Update: Feedback + grade on Best Short Essay

2:30 pm, 12.13.13:  I have sent most of these out (mostly mislabeled as Blog 17, but then nobody is perfect).  I have another appointment now, but everyone will have feedback by the end of the day.

12.11 Rehearsal for reading and creating portfolios

During the first half of class you worked in groups to practice your introduction to your reading, and to time your presentation.  Everyone has about 10 minutes to read (range = 8-12).  If you are planning to read your short pieces - you will want to read a selection of short pieces.  You are welcom to read material from your journal, or CNF writing you have worked on. It doesn't need to be something you have already shared for class.

Portfolios
Each of you sent me the link to your portfolio, and the rest of class was primarily a workshop on setting up this portfolio using google.sites.

Introductory essay:  We spent some time talking about what to write in the introductory essay.  The purpose of this essay is to "reflect on what you worked on this term - your accomplishments and chalenges."  It will provide a place for you to "think about where you are as a writer - and where you want to go."

In our discussion we listed some of what we did during the semester, and came up with a list that looked like this.
Defined CNF - through reading "definitions" and analyzing model essays

Journaling (+ reading from journals).  The journal prompts walked you through different methods for "brainstorming" and included indirect methods, ways to get at "unconscious" materials, and some work on "jourmal mining" where you analyzed (looked for patterns) in your writing as a way to "see" what you were interested in.  Journaling also included work on description.

Discussion of CNF author's relationships to truth

Rhetroical analysis (of publication venues, of how CNF essays work

Conferences and peer workshops

AND you wrote 4 drafts and revised your drafts in response to feedback.

Those are some of the activities you might reflect on, and choose to take forward into your writing practice/identity, or not.


Reading  your work.
We will be meeting on East Campus, in Room 203 from 4:00 to 8:00.  The reading will begin at 4:45 or as soon as everyone arrives.   I will be there around 4 to set up.  We will hang out and eat until everyone is there.  Then we will read.  I passed around a sign up sheet (to set up the order) and it is listed below.  If any of you are really unhappy with your spot - let me know, and we will see if we can shuffle things around a little.

Rafael,
Maria
Alessia
Courtney
Sara
Filip
Robert
David
Kristi
Danielle
Nikki
Tobey
Angelica
Kristen

Grades
Our last day of class is Wednesday, I hope to be able to read through all your work and calculate your grades and send you an email with the details by or before Saturday, December 21. The grades will be assigned as listed on the syllabus and discussed in class.  If you agree with the calculation, you do not need to reply, but if you disagree with the way the grade was assigned, or if I made a mistake, you should be in touch with me so we can come to an agreement.  I will post either the grade we settled on (if I hear from you), or the grade on the grade sheet (if I do not), on Monday, Dec 23.

This has been a wonderful class for me. Thank you for your good participation and for your wonderful writing!   See you next week for the reading.

12.4 Presentations on Publication Venues + what we will do next week

Your presentations this evening were well done - and useful.  Each of you should have several possibilities for places to send your writing.  As many of your observed, these venues are looking for work with the features you have been working on this semester.  So give it a try!

Come to class next week prepared to practice the material you will read at our end of year reading/party.  I have reserved East Campus, Room 203, from 4:00 to 8:00.  We will set up, mill around, and eat food beginning at 4, and the reading will begin at 4:45.  Plan on reading for about 10 minutes.  You do not need to read a piece that you wrote for this class, but I am hoping you will read creative nonfiction.  If you are going to read one of your very short pieces, maybe read two or more.  We will create a sign up sheet next week.

We will continue to work on the refreshment list.  So far we have commitments for the following.

Tobey: cookies
Kristi: Spinach Dip & Veggies
Kristen: Dessert
Robert: Soda
Angelica: Plastic plates & Chips
Maria: Plastic Cups & Napkins
Alessia: Dessert (cookies) and Iced tea
Sally: something hearty

During your rehearsal, work on your introduction and your timing.

After rehearsal, we will use the rest of the class to work on setting up the portfolio + drafting the reflective writing on the opening page.

For next week:
Blog 14: Final/revised short essay

Rhetorical Analyses of Publication Venues + process narratives

We spent the first part of class going through the publication venues and creating a class list of who would present on which venue.

Just to make this clear: these will be informal presentations.  I am not looking for a powerpoint and handouts.  Rather: you will post an analysis of your chosen publication venue on your blog.  This analysis will hit the points on the assignment sheet.  Basically, your writing on the blog should include three things:

1.  The title of your journal with an embedded link so your classmates can click around the site as you talk.

2. A discussion of the audience, purpose, form expectations for CNF essays published in you journal.  You do not need to write plot summaries of all the essays you read.  Rather, you should give a kind of summary of the features of the essays you read (like we did in class 11.13 for Brevity).  Characterize the formal features (there may be several different forms, but give your assessment of what the "preferred" forms are), the voice within the narratives, the subject matter, the "ideology" (belief systems these essays seem to support); their "aesthetic"=> and so on (the features listed on the handout). 

3. A list of "nuts & bolts" kinds of information which someone interested in submitting to your journal will need to know (again, this list is on the handout).  In addition to talking through these requirements (and writing them on your blog), it would be a good idea to embed links for classmates - so they can go directly to the pages/sections where this information is available.

About choosing a journal to revue:  Choose a journal which has a robust interest in publishing CNF.  If the journal primarily publishes fiction or poetry and only one or two pieces of CNF per issue/per year, you should probably choose a different venue. 

List so far (if you want to change your venue - send me an email and I will revise).

Alessia   Not yet decided

Angelica  Better Magazine

Courtney  South Loup Review

Danielle Hippocampus Magazine

Dave Riverteeth

Filip Fourth Genre

Kristen Switchback

Kristi The Brooklyner

Maria Bellingham Review

Nikki Blue Mesa

Rafael   Arcadia

Robert WLA Journal

Sara Narrative Magazine

Tobey Sweet

 

We spent the last part of class discussing the process narratives.  As I said, you will not be required to write a process narrative essay - just a process narrative blog post.  We did not get to pull together your groups' thoughts about what these narratives do (you were asked to notice the different observations/moves the writers made/what parts of the writing process they focused on), how hey work, and how they are CNF. 

I also showed you the sample portfolio created through Google.sites: Chandler Portfolio. 

For next class:

We will begin class with a blitz discussion of how  process narratives work.  Then you will give your presentations on publication venues.  At the end of class you will have time to work on your portfolio.  Come to class with questions about google.sites, if you have them.

