from DSP. Please be sure the letter is delivered to me as early in the semester as possible. DSP is located in STU 301 and is open 8:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. The phone number for DSP is (213) 740­0776.

Statement on Academic Integrity USC seeks to maintain an optimal learning environment. General principles of academic honesty include the concept of respect for the intellectual property of others, the expectation that individual work will be submitted unless otherwise allowed by an instructor, and the obligations both to protect one’s own academic work from misuse by others as well as to avoid using another’s work as one’s own. All students are expected to understand and abide by these principles. Scampus, the Student Guidebook, contains the Student Conduct Code in Section 11.00, while the recommended sanctions are located in Appendix A.: http://www.usc.edu/dept/publications/SCAMPUS/gov/. Students will be referred to the Office of Student Judicial Affairs and Community Standards for further review, should there be any suspicion of academic dishonesty. The Review process can be found at: http://www.usc.edu/student­affairs/SJACS/.

Course Requirements and Grades

Reading

During the course of the semester, you will be expected to read: • At least one Sunday New York Times Book Review section • At least one Sunday Washington Post Book World (Note: You can access this directly at www.washingtonpost.com. Under “Arts & Living,” you’ll see a heading for “Books.”) • At least one Sunday Los Angeles Times “Books” section

In addition to short fiction and essay texts provided by the instructor throughout

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the semester, you should read at least one book published within the past five years, and be prepared to discuss the impact of the book’s content, stylistic presentation, and audience.

Depending on the nature—fiction or nonfiction—of your semester project, you should have familiarity with either Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market 2007 (fiction) or Writer’s Market 2007 (nonfiction), both published by Writer’s Digest Books.

Important collateral/supplementary reading that will enhance the goals of the course and your own understanding of the world of publishing (but which are not required) include the following: • Poets & Writers • The Writer’s Chronicle (published by the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, and often available in the MPW office free of charge) • The Writer Magazine

The standard for usage convention—spelling, punctuation, abbreviations, compound words, etc.—in the world of book publishing (and in the MPW program) is The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, published by the University of Chicago Press. Magazines, journals, and periodicals often have their own style guides, but The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage and The Associated Press Stylebook are generally recognized as standards in serial publications. During the arc of this course, you should consult and use the appropriate style guides to the point where the instructor will not have to call use of convention issues to the students’ attention.

Semester Project Options

SEVENTY­FIVE PERCENT OF YOUR GRADE in this course will be based on your performance in one of four project options. (The other 25 percent of your grade assignment will be accounted for in the following section of the syllabus, “Additional Requirements.”)

The material you submit for this course cannot be material you are working on for another course. (See “Some Ground Rules” for further clarification.)

Choose one of the following four options for your semester project:

1. THE NOVEL­PRESENTATION OPTION: Prepare a competent presentation for a book­ length work of fiction that has some reasonable potential for being taken on by an established book publisher. Your presentation should contain:

(a) Your version of dust­jacket notes describing what the story is about (b) Enough actual text material to introduce most of the major characters and

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themes (at least 60 pages—15,000 words—of revised copy) (c) A two­ to three­paragraph statement to indicate how the book will develop (not to be confused with an outline; the statement is to be thematic) (d) A brief note identifying the type of novel yours is to be, as well as the names of at least two works credibly similar to yours (see following examples)

EXAMPLE: My novel is a suspense­thriller with mystery and law­enforcement background, focusing on aspects of comparative morality in law enforcement and among criminals. Mystic River by Dennis Lehane and North by Frederick Busch are two recently published novels similar in nature and intensity to my work.

EXAMPLE: My novel is a mainstream novel of discovery involving an unorthodox use of point of view in the manner of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones.

EXAMPLE: My mainstream novel dramatizes problems encountered by Native Americans as they move away from the reservation and traditional life, into urban areas and the attendant problems of assimilation and alienation. Louise Erdrich’s novel The Painted Drum addresses similar issues to mine.

