Creative Expression in Writing (EGL 32 W) - Preliminary Syllabus Instructor: Brittany Perham Term: Fall 2015 Required Materials 1. Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present, edited by David Lehman ISBN-13: 978-0743243506 Available at Powell’s Books here: GAPP Available at Amazon.com here: GAPP 2. Short Takes: Brief Encounters with Contemporary Nonfiction, edited by Judith Kitchen ISBN-13: 978-0393326000 Available at Powell’s Books here: Short Takes Available at Amazon.com here: Short Takes 3. Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories, edited by Robert Shepard & James Thomas ISBN-13: 978-0879052652 Available at Powell’s Books here: Sudden Fiction Available at Amazon.com here: Sudden Fiction 4. Online reading (posted online in the form of links) 5. Handouts (posted online in the form of .pdf files) The Online Community The fabulous thing about the Online Writers’ Studio is that it brings together like-minded people from all over the world. Together we will form a community of writers who will challenge and support each other. This is your class. Grading Most students enroll in this course under the non-graded (NGR) or the Credit/No Credit (i.e. pass/fail) options. If you would prefer to be graded, or if you must receive a letter grade to meet the requirements of your academic program, participation will serve as the basis of your grade. In order to receive an A, you must turn in all three pieces of writing for workshop, fulfill your responsibilities as workshop member, and participate thoughtfully in class discussion. If you complete less than 60% of the course work on time, you will receive an F. Writing Exercises and Workshop Pieces This class is designed to help you develop and maintain a personal creative writing practice by encouraging you to generate lots of new and exciting writing over the course of ten weeks. To this end, you’ll experiment widely with short forms: flash fiction, flash nonfiction, and lineated poems. As you try these forms out, you’ll be encouraged to take new risks in your work. Each week, I will provide you with writing exercises to help guide you. After ten weeks, you will come away with nine new drafts generated by these writing exercises. You’ll be encouraged to post some of these exercises so that your fellow class members might read your work. 1 You will also have the opportunity to post three pieces of writing for a full workshop. These pieces will be drawn from the writing exercises you do over the course of our ten weeks together. You’ll be able to decide which pieces you want to post for these workshops; you’ll be free to post either your lineated poems or your short prose pieces. These three pieces will each receive a full and thoughtful critique from me and from the other workshop members. Reading Reading is maybe the single most important part of a writer’s training. This course asks you to practice reading as a writer, since this will ultimately strengthen your own work. You will be encouraged to bring together your emotional side (How does this make me feel?) with your analytical side (What formal choices has the writer made that could explain the way I’m feeling?). Each week, we’ll be reading together several assigned pieces that I’ve drawn from our anthologies (and a few exterior sources); you’ll also be reading widely in the anthologies on your own. This class is about establishing and sustaining a personal creative practice, and part of this practice is about establishing a personal reading practice. To this end, we’ll be shaping our reading list together. Zoom Office Hours Periodically, I will hold office hours via Zoom Chat. These office hours are entirely optional. You are welcome and encouraged to drop in and ask questions. Creativity Journals Keeping a creativity journal is a great way to strengthen your own creative practice in a daily and ongoing way. Each week, I will be providing you with a new journaling prompt. This is meant to be something that will take only 2-3 minutes of your time each day. These journals are for you; I will not be grading them in any way. Weekly Class Schedule ***The source for each reading is listed in parenthesis. “GAPP” refers to Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present, edited by David Lehman; “Short Takes” refers to Short Takes: Brief Encounters with Contemporary Nonfiction, edited by Judith Kitchen; “Sudden Fiction” refers to Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories, edited by Robert Shepard and James Thomas. Some readings will be posted as .pdf files or will be found online (links provided). WEEK 1: CREATIVITY AND CREATIVE PRACTICE What is creativity? What does it mean to develop and maintain a personal creative practice? How do we go about doing it? ---Introductions & Creative Autobiography ---Becoming familiar with the