Blog 12:  Draft short essay 2 (due around TG so I can return your work with comments).

Blog 13: Publication venue handout

Have a happy Thanksgiving and see you in two weeks!

Sample Portfolio

Chandler Portfolio

Just a note

I am reading through your short drafts and I am not kidding, I really do think your writing is better than a lot of what we summed up for the publication venue discussion.  You are wonderful writers.  What a pleasure to read these essays!

11.13 Using description, and rhetorical analysis of publications

Discussion of famous descriptions
In the four descriptions, we idenitified a number of different "moves" the writers made to get the reader to read through the literal description as a way to evoke a feeling, idea or sense of "the way things are" in the story.  In the Joyce excerpt from "The Dead," we noticed the repeated military references, so that the description of the food on the table also became suggestive of two armies staged for a battle.  The extended references to food and objects in terms of military descriptions, whether the reader picked up on it consciously or not, evoked a sense of impending confrontation.

In the excerpt from "Prue" by Monroe, we noted the language construction of "denial" - all the insistence of what the act "was not" => as if the main character's rebellion and resistance were built into the grammatical structures of the description.  We also noticed the use of symbolic objects (of addiction), the candy and the tobacco, and the significance of the action portrayed (possession without consent).

In Ozick's "Existing Things,"  we noted the incongruence of the poetic/symbollic language/metaphors associated with the description of the mica ("hypnotic semaphores signaling eeriness out of the ground") and the heat, and the light, as compared with the more straight-forward descriptive language for other objects.  We also noticed the empty street, the absence of adults - the aloneness of the narrator in the presence of her realization - so that the physical correlate of the realization paralleled the sense of being "in your head with a big realization".

Finally, Dybek's "Thread," the story about his loss of faith, as in the other stories, also seemed to make the objects take on double signification = both with their literal meanings and with symbolic meanings.  The act of "strangling" his finger, weighing the thread, tasting it for "gold" were all suggestive of parallel meanings in terms of his relationships to his beliefs.

You then wrote some descriptions with the material you brought to class - and they were wonderful.  You were all working with the ideas/writerly moves from our past couple of weeks, and I am looking forward to see how these in-class writing exercises are morphing your writing!

Rhetorical analysis of writing venues.  We talked through the assignment sheet for the analysis of a writing venue assignment - and you didn't seem to have many questions so I am guessing you have a good first approximation of what is expected.  We spent the last 15 minutes of class clicking through the essays in the last issue of Brevity and classifying them in terms of the features listed on the assignment sheet.  We looked for patterns in the publication's preferences for subject material, form, "mindsets" or value systems that shape the "take" or message embedded in the material, genre (really sub-genres of CNF), and so on. 

Our discussion suggested that Brevity's audience was interested short CNF that was a kind of conservative, literary, personal reflective essay.  In this case, conservative means that readers are interested in reading form as a feature of content in a way where form is central and varied  but there is nothing really edgy or experimental about the forms used in this journal (they were mostly "traditional" variations on narrative = segments, stream of consciousness, metaphoric, letter etc.)  The texts were literary in that they mostly complied with the definitions by Lott & Gutkind in terms of their earnestness/seriousness in terms of subject matter, were reflective and presented a "realization" (circling around a question/contemplation/representation).   The subject material was serious =difficult, striking "revelatory" experiences portrayed through many of the descriptive moves we analyzed this evening. 

For next week
Read:  Zion, 402+ On writing Zion, 410 by Stanton,  Pope, Teacher training, 388, Composing 'Teacher training'" 394.

Blog 11:  Short essay 2 brainstorming

Also, look through the list of possible venues for CNF.
In addition to the link posted to the right, you might want to check out:
Fifty (plus) journals that publish CNF
Poets & Writer's Search Engine for publication venues (you can enter your own search terms)

Come to class with 3-4 possibilities for your analysis of a publication venue.  We will work on figuring out who will present on which venue, and get started on your handouts for your presentations in class.

During the second part of class we will talk about setting up your portfolio and creating your reflective/craft essay (where you write about your writing process/what you learned about writing I this course).


 

11.13 Revised calendar

W Nov 13

Tonight=> workshop on using description + rhetorical analysis of publication venues

Read:  Zion, 402+ On writing Zion, 410 by Stanton,  Pope, Teacher training, 388, Composing 'Teacher training'" 394.

Blog 11:  Short essay 2 brainstorming

 

Week 12 

W Nov 20  

Work on publication venue assignment

Presentation on craft essays + porfolio

Blog 12:  Draft short essay 2

 

Week 13 

W  Nov 28 No Class = Thanksgiving

 

Blog 13: Publication venue handout

 

Week 14

W Dec 4

Publication venue presentations

in-class workshop on revision + portfolio

Read:  TBA

Blog 14: draft craft essay + any essay you would like to work on for revision

 

Week 15

W Dec 11 Due: Revised best short essay

in-class create portfolio

practice for reading

Blog 15: Best essay revised

 

Week 16 

W Dec 18  Final portfolio due

Reading

Famous descriptions

1.  A fat brown goose, lay at one end of the table and at the other end, on a bed of creased paper strewn with sprigs of parsley, lay a great ham, stripped of its outer skin and peppered over with crust crumbs, a neat paper frill round its shin and beside this was a round of spiced beef.  Between these rival ends ran parallel lines of side-dishes: two little minsters of jelly, red and yellow: a shallow dish full of blocks of blancmange and red jam, a large green leaf-shaped dish with a stalk-shaped handle, on which lay bunches of purple raisins and peeled almonds, a companion dish on which lay a solid rectangle of Smyrna figs, a dish of custard topped with grated nutmeg, a small bowl full of chocolates and sweets wrapped in gold and silver papers and a glass vase in which stood some tall celery stalks.  In the centre of the table there stood, as sentries to a fruit-stand which upheld a pyramid of oranges and American apples, two squat old-fashioned decanters of cut glass, one containing port and the other dark sherry. On the closed square piano a pudding in a huge yellow dish lay in waiting and behind it were three squads of bottles of stout and ale and minerals, drawn up according to the colours of their uniforms, the first two black, with brown and red labels, the third ad smallest squad white, with transverse green sashes.