As guidelines to consider when choosing to write a novel, I call your attention to some comments made by Jonathan Yardley, the esteemed columnist for the Washington Post and arguably one of the best reviewers working today. It is a longish quote but worth your attention because it details thematic and content mistakes that have been made by students, either in the innocence of not having read recent publications or in the naive belief that they will not be judged by the same standards as current professional writers:

The disdain with which American writers often view mainstream American society intensified as their work became remote and more inaccessible. Two other elements were in the mix. The first was the Vietnam War. Intellectuals and academics turned against the country en masse, as soon reflected in fiction that was disdainful of real and/or imagined American transgressions. . . . The second was the rise of university departments of creative writing. This began slowly during the 1950s but accelerated rapidly during the 1960s and 1970s as money flooded onto the campuses. . . . At first nobody much noticed, indeed some . . . assumed it was good for writers to have the financial support and security that college appointments provided. By the 1980s, though, a number of unanticipated repercussions had become apparent. One was that some writers became so caught up in departmental responsibilities and other distractions that they stopped writing. In many cases that was no great loss. Of far more seriousness was the isolation of writing­school students (and teachers) from real­ world America. The campus, for all its attractions, is a poor place to get any feel for life as most Americans live it, yet the campus had become not merely the training ground for ostensibly literary American writers but the only place they knew anything about. Apart, of course, from their own psyches. A cartoon in the New Yorker . . . said

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it all. Two people are in a bookstore. One stands in front of a section called “Self­ Improvement,” while the other is browsing “Self­Involvement.” That, exactly, summarizes the state of the art of literary fiction in these United States [now]. Much of it is written and constructed with technical facility, for technique is one thing the schools can teach. But it rarely is interested in anything except the inner lives and private experiences of the author­surrogates who are its central characters. It connects with itself but has little to say to the world outside, indeed makes surprisingly feeble efforts to connect with that world.

2. THE SHORT­STORY OPTION: Present at least three completed short stories for a minimum total of 60 pages of text in final draft. They may be thematic, as in, for example, Pam Huston’s Cowboys Are My Weakness, Colm Toibin’s Mothers and Sons, or Margaret Atwood’s Wilderness Tips, in which the locales or regions are the same but the characters differ.

You are also free to present a group of stories that have no apparent relationship to one another, as in, for example, The Whore’s Child by Richard Russo or Babylon and Other Stories by Alix Ohlin.

As guidelines for the kinds of stories to write, you’re well advised to consider the approach taken by Annie Proulx when she was chosen to edit The Best American Short Stories 1997. Even though her comments are ten years old, they continue to resonate with the accuracy of her vision. Listing a few of her reasons for winnowing out some of the stories she had to consider, Ms. Proulx said:

First person and present tense grew tiresome. Too many were formulaic: sensitive girls or sensitive ex­cons set against some ill, or old, or handicapped, or peculiar individual; mawkish urban and suburban love affairs; college students at introduction­to­life summer jobs; the sensitive watcher­child observing mother’s or father’s adultery; sensitive kids making fun of sensitive kids of different ethnicity. And the same images and characters and actions appeared over and over— university professor fathers (usually professors of history, literature, or the classics, never science or math), dead mothers (almost never were they university professors), heart attack victims, boys building airplanes, youths sitting in wrecked vehicles in which friends or relatives have died, aged couples featured in photographs taken decades earlier, many, many barking dogs, clove cigarettes, and banal, folksy one­liner advice given by old dad.

Ms. Proulx is saying these themes and approaches were tiresome nearly ten years ago, so imagine how they will affect editors now in 2007. Simply put, your writing time is best spent on projects that take dramatic and emotional risk, projects that are likely to cause you to discover something about yourself, projects that avoid thinly cloaked political or religious screed, projects that avoid cliché and/or political correctness.