online platform ---Begin Creativity Journals ---Assignment: Writing Exercise 1 2 Readings: On Creating the Speaker/Self in Writing: Mark Strand, “In the Privacy of Home” (GAPP) Ron Carlson, “Disclaimer” (Short Takes) Michael Martone, “Contributor’s Note” (Short Takes) On Creativity: Shelley Carson, “Brainsets and the Creative Process” (PDF) On Writing in Short Prose Forms: from Sudden Fiction: “Afterwords: A Practicum” p. 248-252 (Sudden Fiction) WEEK 2: BECOMING A PERSON ON WHOM NOTHING IS LOST How is creativity a response to the world as it is? How can we become observers of both the internal world and the external world? How can concrete language and specific, revealing details create an experience for the reader? ---Due: Writing Exercise 1 ---Assignment: Writing Exercise 2 ---Creativity Journal: 7 Days of Observations Readings: Joanne Beard, “Behind the Screen” (Short Takes) Stephen Corey, “Experiencing” (Short Takes) Stephen Kuusisto, “Night Song” (Short Takes) Kathleen Dean Moore, “Muskgrass Chara” (Short Takes) H.E. Francisc, “Sitting” (Sudden Fiction) Elizabeth Tallent, “No One’s a Mystery” (Sudden Fiction) A Selection of Haikus (PDF) Some descriptions of faces (PDF) WEEK 3: THE LAND OF THE FIGURATIVE How does writing transcend the actual? What’s the difference between what is “real” and what is “true”? How do we enter into the metaphorical world? ---Due: Writing Exercise 2 ---Assignment: Writing Exercise 3 ---Creativity Journal: 7 Days of Metaphor Making 3 Readings: Robert Bly, “Warning to the Reader” (GAPP) Amy Gerstler, “Bitter Angel” (GAPP) W.S. Merwin, “Our Jailer,” and “The Lonely Child” (GAPP) Jean Toomer, “Calling Jesus” (GAPP) Salmun Rushdie, “Water’s Edge” (Short Takes) Lydia Davis, “The Sock” (Sudden Fiction) Jane Anne Phillips, “Blind Girls” (Sudden Fiction) Aloysius Bertrand “Five Fingers of the Hand” (http://www.theadirondackreview.com/aloysiusbertrand.html) (--scroll down the page to find this one!) Jack Gilbert, “Michiko Dead” (http://www.vqronline.org/michiko-dead) Sharon Olds, “Feared Drowned” (http://vegancinephile.com/2012/09/08/poem-of-the-week-feared-drowned- by-sharon-olds/) Jean Toomer, “Portrait in Georgia” (http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/portrait-georgia) WEEK 4: FAILURE, DIFFICULTY, & SHAME and EXPERIMENTS IN FORM What are we afraid of in our creative practices? How can accidents and failure be productive? How does trial and error with various forms strengthen our creative process? Why might experimenting with existing forms be useful to us as we worry about failure? How might using these types of forms allow us to treat difficult subject matter like shame and fear? ---Due: Writing Exercise 3 ---Assignment: Writing Exercise 4 ---Creativity Journal: 7 Days of Failure Readings for Failure, Difficulty, & Shame: Robert Hass, “A Story About the Body” (GAPP) Joe Mackall, “Words of My Youth” (Short Takes) Stuart Dybeck, “Confession” (Short Takes) Lynda Barry, “Two Questions” (PDF) Padgett Powell, “A Gentleman’s C” (http://biblioklept.org/2010/11/26/a-gentlemans-c-padgett-powell/) Readings for Experiments in Form: Lucas Cooper, “Class Notes” (Sudden Fiction) Francois Camoin, “Things I Did to Make It Possible” (Sudden Fiction) Jack Matthews, “A Questionnaire for Rudolph Gordon” (Sudden Fiction) Chet Williamson, “The Personal Touch” (Sudden Fiction) 4 Claudia Rankine, “Intermission in Four Acts” (GAPP) James Richardson, “Vectors: 36 Aphorism” (GAPP) Joe Wenderoth, “12 Epistles from Letters to Wendy’s” (GAPP) Tyronne Williams, “Cold Calls” (GAPP) George Saunders, “I Can Speak!” (http://revision30.wordpress.com/category/stories-the-nick-and-jay-revision- project/george-saunders-i-can-speak/) WEEK 5: ALTERNATE AND LYRIC STRATEGIES What are the many ways to tell a story? What does “telling a story” mean? How do we make meaning in new and associative ways? How do we write a lyric essay or story? ---Workshop 1A ---Due: Writing Exercise 4 ---Assignment: Writing Exercise 5 ---Journals: 7 Forms in 7 Days Readings: Margaret Atwood, “Women’s Novels” (GAPP) Elizabeth Bishop, “12 O’Clock News” (GAPP) Robert Bly, “The Hockey Poem” (GAPP) Gertrude Stein, “22 Objects from Tender Buttons” (GAPP) Anne Waldman, “Stereo” (GAPP) T.C. Boyle, “The Hit Man” (Sudden Fiction) Gordon Lish, “The Merry Chase” (Sudden Fiction) Jane Martin, “Twirler” (Sudden Fiction) Kim Barnes, “Work” (Short Takes) Marvin Bell, “Four” (Short Takes) James Galvin, “A Second Time” (Short Takes) M.J. Iuppa, “Daylight Savings Time” (Short Takes) Dinty Moore, “Son of Mr. Green Jeans” (Short Takes) Luc Sante, “The Unknown Soldier” (Short Takes) Michael Ondaatje, “7 or 8 Things I Know About Her” http://exceptindreams.livejournal.com/289600.html Margaret Atwood, “Happy Endings” (http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~rebeccal/lit/238f11/pdfs/HappyEndings_Atwo