2.  She doesn't mention that the next morning she picked up one of Gordon's cufflinks from his dresser. The cufflinks are made of amber and he bought them in Russia, on the holiday he and wife took when thy got back together again. They look like squares of candy, golden, translucent, and this one warms quickly in her hand.  She drops it into the pocket of her jacket.  Taking one is not a real theft.  It could be a reminder, and an intimate prank, a piece of nonsense.
//
When she gets home she puts the cufflink in an old tobacco tin. The children bought this tobacco tin in a junk shop years ago, and gave it to here for a present.  She used to smoke, in those days, and the children were worried about her, so they gave her this tin full of toffees, jelly beans, and gumdrops, with a note saying, "Please get fat instead." That was for her birthday. Now the tin has in it several things besides the cufflink-- all small things, not of great value but not worthless, either.  A little enameled dish, a sterling-silver spoon for salt, a crystal fish.  These are not sentimental keepsakes.  She never looks at them, and often forgets what he has there. T hey are not booty, they don't have ritualistic significance.  she does not take something every time she goes to Gordon's hous, or every time she stays over, or to mark what she might call memorable visits.  She just takes something, every now and then, and puts it away in the dark of the old tobacco tin, and more or less forgets about it.


3. The lots are empty because no one builds on them.  It is the middle of the summer in the middle of the Depression. I am alone under a slow molasses sun, staring at the little chips of light flashing at my feet. Up and down the whole length of the street there is no one, not a single grownup, and certainly, in that sparse time, no other child.  There is only myself and these hypnotic semaphores signaling eeriness out of the ground.  But no, up the block a little way, a baby carriage is entrusted to the idle afternoon, with a baby left to sleep, all by itself, under white netting.


4.  One Sunday, sitting in the pew, watching flashes of spring lightning illuminate the robes of the angels on the stained glass windows, my mind began to drift.  I studied my gold sash upon which the tarnishing imprint of raindrops had dried into vague patterns-- it had begun to rain just as we marched in off the street.  There was a frayed edge to my sash and I wrapped a loose thread around my finger and gently tugged.  The fabric bunched and the thread continued to unwind until it seemed the entire sash might unravel. I pinched the thread and broke it off, then wound it back round my finger tightly enough to cut off my circulation.  When my fingertip turned white, I unwound the thread from my finger and weighted it on my open palm, fitting it along the various lines on my hand.  I opened my other palm and held my hands out to test if the balance between them was affected by the weight of the thread.  It wasn't. I placed the thread on my tongue and lit it rest there where its weight was more discern able. I half-expected a metallic taste of gold, but it tasted starchy like any other thread.  Against the pores of my tongue, I could feel it growing thicker with the saliva that was gathering in my mouth.  I swallowed both the saliva and the thread.

11.6 Description, indirection, short essays, and titles

You started class with a writing prompt where you were asked to describe a place and a person, to report about three lines of dialog, and to place this material within a mental state.  The mental state was not an interpretive state (I was so happy; it was the most important experience in my life; etc) - rather it was to document the internal response  (a buzzy feeling like too much coffee, a mind going out of focus, a feeling of almost like hunger except in my heart, etc) that won't necessarily correlate with the big labels we have for how we feel. 

You spent about 2 minutes writing these.  For your process, some of you started with a place where you'd had lots of experiences and listed some possibilities; some of you focused on a conversation that you could write to; and some of you found (through listing) an event with that had lots of feeling associated to it.

You read your work and I thought it was very strong.  By standing back and watching - getting outside of your narrative - you opened up space for your readers to make a narrative that would draw them in.   I liked how your stories raised questions, and drew me along to pose connections (which weren't already made for me by interpretive bridges in the writing).   They were clearly written and richly evocative.  And that is exactly what we are going for.

Examples of short CNF. After this exercise we spent some time talking about "The Indian Dog," a piece that uses narrative, characterization (of himself and the dog), and careful selection of language and metaphor to tell a larger story of what he learned about "the heart's longing."  While Momaday gives us extensive illustration of how the reader learned this lesson, ultimately each reader is led to a place where s/he must construct his/her own story. 

An invitation to use form as part of your story.  The pieces in your text presented some different ways to use sections/space to create a short piece.  The challenges are different than they are for a long piece, but the task is similar in that it is about using relationships between the sections in a way that contributes to the work's interpretation.  It sounds like most of you aren't so interested in incorporating image, sound, and/or motion, so we didn't spend much time on that - though we may double back and re-consider if your interests change.

Titles. We finally got around to working on titles.  Process = write a list of ideas from your story; then list language/metaphors associated with those ideas => but which do not state the idea directly (if you are writing about Jealousy, that is the one word you can't use).  The point of these moves is to get a pile of words you can mix up - like paint - to come out with exactly the right color. 

Next, you were asked to combine/permute these words/ideas into 5 possible titles = and choose.

We did some good work with this!   As you continue to explore this method, don't be afraid to go way far afield when you are making your lists of metaphors and words.  Make it anything you can think of list.  This is the searching phase and you want to look everywhere.  The getting choosey phase is later.  Cast a wide net.  Then combine and re-arrange. 

For next week.
Read: cruise around Brevity,(check out the current issue)  and Blackbird (check out the nonfiction gallery)
Blog 10: Draft short essay 

Also: come to class prepared to write a descriptive passage that evokes an emotion/feeling, idea.  No dialog.  No internal reflection.  You may describe humans doing things, but you can't get inside their heads. Should be fun, right?

10.30 Writing journals as documentation of an automatic self, more (un)truth and short essays

We started class with an exercise where you read through what you've written in your journal from two different perspectives.  You started out looking for patterns in content: what did your write about the most in terms of focus? were there repeated words? did much of your writing come back to the same places, people, ideas, actions?  Next you looked through your writing in terms of dominant emotion: was the writing predominantly curious? happy? sad? angry? grounded in a sense of loss?  Once you had a sense of these to features of your journal so far, you looked for correlations= how does the dominant subject material connect to, support, interact with, play out in terms of (etc) the dominant emotion?

This exercise was about looking at the snapshots of yourself on the page (your writing self, the self you have written onto the page) and looking for patterns in who that self is.  Noticing those patterns can give you information about strengths, interests, (unconscious) tendencies and overlooked possibilities associated with your writing, and it provides an opportunity to consciously step into a new perspective, writing style, emotional frame, or. . .. We concluded this exercise by writing something different.  You could write about the dominant content from a different emotion, or vice versa, or anything else. 

The rationale for this exercise comes from psychological research both about "loops" or "ruts" (as we discussed last week) and findings that we can "language" our way out of those loops by consciously noticing our language patterns, and amending/adapting/revising/opening them to something else.  Research has shown that in many ways, we become both who and "how" we say we are.    So see what you want to do with that one.