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3. THE NONFICTION­BOOK OPTION: Prepare a proposal for a nonfiction book on a single subject, including

(a) A scope statement describing what the book is about. (b) A complete table of contents with at least a one­paragraph summary of each chapter. (c) At least 60 polished pages of text. (d) A statement explaining why this book is relevant now. (e) A marketing statement showing what other books on your subject are available. If there are no other books on this subject, you should say so and accordingly show why there ought to be now, with your book. Literary agents, editors, and your instructor will want to know why your book is better than previous books on the subject, why this is the time for such a work, and what resources you bring to the material that are not readily available elsewhere. As part of your marketing statement, you should also briefly describe what—in practical terms—your book will do for the reader (e.g., “This book will show the reader how to master the intricacies of Windows XP in one hour,” or, “This book will serve as a basic introduction to classical literature, bringing the reader from square one to upper­ division college­level awareness”).

Examples of recent nonfiction books you may wish to consult as models for your presentation are Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand; The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger; Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt’s remarkable saga of his mother; Wait Till Next Year and Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin; Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer; Longitude by Dava Sobel; and The Little Ice Age by Brian Fagan, as well as Mr. Fagan’s 2006 title, Fish on Friday.

4. THE NONFICTION COLLECTION OR OMNIBUS OPTION: Prepare a presentation for a series of essays, interviews, or material in some other obvious format, which are of publishable quality in themselves and which, when combined, produce a book that will have enough value to the artistic, scholarly, professional, or lay community that a credible readership may be projected for it. You’ll need to submit

(a) A scope statement describing the range and effect of the book, the intended audience, and any significant contributions you’ll bring to the work other than merely assembling the material (b) At least 60 pages of finished text (c) A complete table of contents (d) A one­paragraph summary for each of the intended chapters in the book

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Some Words about Your Nonfiction Options

In past years, most first­book authors achieved publication with a work of nonfiction that more often than not returned enough profit or showed enough promise to cause a publisher to take a gamble on a promising work of fiction from the author. This is no longer the case today. True enough, more books are being published than ever before, but the readership—the number of persons buying and reading books—has not notably increased. Unless a work of nonfiction has some clearly demonstrated potential, or unless the author has some identifiable cachet, publishers are going to be skeptical in their assessment of its future in bookstores. In keeping with this trend, your instructor will be less likely to approve a nonfiction project unless he can see or is made to see the clear merit to some segment of society. Even then, you should be aware that most book publishers are more disinclined to read nonfiction proposals all the way through, much less publish the work. The editor­in­ chief of one book­publishing house, Basic Books, has estimated for your instructor that his firm rejects about 29 of 30 book proposals submitted by serious authors, including authors he has previously published. Based on your instructor’s experience with the present marketplace, as well as his past experiences in dealing with nonfiction proposals for this class—and their record of securing literary agent representation or publication—your chances of having a fiction project approved are three out of five. Your chances of approval on a nonfiction project are one in ten. This is not meant to discourage you from putting your best efforts into a work of nonfiction; it is meant to make you aware of the inherent qualities of content, as well as excellence in execution, necessary to persuade a literary agent and, ultimately, the right publisher to support your efforts.

WHICHEVER YOUR CHOICE for semester project, you must declare it in writing by the third meeting of the class, January29, 2008. Examples of written declaration:

My semester project for the class will be a science­fiction novel about the potential hazards of fish farming, set at the Institution of Oceanography, Woods Hole, Mass., at a more or less contemporary time.

My semester project will be an interlinked series of short stories, each from a differing point of view among a group of men who have played cards with one another on a weekly basis for nearly twenty­five years.

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My semester project will be a book­length work of nonfiction, investigating the relevant details of the world as it moves out of the Ice Age and into the Age of Global Warming.

My semester project will be a book­length work of nonfiction comparing via interviews the effects writers and artists who teach in colleges and universities feel their teaching experiences have had on their artistic work.

You will be asked to give a brief verbal summary of your written declaration in class. Your instructor, who wants this assignment to develop into a book­contract arrangement for you, reserves the right to ask for some show of clarification or to veto the project and send you back to the drawing board if he believes your proposal is weak, unrealistic, overly derivative, or, if your project is fiction, there seems to be a paucity of story.

If you opt for the novel or the book­length nonfiction narrative, you must by the tenth meeting of the class, March 18, 2008, turn in a list of at least five book publishers who are legitimate, potential sources for taking on your work, giving a brief rationale for each choice.

If you select the short­story or essay (omnibus) options, you must turn in by March 18, 2008, a list of at least five serial publications where your work has a reasonable chance of appearing. You are encouraged but not required to extend this list to a number of book publishers who would take on a collection of your shorter works.

You are required to observe these dates at pain of the loss of a half grade (A becomes A–; A– becomes B+, etc.).

The completed semester project is due in the instructor’s hands on or before Tuesday, April 22, 2008. This deadline allows the instructor time to read your assignment before grades are due according to departmental and university requirements. Plan accordingly. NB: If you are taking three writing classes this semester, there is an overwhelming probability that you will be late turning in one or more assignments for the various classes.

Additional Requirements

SEVENTY­FIVE PERCENT OF YOUR COURSE GRADE will be based on your semester project (see the preceding explanation of your options). The remaining 25 percent of your course grade is covered in this section.

TEN PERCENT OF YOUR COURSE GRADE will be based on your performance on the following assignment:

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1. Choose any book­length work of fiction or nonfiction on the current New York Times bestseller list, or choose any short story or essay published in a journal, newspaper, or periodical within the past 12 months. 2. Photocopy and edit the first four pages, removing material you think unnecessary, distracting, or lacking grace in presentation—suggesting a different order of development if appropriate, calling for added material and development as you deem appropriate. 3. Turn in your edited four pages any time between March 4 and April 8 (no earlier than March 4, no later than April 8).

THE REMAINING FIFTEEN PERCENT OF YOUR COURSE GRADE will be based on your participation in class in response to the information presented you and your performance and originality in the editing and evaluation exercises.

This is not a workshop course. It is arguable that too much workshopping within a writing program may produce a homogenous voice. This course is intended as an interactive exchange of information, which involves your response to material presented in lectures and your performance in responding to the temporal assignments.

How, then, do you respond? Some possibilities:

• Ask intelligent questions. • Bring in materials from publishing/publisher/author­related Web sites and discuss them. • Discuss the usefulness to a writer of recent titles you’ve read or read about. • Join the discussion of published fiction and nonfiction materials the instructor will ask you to read during the semester. • Bring to class and discuss materials from major book­review sources that strike you as relevant to a career in writing and publishing or indicative of some value to developing writers. • Bring to class and/or discuss materials related to new developments in publishing, distribution, bookstore sales, or electronic publishing. • Bring to class and/or discuss calls for manuscript submissions or publications in which marketing information plays a major part. • Bring to class and/or discuss some work you have read recently that embodies, illustrates, or somehow amplifies craft­related topics currently under investigation in the class. For example, you may find an interview with an author in which that author’s process of revision is discussed. Such material will undoubtedly amplify the detailed attention we’ll be paying to revision in this course.

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Words of Advice about the Assignment and Your Grade

The standard for assigning the course grade is based on the instructor’s experience over more than 30 years as an editor and consultant for book publishers, as a consultant to literary agents, as a reviewer of books for major periodicals, as editor of a literary journal, as a writer, and on his assessment of how your work would fare in the literary marketplace among such professional readers as editors, literary agents, reviewers, and librarians. Your instructor’s basic approach as he looks at your work is to wonder what the response will be from literary agents and editors who focus on the type of material you chose for your project. He will also tend to measure your proposal against books currently being published or being accepted for publication. Given his need to assign a letter grade for all work done in the class, your instructor thinks of himself as a realistic grader rather than easy or difficult. He has no qualms about assigning the grade of A to an entire class and, indeed, has done so. If he is not convinced your work will do well in the world of books, journals, magazines, and other periodical publications, your instructor will express his misgivings to you in personal consultation, by memo, and by editorial commentary supplementing the work you submit. Accordingly, a grade of A– expresses the instructor’s belief that your project has a realistic expectation for publication, but may need some work. Grade B+ could still be in the running for publication but needs more work, attention to revision details, and substance. Grade B means good, solid work, well worth your effort to pursue additional revision. It expresses the instructor’s belief that you’re onto a nice idea or ideas and are at the close­but­no­cigar level. Grade B– means wake­up call; you need to read more contemporary material. Take a closer look at the books, journals, and magazines being published in today’s literary and commercial venues. A grade of B– is a direct suggestion that you look deeper into yourself for clues, responses, and ideas. Grade C means get with the program. Yes, sometimes a semester’s work merits the unequivocal grade of A, but the grade of A is not a guarantee of publication; the grade of A– is not an indication that there is something wrong with the work or, indeed, the student’s technique.