The great debate: When is it OK to alter the “truth” in CNF
.You were arbitrarily assigned as advocates of truthtelling and wanton lying in creative nonfiction.  The debate played out in terms of the following issues (which I have paired).

On the side of artistic license and bending the truth:
1.Liars: CNF by definition includes the use of art and dramatic presentation; this will necessarily deviate from the literal "truth" of "what happened".
Truthtellers: CNF as a genre identifies itself as accountable for what happened; when it cannot be accountable, it obliged to acknowledge (rather than cover up) its shortcomins. That is the contract with the reader for this genre, and genre matters.

2.Liars: Innocent + appealing "untruths" are harmless: CNF centers on a core truth= a central event /idea that the author experiences/explores.  This "truth" is the basis for the CNF contract, not the "details".White lies don’t hurt anyone because they do not change the bigger picture.  The truth of the experience remains true + the same even when details are changed.

Truthtellers: if changes are necessary, they need to be acknowledged because changing details DOES change the core truth.  The truth is in the details.

3. Liars:Truth is always partial:something always is edited out, and something is always added.
Truthtellers: intentional misrepresentation is different from necessary partiality.

4.Liars: Truth is never "T"ruth, but truth; it is always invested in someone's perspective.
Truthtellers:  Telling small "t" requires truthfulness about perspective.  Altering or obscuring the source of information violates the CNF contract.

I didn't get all of this - but that is the idea.  I think our conclusion is that where a writer stands with respect to telling "truth" to her/his readers is a personal decision, and is about how a writer defines his/her integrity.  We did not get into the standards of "truth" expected for different subgenres of CNF, such as literary journalism, travel writing, and so on.  Within these subgenres I am guessing, as readers and writers, we would have had specific, genre driven expectations about what should be literally true, and what could be artistically true (the Daisy piece raised many of these questions).  So I think that is that.

Short essays and Long essays
The assignment sheet for the short essays is posted to the right, so you can get started on that.  We will be workshopping/talking about some of your ideas for short essays in class next week.  Long essays, final revised drafts, are due by next class.

For next week

Read:  Lord, "I met a man," p. 115; Braner, "Soundtrack," p. 29;  McNight, "Mother's Day," p 120;  look around Mike Steinberg's blog http://www.mjsteinberg.net/blog.htm (don't forget to read the comments), Bresland, "Les Cruel Shoes," p. 31 (read it first in your book - and then check out http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v4n1/gallery/bresland/shoes.htm  you will need realplayer - free downlad) 

Blog 9: Final Long essay

 

Thanks for the good class.  Your debate was awesome.  See you next week.

short essay

short essay assignment sheet

Blogs and heads up for class this Wednesday

If you posted your draft long essay to your blog you get 10 points.  I will give you feedback at your conference (or by email if you requested it).

We will be working on titles for your long essays.

We will talk about the short essays.

10.23 Lies, finishing up the long essays, and moving on to the short nes

The James Frey story.  I think one reason I keep his story in the course is that classes bring so many different perspectives on how/whether his work goes over boundaries for ethical creative nonfiction.  I imagined he was a particularly egregious example of self-serving, exploitative, damaging to others use of purported truth for commercial purposes, and what is interesting is that while I didn't really hear too much disagreement with what he did, it seems relationships to those moves cover a broad range of responses.  And then there I Mike Daisy - when journalism gets into rounding the corners, embroidering facts, and compressing/fabricating events. 

At the beginning of class we created a list of different kinds of lies, and created a loose classification of which kinds of lies were "worst" and which didn't matter so much.  The list looked something like this.  Although our classifications weren't exactly mutually exclusive, they suggest the different motivations and functions for lies.

Most harmful
self serving (blame others, take credit, appropriate others' stories. . .)
preserve/cultivate a self image (connects to self-serving lies)

Depends
prevent/avoid conflict (avoid hurting others, social lies)
preserve autonomy (lies typical in conversations across power differentials, like the kinds of lies adolescents tell to parents, workers to bosses [sick days] etc)
preserve someone else's frights/freedoms (similar to preserving autonomy but for someone else)
avoid getting into  trouble (withhold information, don't tell more than necessary - some people didn't even consider this lying)

Harmless (but of course it depends)
teasing (can be playful but also can be bullying)
playful lying

Some general observations about why writers, especially creative nonfiction writers need to think about lies include the following.
1. All of us almost always lie in our writing /thinking, so being familiar with the kinds of lies you tell is important.
2. Different genres have different relationships to truth; so it is important to make sure you are within the "truth frame" for your genre.
3.  Telling a story is always inherently inaccurate - since it involves interpretation=> the imposition of a narrative line which strings what otherwise are unassociated events to make "sense" of unorganized experience.  As writers, examining our relationships to the kinds of stories we tell can tell us not only about the events we write about, but about ourselves.

Discussion of writers who include "lies" in their work. We then talked about Frey and Daisy, and the perspectives were pretty much all over the place, which was wonderful.  Most perspectives fell between either:

 they produced their work to make money and they were successful, and "lying" (strategic representation of truth) is more or less part of the "work" of producing materials that sell;

or these two writers betrayed their readers/audience, perpetucated "lies" that can do damage to real people in the real world, and exploited real people by appropriating and misrepresenting their stories within genres that purport to you true.

We did notice that most of Frey's lies were of the kind at the top of the list (the damaging categories). 

We also noticed, though I didn't spend much time on it, that much of the untruth in Frey's narrative was a good match for "stereotypes" or cultural stories about the "criminal with a heart of gold," "bad cops," "corrupt legal systems," "struggling adolescent boys," "crime bosses with a heart  of gold" and tragic love relationships (the story about Lily).  In other words, part of what made his story believable was that is a good fit with worn out storylines from pulp fiction and romance = which may well be why it was not published as a work of fiction.  Something to think about.

Before the workshop on your long essays, we finished class with a list of observations about the place of lies/truth in CNF.
1. If it can be proved wrong, don't write it (the don't get caught approach).
2.Don't write material that will jeopardize reputation (yours or others)
3. Write your own truth; stay in your own story.
4. Be mindful of the world=> your truth is not the only truth out there
5. embellishment is not bad, but there can be a fine line between embellishment and lying=> be faithful to the central truth of your story
6. Be as truthful as you can be. Don't take liberties for the sake of the story. Your truth is in your perspective.
7. Writers should not plagiarize, slander, or state facts without evidence

There were several more observations, but I couldn't read my handwriting.  Sad but true.