This assignment sounds easier than it really is. “I’m going to write a book proposal. Hey, no prob. Piece of cake.” As a consequence, you will be tempted to let it slide until you finish the screenplay or sonnet cycle you have in the works. Then, in late October or into November, you’ll hope to get it all done with some serious all­nighters, in the remaining days of the semester, and then, failing that, pull some project in from another course or, worse still, rely on some material that got you good grades in the undergraduate level. What a waste of your time, energy, and money! Neither of these approaches is very sound,

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nor is the last­minute attempt at plea bargaining. Your instructor has had more reason to assign course grades of B+ or lower when there have been less than two submissions of material during the arc of the semester. It is also your instructor’s experience that this assignment seems abundantly clear after one or two readings of the syllabus. Then, as September progresses into October and, suddenly, the instructor begins to ask you for a look at some of your work, the assignment becomes ambiguous and in need of clarification. “I don’t understand the assignment.” Or, “What do you really mean by sixty pages?” Or the more prosaic, “Will I be graded down if I only turn in fifty­nine pages?” and onward toward “Is it all right if I turn in some pages I’m working on for other instructors?” No, it is not all right. Because he wants to provide some semblance of a positive contribution to your work, your instructor hopes to see material from you during the arc of the course, perhaps to offer suggestions, perhaps merely to offer encouragement, but certainly in hopes of seeing that you don’t get caught up in a crisis of performance. Your instructor will be flexible, even indulgent through mid­September, but NB, if you have not turned in any material, however first­draft its substance, by February 19, you will lose a half­grade so that A­level work becomes A–, A– work becomes B+, and on down the scale. You must submit material that will be part of your semester project at least twice during the semester; there is no maximum to the amount of material you can submit. If you are interested in getting the most for your—or Sallie Mae’s—money, you would be well advised to turn in as much material throughout the course of the semester as you possibly can. The more you submit, the more instructor feedback you get. The grade Incomplete cannot be assign by the instructor without authorization to do so from the department chair. If you believe you have a valid reason to apply for a grade of Incomplete, it is your responsibility to initiate and complete the relevant paperwork, which must be presented to the instructor by the penultimate meeting of the class, which, in this case is April 22, 2008. If circumstances force you to apply for the grade Incomplete, you must follow university guidelines for removing it. You will lose half a grade, meaning the highest grade you can hope for is A–. Unless your authorization for a grade of Incomplete is in the instructor’s hands by the penultimate meeting of the class, there is a fifty­percent probability that you will be assigned the grade of F. There are two points to be made here: (a) If you are taking more than two writing courses simultaneously, there is an overwhelming potential for you to be late getting your assignments in on time, and (b) every day that elapses beyond April 22 without your turning in your final project for this course increases your potential for having to deal with university bureaucracy.

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Some Ground Rules

FORMAT FOR SUBMISSIONS: With the exception of the declaration of semester project and the editing assignment, material must be submitted in double­spaced print form on an 8½ x 11 sheet printed on one side. As in the publishing world, single­spaced material turned in for this class will be returned unread. While the semester project is to be submitted in printed form, you may e­mail incremental submissions to the instructor in Microsoft Word, PDF, or RTF format.