Finishing long essay. I am hoping you got lots of good feedback on your drafts, and have the beginning of a plan for revising your long essay.  We changed the due date for the revised long essay to November 6.  You signed up for conferences (or requested written feedback).  The conference schedule is as follows.

Thursday, 10.24
10:30 Kristen, 4:30 Maria

Monday 10.28
7:00 Tobey

Tuesday 10.29
12:30 Filip,  3:30 Robert; 7:15 Alessia

Wednesday 10.30
1:00 Angelica; 2:30 Sara; 3:00 Nikki; 3:30 Kristi

Thursday 10.31
3:15 Dave

If you have not signed up for a conference or requested written feedback, send me an email and we will set something up.

For next week:
Read:  More about truth!

Jill Talbert http://brevity.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/border-crossings-fiction-and-the-literature-of-fact/

Dinty Moore  http://brevity.wordpress.com/2012/04/20/what-is-given-against-knowingly-changing-the-truth/

Short fiction handouts: Fallout by Seamus Deane, and Accident by Dawn Marano  (f you did not get one in class, there are extra copies in my mailbox, next to CAS 301 in the English Department).

Blog  8:.  Brainstorming for short essay.  Think about a focus that can be explored/opened up in terms of a single scene/story - or a set of tightly connected events.

The revised long essay will be due November 6.

Have fun writing, and see you next week.

10.16 Family stories and Draft 2

You started by writing a list of stories your family tells- about you, about each other, at family gatherings, when company comes, or in response to certain events.  We then characterized these stories in terms of how they felt and what they did.  Our list looked something like this.

Funny
Precious
Providing family history - telling about the past + providing information about members who might not be there
Characterizing family members
Describing relationships

As we continued to talk (and you continued to add to, write about and think about the stories on your lists) we noticed who told the stories, in what contexts, and to what effects; whether the same story was told by more than one family member or only by one; how the stories were received.  And we began to think about the family dynamics (not necessarily the ones narrated in the stories) that these stories enact. 

You then went back to your lists and thought about how you might use a set of stories - juxtaposed, or told in a sequence or in parallel - as a way to portray something about something about the family/people who tell them.  Good work on this!

Workshop.  You spent the rest of class working in groups.  The volume of discussion was a sustained hum (sounded good to me) and I'm hoping you all got what you need to take with you.

For next week: 
Read:  Smoking gun expose of A Million Little Pieces
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/million-little-lies
Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/454/mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory =>Read the overview at the preceding link, and then follow the link on that page and listen to the retraction episode  http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/retraction

Blog 7: Due Draft long essay 2

10.9 Writing a path to the final scene and brainstorming for Draft 2

Tonight's focus was on creating an essay that knows where it is going from the first word of the title:  An essay that drops readers into carrying metaphors that evoke the feelings and ideas central to its contemplation. 

Brainstorming to mental flash shots.  For the brainstorming activity you let yourself settle into a relaxed state, and watched the images that flicker through your head.  As best you could, without interrupting the flow of the picture show, you wrote down key words to call back that image when you finished the exercise.

When we shared lists, you looked to see if there were patterns in the sequence or focus of your images.  Did their sequence suggest any kind of chronology?  Are all these images related some how? 

Then you wrote the scene evoked by one of the images, both as a narrative, and as a description (just the details of what you can see).

You also did some freewriting, followed by some focused freewriting.  We didn't do much with that, but it is there in your notebook.  Something that came into your mind.

The Patch and Silent Dancing
.We talked about these two essays using similar processes (though I belabored the structure a little more in McPhee's essay).  First we generated a list of what the essay was "about" = the ideas or feelings that operated as a kind of center for the stories/material the author presented.  Then we puled out some of the recurring images or metaphors the author resorted to in his/her telling of the story.  And finally, we looked at how the author used the sequence, juxtaposition, repetition, and so on the "build" an overall felt response - the reader's takeaway for the essay.  We also noticed how these two essays lead us to a final scene which calls upon much, if not all, of the material the authors have placed in our way, as if, they are orchestrating an experience of reading an essay which will allow us to see the thoughts and feelings evoked by their writing  both in terms of our own experiences, and theirs.

For next week:
Blog 6:  Brainstorming for draft 2 for the long essay.  Try listing some of the feelings/ideas you want your essay to be about, identifying "scenes" to create the experience of those feelings/ideas, listing some metaphors in your feelings & ideas that will "carry" your concept.  This may not be the way you usually write - but see what you can do with it.

Next class will be devoted to work on drafting long essay to, so come to class with some material to work with.

10.2 Workshop for drafts + Search for Marvin Gardens

Tonight's prompt was to write a list of topics you would not write about.  Even though most of you indicated you would write about most everything, we generated a list of the categories of material which seemed to characterize the kinds of topics we might be reluctant to write.  This list included the following.

material that was not yet processed
experiences connected to cultural taboos
stories about illegal actions
experiences where we (the author) behaves badly or does not come off well (feels ashamed)
stories that belong to someone else

If we think about CNF's objectives - as set forward by Lott, Gutkind and other CNF authors - in some ways they seem to direct us toward exactly the kinds of materials authors might be reluctant to take on.  As we discussed toward the end of this section of class, if CNF seeks to "explore" or make sense of what it is to be human, these topics certainly direct us toward some of the unresolved, not talked about and "forbidden" areas in human lives. 

While our class conversation was much more convoluted - that is the heart of it.

Workshops
You spent the middle of class workshopping your drafts.  Your list of what you wanted feedback on included:
Was my essay a good read?
what should I add/delete?
how does the organization/segmentation work?
is it CNF?  (Does it include incessant questioning/deepening exploration of an idea?  does it present rendered experience => shown not told?)

You kept notes on what you learned from your talk, and we talked about some of the realizations you had about what you wanted to do with your essays.


The Search for Marvin Gardens. 

This discussion identified the three threads/narrative lines in McPhee's essay: walking through Atlantic City, noticing the urban decay, on a search for Marvin Gardens; playing the game Monopoly with comments on the strategies/practices/objects of play; historical commentaries on how Atlantic City was built (and by whom).  While these three strands were broken up into segments that were interspersed among one another - I suggested that we might think of them each as making the same point/contemplating the same idea from a different perspective - like the three successive stories in Stripped for Parts.  The point they were contemplating is set up in the title (also as in Stripped for Parts), metaphorically, and although the essay is about the middle class, and all three threads lead to a contemplation on the importance of economic and political and social structures associated with the middleclass, McPhee accompanies us in that contemplation but does not preach to us or argue with us. Rather, he tells us stories that take us there.