You must follow the appropriate style guide for your work. If, after March 25, your instructor notices more than five errors in spelling, grammar, usage, or syntax, or if the material is presented in any format other than that outlined in the preceding paragraph, your instructor will return the material to you unread.

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR this course cannot be material you develop in another course you are taking concurrently. Don’t even ask; doing so will automatically lower your grade one­half grade. If you try to move on with material you developed in a course you took earlier, you stand the risk of learning one of the great truths relating to publishing: There is no uniform code of editorial standards. Although editors may well agree on the worth of a project and bid against one another to bring an author to contract, they just as frequently disagree. The door opens on your potential crisis of identity if you try to present a project for this class on which you were afforded encouragement and given a grade of A or A–, only to have your current instructor fail to resonate to its possibilities. (It also has happened that material developed in this class did not elicit encouragement in others and, indeed, has elicited negative responses.)

This is not a workshop class: a large part of it will be interactive lecture, with you free to interrupt the instructor for relevant questions, clarifications, or relevant disagreement with materials and concepts being presented. The instructor has a good deal of material of varying types to present. These cannot fit into a workshop situation. Your opinions are important and should be expressed. You will be asked during the arc of the semester to bring in examples of published materials you especially liked or disliked and to expand on why you arrived at that judgment. (See “Additional Requirements,” earlier.)

Unless there are unforeseen last­minute cancellations, some class meetings will center on guests chosen for their potential to enhance your literary understanding and the future deployment of your literary energies. Some class sessions will be given over to your discussions of published works of long­ and short­form fiction as well as nonfiction work your instructor will give you to read.

IN THE MPW PROGRAM as well as The Writing Life after you receive your degree, some

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ideas and projects lose their initial splendor. Every writer has the literary equivalent of a graveyard somewhere in the file drawers or the mysterious reaches of the computer hard drive. Projects should always carry with them some kind of energizing force, whether that force is based on revenge, altruism, pure fun, or the energy of creative engagement.

If the concept you have chosen for your semester project in this class loses its attractiveness to you by late February or thereabouts, you are wise to consider dropping it. You may accordingly submit plans for another project, but the due dates and the page­ length standards still obtain, and you may not use the pages done on the abandoned project to count toward the 60­page text requirement.

YOUR PRESENCE IN CLASS assures you exposure to concepts and materials vital to your writing career. After two absences, the instructor may lower your earned grade by half a point. Three absences will lower your grade by a full point.

YOU WILL BE GIVEN verbal and written commentary during the course of the semester on materials you turn in to the instructor.

YOU SHOULD NOT turn in your only copy of a manuscript nor should you ever submit to a literary agent or publisher your only copy of text without taking ample steps toward backing up the work in some photocopied or word processing format or, for that matter, both.

COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS ON the semester project are not acceptable. Nor is it acceptable for you to propose a project in which you are acting as a ghost writer or amanuensis, or in an as­told­to capacity for some individual or organization that control a body of information that you may deem to be publishable but for which you cannot be given copyright. Your project for this course must be something you have originated and for which you could secure copyright.

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Calendar of Due Dates

January 29: Written statement of your chosen semester project due, along with a brief summary of the statement presented orally in class.

March 4: First date on which you may submit editing assignment.

February 19: Date by which you must begin submitting material from your semester project.

March 18: If you are working on a novel or book­length nonfiction narrative, turn in a list of at least five book publishers who are legitimate, potential sources for taking on your work, giving a brief rationale for each choice. If you are working on a short­story or essay (omnibus) project, turn in a list of at least five serial publications where your work has a reasonable chance of appearing. You are encouraged but not required to extend this list to a number of book publishers who would take on a collection of your shorter works.

March 25: Date after which all assignments submitted will be returned to you unread beyond the point where your instructor notices more than five errors in spelling, grammar, usage, or syntax, or if the material is presented in any format other than double­spaced

April 8: Final date by which you must submit editing assignment.

April 22: If you have a valid reason to take an Incomplete in the course, deadline by which you must complete relevant paperwork.

April 22: Completed semester project due.

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