****One important thing to notice in McPhee's essay is that his idea/contemplation - the role of the middle class in creating sustainable communities - is at the center of his essay. That idea, not the stories themselves, drives the essay's organization and selection of material. CNF certainly includes powerfully rendered scenes, characters, and settings, but at the center of the essay is its idea.

As you think about how to revise your essays, give some thought to what idea you are exploring.  How did this story make you grow/feel/see the world differently?  What idea(s) does your story embody?  Use those ideas/themes/contemplations to focus the way you tell your story: the particular material you select, the organization, and the way you portray it.

For next week:
Read: Cofer: p.54, "Silent dancing"; "The Patch" by John McPhee
Blog 5: write about your plans for revising Draft 1

Conferences for Draft 1 (so far)

Thursday, October 3
12:00 Courtney
1:00 Sara
3:30 Kristen
4:00 Kristi


Monday, October 7
1:30 Filip
2:00 Nikki
3:15 Angie
7:15 Alessia

Wednesday, October 9
2:00 Tobey
3:00 Rafael
7:15 Maria

9.24 Getting ready for Draft 1 & segmented essays

Getting reading to write Draft 1. Your stories in response to the writing prompt were great.  They all sounded like they could support a creative nonfiction piece that presents both a compelling experience and the relentless, reflective questioning that creates a thoughtful reflection on what that experience (or set of experiences) was "about."  As we think back on the CNF we have read so far, we might notice that most of the pieces don't make their points directly.  Rather, the dramatize events that cause us to feel the "aboutness" of the piece - which is often set up clearly (but in a way that only takes on its full meaning after reading the entire piece) => in the title.

You posted some brainstorming for your first draft, and after listening in on your discussions in your groups in class, it sounds like you are reading to get full version of the essay on the page. 

This draft is a place to:

• take risks in terms working with writing content and form that you might not feel "in control" of
• get all your ideas out there - even if they are not perfect, and even the ones that (for now) you aren't sure how they fit in
• stumble around looking for a focus
• write into your strengths, and use that writing to open up or lead you to places you are less sure of

Unless it is something you want to do or that you feel is important to your development as a writer - don't spend a lot of time crafting beautiful sentences.  This writing is about painting all over the canvas: roughing out the elements you will work with, exploring relationships, looking for images/stories to render vividly the overall picture you will paint.

So have fun and I am looking forward to reading your work!

Segmented essays.
You did great work coming up with a list of "what segments do" = how they work.  We had a pretty impressive list on the board which I erased without writing down, but if I remember correctly it included:
signal transitions
imply comparisons
set up a chronology (or other kinds of relationships)
tell the whole story/make the whole point
develop separate scenes/characters/ideas
build a novel overall structure (different from the more or less linear, cumulative structure of reading)

 As we noticed in reading the segmented essays discussed in class, each essay's organization was integral to its meaning => the way the essay was built was part of the essay's "aboutness."  In Teacher Training, only the title overtly states the focus on learning to be a good teacher.  The parallel experiences in the paired segments is what embodies that point in its fullness without any direct statement. Again, in Schwartz's piece, the scenes move from the US to Germany and back, and the attitudes of the author and her father move in different directions as they grapple with the shared experiences portrayed in each segment.  And Kahn's piece does many things within each segment - though in some sense each seems to come to an understated, not quite definitive resolution about organ transplants - as if each vignette is a whole story (with a conclusion) in itself.  She could have come to different conclusions (or conclusions that contradicted each other) - but in a way, these three seem to work together to make a single point supported by the implications of the title.

Looking at the three essays gave concrete illustrations of how segments can function.   These essays used segments in quite different ways with respect to how much & which parts of the story they told, the kinds of "points" they made with respect to the whole piece, their relationships to time, character, and scene - and so on.  You can mix and match, invent and re-arrange these functions as you work on revising your drafts. 

Segmenting and drafting
Sometimes, a draft will present itself in terms of the segmenting pattern you will eventually use for your essay - but not always or even often.  The form of the segmented essays we analyzed was artfully constructed, and you may not be ready to impose the form until after you are deep into the "aboutness" of your material.  On the other hand, because your feeling about how to segment/structure your essay can be part of what your essay is about, sometimes writing into a "structure" can facilitate the drafting process.  Yeah, I know, thanks a lot for the clear advice.  So if I try to give a little more direction here I'd say - if planning the form for your essay (choosing a structure - maybe even one of the named structures in the previous post) helps you get a lot of writing on the page = go for it.  If it gets you stuck = let it go and just write, and you can think about structuring after you conference and workshop and have a more clear idea what kind of segmenting pattern will allow you to convey your meanings through form as well as content.

For next week:
Read: McPhee, p. 128, "The Search for Marvin Gardens"
Blog 4: Draft 1

Interesting classification of segmented essays

In his essay "Collage, Montage, Mosaic, Vignette, Episode, Segment," Robert Root names segmented structures in terms of the relationships between their sections. The following listing is taken from his essay, with a few modifications.

• juxtaposition - arranging one item alongside another item so that the comment back and forth on one another
• parallelism - altermating of intertwining one continuouse strand with another (a present tense strand with a past tense strand, a domestic strand with a foreign strand, etc)
• patterning - choosing an extra-literary design and arranging literary segments accordingly (for example, using the structure of/associations with the seasons, a musical piece, preparing a meal as the sequential frame for an essay)
• accumulation - arranging a series of segments or scenes or episodes so that they add to or enrich or alter the meanings of previous segments with each addition, perhaps reinterpreting earlier segments
• journaling - actually writing in episodes or reconstructing teh journal experience in drafts (this approach may include notes, earlier versions of the essay, reflections on how to revise earlier sections, etc.)

9.18 More brainstorming, truth, and a functional definition of CNF

Notes on in-class brainstorming. We started class with some more practices for looking around in your head for stories you haven't told yet.  As made clear in the discussion of Lott later in class, CNF (at least Lott's definition of it), is about serious, reflective interrogation of the self "through the subject at hand".  This suggests that you will need to find ways to see things differently (from multiple perspectives), and do some of the scary work of questioning experiences, feelings, and intimations that you might not yet have worked out.  So while you might write about a story/experience you have told many times before, for that story to work as CNF, you need to see something new in it, to take your reader with you into that experience in ways that are deeper and more purposeful than in your usual tellings of that story.

So that's what we are going for.  To do that kind of creative, opening-up new territory, seeing-things-from-new perspectives brainstorming, it can help if you step into patterns for "thinking" differently.  And that was my reasoning for selecting the strategies we've spent time on in class. 

Active imagination.  The technique I walked you through for spending some time in dream spaces is about giving you a place where you can look around at what is going on in your mind in terms of feelings, thoughts, and ideas that you might not even have words for.  You shared some remarkable observations and stories (and I am hoping you wrote even more down).  Once you have these experiences on your page - cultivate a generous relationship with them.  Be reluctant to name them or say "what they mean" too quickly.  They are travelers from a different country and you have a lot to learn from them if you don't try too hard to make them "make sense" in terms of the culture/language you already know.  Recognize them as different, ask them questions, ponder what they say and allow that you will probably only get a small part of "what they mean". 

Associating to assumptions/beliefs.  The second exercise was about connecting to ways of thinking/feeling/being in terms of particular experiences.  It can help you unpack or understand where your inner core of beliefs/assumptions come from - and maybe even to rethink them through examining the experiences that created them.

I asked you to think of something that you know now that you didn't know when you were younger.  We came up with a list of platitudes (which is typical of the way humans tend to "feel/say" the really big realizations - maybe because there is so much associated with them that an overgeneralization is the only way to "hold" them?) - good platitudes - platitudes that many of us connected to, recognized and felt.  What this does is it directs you to a kind of "box of memories/stories/feelings" that have a complex focus.  Then you wrote about "moments" or particular experiences that were in that box.  If this exercise sets you up to write about a "set pieces" - stories you have told over and over again - dig deeper, cast a wider net, or look at the edges of your set piece - how did it get set up, who were the important people and why?  Work on seeing it a different way.   This exercise can be focused to associate to lots of different kinds of knowing - what you believe/know about being happy, sad, angry; what you believe about fairness, truth, kindness, integrity, personal autonomy, and so on.

Gutkind and Lott.
As our discussion revealed - how CNF writers relate to truth connects strongly to how they define CNF's purpose - or what it does.  The definitions we developed last week were formal definitions = in that they functioned primarily on the ways CNF is built.  Lott's definition was a functional definition=focused on what CNF does.  He developed a list of purposes beginning with the mundane (to keep our lives from passing away) and working their way toward the profound (to answer for our lives), with descriptions of the processes of asking always deeper questions, stepping outside of our own self-interested perspectives, experimenting & taking risks while searching for a personal truth.  This definition suggests that the writer's representations of the truths s/he is searching will necessarily need to be carefully crafted - and that was what Gutkind's piece was about.  As I said in class, I clearly chose to discuss the two pieces in the wrong order.  Oh well. No one's perfect. 

Gutkind offered as set of suggestions for how CNF writers need to relate to truth (354).  We got to those pretty quickly - though we weren't 100% in agreement about how to "use" them. We spent the most time on rounding corners & compressing (the writer's relationship to the literal truth); and allowing the cast of characters in your writing opportunities to read (and to have input into?) your writing.  For the purposes of this class, I want to ground assignments in Lott's definition, and any writing you do which is true to the purposes he sets forward, will have a careful - integrity based - relationship to truth (in terms of fabrication, rounding corners, and compression).  In other words, if you know you are doing it (sometimes we don't) - you need to give your reader a heads up. 

In terms of sharing your work with individuals whose stories overlap with your own - from my perspective, that is up to the individual writer.  If you have told your story honestly, how you work out issues with others who might be involved belongs to you.  While I may be able to comment on whether or not a piece has explored multiple perspectives and interrogated its own "truths" in complex ways, I'm not really in a position to make moral judgments about who owns what story and who has the right to tell it.  I will say that, because we are posting writing on blogs, you should not mention illegal activities - your own or others. From my personal perspective, I am a strong advocate for writers to write their own stories, and I have benefited immensely for the generosity of writers who have told "dangerous" stories about experiences I would have otherwise faced alone.  At the same time, each of us has to consider our relationships to the people in our lives who will inevitably be in our writing - and consider how we want to balance reaching out to strangers (our readers), and being respectful and caring of the people we live with.

For next week
Read: Schwartz, 194; Pope, 388; Kahn, 95
Pay attention to how the authors use segments in their work.  How are the spaces meaningful? What do they affect the reader's experience?
Blog 3: Invention writing for essay 1
By this time, your writing journals (hopefully) have some lists, some descriptions, some scenes, and some writing you aren't sure what it is.   Read through what you've written, maybe add some more freewriting, and then do a post where you "muse" over some ideas for your first essay.  Musings might mention: the idea or question, or feeling you are interested in writing about; a list of stories/experiences from your life that are relevant to that focus; and maybe some drafty indication of what you might put in each story. 
Or - you might explore several subjects/topics in less detail.

In class you will talk about your ideas - and comment on each other's blogs.  Once everyone has a feel for how to get started, we will talk about segmented essays and how you might use segments in your essay.

9.11 Indirect brainstorming - and definitions of CNF by induction

Indirect brainstorming. We started class with some exploration of what I think of a indirect brainstorming.  A lot of brainstorming taught in writing courses is about developing ideas for a specific purpose.  Indirect brainstorming is more about spending some time inside your thoughts and feelings and watching what comes up.  Time spent in these kinds of processes helps in two ways.  It gives you some experience noticing what you are thinking/feeling; and it allows you to recognize and accumulate writing about ideas/feelings/thoughts/stories that are "in" you.  Think of it as pro-active brainstorming.  It puts you in a position where you might be able to  "look up" (in your journal) writing your thoughts on a topic - rather than generating it specifically for an assignment.

Variation on meditation.   IOur first exercise was to sit quietly with eyes closed and simply notice what passes through our mind -without judging or trying to control our thoughts in any way.  We did this together, for 5 minutes.  After sitting, I asked you to write about your experience - what you "saw" and how it felt.

Your reflections on the experience were that it was hard to sit and be quiet, that there was some discomfort in doing this in a group, that disturbances (noises, movements) seemed magnified, that it was hard to sit still - and stay awake.  This is all pretty regular.  You also noticed that your ideas were more vivid.  Some of you had "thoughts" visually - for others it was in language.  There was curiosity and worry, and a wish not to think some of the things you were thinking.  Thoughts jumped around - followed by association, and feelings were attached to thoughts.  This list reflects what many people notice in this kind of experience.

In our discussion of why we might want to spend time sitting and watching what comes up in our minds, we said that if you watch your mind as a habit - you will get better at knowing what is in your mind, and you may even begin to notice patterns.  Becoming conscious of consciousness is, in many ways, a necessary writerly accomplishment - since writers need to be aware of how consciousness works in order to represent human behaviors, and in order to be able to write materials that evoke felt resoonses from their readers.     Specifically, you pointed out that this approach might help with writers' blog, opening up or inspiring creative work, and giving us more choices about how to go (or not) particular places in our minds.

Sensual association.  The second brainstorming activity was to associate to our sensual memories: smells, sounds, touches, sights and tastes.  In our talk, smells were particularly evocative.  As you read out your lists, sounds of the ocean, the smell of first rain, fall, our mothers, and pierogis, all of us went with you into related bodily experiences.  As set up in my introduction to this exercise - memory is deeply associated with the senses.  That makes sensory association an important technique for brainstorming - and for writing powerfully evocative prose.

Analysis of features of creative nonfiction.
 We started by listing features you noticed in all of the assigned readings.  Our list on the board included the following.
colloquialism - local language = sense of coming from a particular place

rawness, vulnerability = no holding back "out there 

sincere, open

detailed setting + stories

internally observed = reflection

writing techniques - elements of fiction

flashback, figurative language, dialog, metapho = literary

drew from memories 

reflection point <=>vivid experience/story embodied idea

-- 

essay features = reflection/point/generalizations, 1st person

fiction features = embodied, evoked experience, scenes /detailed showing rather than telling, 

not chronological

 

I then talked through your assignment sheet for the long essays (posted to the right).

 

We finished class with group work to analyze the long essays in terms of: focus, organization, directness, literariness, word choice, and point of view.  At the end of group work I asked for one brilliant statement from each group relevant to your analysis, and you came up with the following.

1. CNF makes readers FEEL the story (as opposed to just staying in the words).

2. The writing's organization makes the point: it is critical to the way the reader "gets" what the story is about.

3. Word choices create the character of the narrator (the voice of the "I" who tells the stories).

4. Both writers of these essays used their writing to explore their identities.

 

AWESOME - and truly brilliant observations about CNF!

Great class and see you next week.

For next class:
We will continue work on indirect, associative brainstorming and finish discussion of how to define creative nonfiction.

Read: Lott & Gutkind on creative nonfiction (handout in class - copies available in my mailbox)

Blog 2:  Use today's class discussion + what you are reading in Lott + Gutkind to develop your definition of creative nonfiction.  What to Lott & Gutkind leave out?  How are definitions of creative nonfiction changing in light of digital publishing?

9.4 What we did in class

Note on making sure you have access to a book:  I have a book in my office that you can make copies from.  Also, two students from last Fall contacted me and will sell you their books and have them available for immediate exchange.  If you contact me I will put you in touch.


What we did
What a great first class!  We started class with the regular introductions, and after that you did some writing to a prompt.  Thanks so much for sharing your stories - hearing and reflecting on the group's experiences is one of the most important experiences of this course. 

In-class writing + writing journals. Tonight's work writing to a prompt, sharing, and reflecting is pretty much the way we will begin every class for about the first half of the semester - so bring a dedicated journal, or your laptop, or sign into a private space on the computers.   This writing journal will allow you to accumulate and write into a treasure trove of possibilities for your writing.  In CNF, your experiences, reflections, observations, and questions are the basis for your writing - and you use writing to open up your experiences so you can feel them, understand them, think about them in new ways. 

As I said in class - you do not need to share what you write in your journals.  The idea is to give you a safe place to explore material that is risky or unconventional.  Reading/talking about what you write in your journal is not competitive - it is not about being the best, but about sharing so you can "see" your thoughts/possible writings in a space outside yourself as you work on them and re-shape them.

Definitions of CNF.  We spent most of the rest of class grappling with what CNF is.  I gave you a start with a list of words I put on the board: it is in first person, it is true, and it uses the craft associated with "fiction" (scene, character, dialog, etc).  We then put a list of works on the board that we thought might be CNF.  If they are "fiction" => then are not CNF.  If they are not presented through the first person narrative of the author, they are not CNF.  If they are all "telling" with no "showing" => then are not CNF.  As you will see from the readings, CNF has many more subtle features - both "essential" things that it HAS to do to be CNF (like being in the first person), and it also has an array of moves that it "often" makes (such as using a non-chronological presentation of 'what happened') - but not always. The "often" moves are associated with the art of the individual author - and there are many possibilities an more are continuing to evolve, especially in digital compositions.

Blogs.  You spent a chunk of the second part of class setting up your blogs.  I put up all the links that were sent to the course email.  If you don't see your link up there - send me a reminder and I will get on it.  So far so good!

Books.  MAKE SURE YOU GET THE SIXTH EDITION.  (Earlier editions have different readings)  If you can't get a book from the book store (if they run out), options include:
Available on Amazon (used from 32.62 = you might spend the savings on expedited delivery).
Ask me for a copy and we can arrange a pick-up; I have reached out to last year's class and am hoping I can rustle up the necessary copies for you.

For next class:
Read:  Check out course blog + browse your text and read carefully:  Beard, p. 3,"Out There," Marquart, p. 118, "Some things about that day," Lopate, p,107, "Portrait of my body," Ebert,p.258, "I think I'm musing my mind," (then check out a couple entries + comments on his blog http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/

Blog 1:  Using the sample essays from your text - identify and discuss what you see as features of creative nonfiction, then make a list.  What are the "essential" features?  What are the sometimes there and sometimes not features? What are some of the differences between short and long forms?

And:  Bring your writing journal to class

 

9.4 First day of class

Welcome to ENG 4017/5017: Creative Nonfiction.

As you can see, I have left the posts and the blogs from last term.  If you like - you can look through them to get a feel for how the class will go.  By the end of class today - the links will be to your blogs, and the posts will be for our class.

As it says on the course syllabus & calendar (posted under course documents to the right), we will use this blog as a hub for course communications.  After each class I will post an update of what we did - and the assignment for what to do for the next class. To do well in this class - you will want to check the blog after every class. If it is more than 24 hours after class and I have not yet posted the update - I am hoping one of you will do me the favor of sending me a reminder! 

So we will see how this goes. . . .