You should have received an email with your grade sheet pasted in.
If I do not hear anything from you by 12.24, I will assume everything is as you think it should be and I will post grades to Keanwise.
Happy holidays!
Monday, December 22, 2014
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
12.10 Planning for reading + finishing portfolios
Note: I will read through the craft essays and get back to you with comments (for Blog 14) by sometime Saturday.
Program (tentative = let me know if you change your title or anything else)
Mary Ellen In a Jam
Patrice Heavy Doors
Christina
Holly BLT Special
Patricia Soundtrack of Silence
Stephanie Ordinary Tragedy
Briana
Melissa
Cristal Hibiscus Flowers next to Dirt Roads
Matt Signaling
Florie Burning Mountain
Osza The Void
Food
Osza cupcakes
Christina brownies
Patricia subs
Florie spinach dip
Matt savory something
Holly Taco casserole palisade
Mary Ellen ziti-brocolli
Patrice raw veggie pizza
Stephanie chips
Briana mac & cheese bits
Melissa baked goods
Portfolio
I've checked the links for everyone who sent me the url for the portfolio, and they all work.
As I was reviewing the pages, it dawned on me that you have not turned in (and I have not graded) the revised short essay. . . though we talked about which one you wanted to revise. So this is the plan.
Post your best short essay (on the revised essay page) for essay 3/4.
Then, for your "best" essay, post the version of the essay you choose to read for our last class.
For next week:
If anyone has questions or wants to go over the version of the essay for the reading - be in touch and we will find a time to meet.
Completed portfolio due at the end of class Wednesday, December 17.
Everything sounded great this evening as I was listening to you practice. We should have a great reading next week! Take care and see you then.
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
12.3 Rhetorical analysis presentations
Great job on your presentations! So now we have an idea of what some of the venues are looking for, and which ones might be interested in our work. Well done.
Next week will be planning for the final reading. As announced in class, I am still lining up for the location. At present I am thinking it will be CAS 351, or CAS 308 - I will give you an update next week.
Practice for final presentations.
During the first part of next week's class you will practice for the final reading/presentation. As we discussed, during most readings, the author gives a short presentation about where the piece came from or how it was written. Since this is a writing class, anything you might add about how the piece developed, how you revised it, etc - would work. Your introduction + your piece should come to about 8-12 minutes. You will have time in class to practice giving your intro + presenting your reading.
Let me know if you are bringing guests - so I can make an estimate on the space.
We will create the program (the order for readers) in class next week.
Creating your portfolio
During the second part of class next week, we will walk through creating your portfolio site using google.sites. It is an app available to you through your Kean google account. The model portfolio os posted to the right.
Next week will be planning for the final reading. As announced in class, I am still lining up for the location. At present I am thinking it will be CAS 351, or CAS 308 - I will give you an update next week.
Practice for final presentations.
During the first part of next week's class you will practice for the final reading/presentation. As we discussed, during most readings, the author gives a short presentation about where the piece came from or how it was written. Since this is a writing class, anything you might add about how the piece developed, how you revised it, etc - would work. Your introduction + your piece should come to about 8-12 minutes. You will have time in class to practice giving your intro + presenting your reading.
Let me know if you are bringing guests - so I can make an estimate on the space.
We will create the program (the order for readers) in class next week.
Creating your portfolio
During the second part of class next week, we will walk through creating your portfolio site using google.sites. It is an app available to you through your Kean google account. The model portfolio os posted to the right.
Blog 14: draft craft essay or any essay you would like to work on for revision (and receive some comments)
See you next week!
Thursday, November 20, 2014
11.19 A little bit of everything
Although the posts listed below, have been talked about/used - even graded - I haven't yet sent you the "tally sheet" for credit given. I will be providing feedback/counting what's posted (and what is not) beginning Thursday evening. So this is a heads up to make sure the following list of blogs are posted so they can be reviewed.
Update: There WAS a Blog 8 (only it was labeled Blog 7). The first Blog 7 was the Draft Long Essay 2 (which everyone turned in - and attended a conference to talk about)
Blogs:
Craft essay
We started class by reviewing the "moves" the authors of the craft essays made. We noted that, in general, the authors made statements about where ideas came from, about writing process, and about what they learned (generalized reflections about themselves as writers).
We then took a look at the assignment for your reflective writing to introduce your portfolio. We noted that it is similar to (makes the same kinds of moves) but different from (in that it considers a body of writing, rather than a single composition) the sample essays in your text. Your task, is to use the moves - and the kind of detailed analysis - from the craft essay in your text book as a model for you analysis of the writing you have produced for this text.
We took a quick look at the form of the portfolio (set up through google.sites=> available through our kean.google account) you will use to turn in your work.
Workshop:
After this work, you spent the rest of class "catchng up" the assignment of your choice, while I had one-on-one conferences with each of you on blogs + short essays (2 brainstorms & 1 draft).
For the next class(es):
November 26: This is an open workshop for you to work on any of the assigned projects. The lab will be open, but you are not required to attend class. The complete draft for the short essay is due by the end of class (Blog 13: Draft short essay 2). Due for next class (12.3) is Blog 14: Rhetorical analysis of publication venue.
December 3. In class you will give your rhetorical analysis presentation. This it informal (do not stress over it). You are not required to stand in front of the class - though you are welcome to. I can click through the points in your blog post if you prefer. The idea is for us to share information about the different expectations of journals where you might publish CNF.
If there is time left after the presentations, we will work on setting up the portfolio using the google.sites ap from your Kean account. The model portfolio is posted to the right, if you want to fool around with it ahead of time.
Have a great Thanksgiving!
Update: There WAS a Blog 8 (only it was labeled Blog 7). The first Blog 7 was the Draft Long Essay 2 (which everyone turned in - and attended a conference to talk about)
Blogs:
Blog 7: Long essay 2 draft
Blog 7: Write some notes about which essay you will revise, and what you will do to revise it.
Blog 7: Write some notes about which essay you will revise, and what you will do to revise it.
Blog 8: not assigned! (I just skipped over this number?)
Blog 9: Post Brainstorming Short essay 1
Blog 10: Revised (best) Long Essay
Blog 11: Post Short Draft Essay 1
Blog 12: Short essay 2 brainstorming
Craft essay
We started class by reviewing the "moves" the authors of the craft essays made. We noted that, in general, the authors made statements about where ideas came from, about writing process, and about what they learned (generalized reflections about themselves as writers).
We then took a look at the assignment for your reflective writing to introduce your portfolio. We noted that it is similar to (makes the same kinds of moves) but different from (in that it considers a body of writing, rather than a single composition) the sample essays in your text. Your task, is to use the moves - and the kind of detailed analysis - from the craft essay in your text book as a model for you analysis of the writing you have produced for this text.
We took a quick look at the form of the portfolio (set up through google.sites=> available through our kean.google account) you will use to turn in your work.
Workshop:
After this work, you spent the rest of class "catchng up" the assignment of your choice, while I had one-on-one conferences with each of you on blogs + short essays (2 brainstorms & 1 draft).
For the next class(es):
November 26: This is an open workshop for you to work on any of the assigned projects. The lab will be open, but you are not required to attend class. The complete draft for the short essay is due by the end of class (Blog 13: Draft short essay 2). Due for next class (12.3) is Blog 14: Rhetorical analysis of publication venue.
December 3. In class you will give your rhetorical analysis presentation. This it informal (do not stress over it). You are not required to stand in front of the class - though you are welcome to. I can click through the points in your blog post if you prefer. The idea is for us to share information about the different expectations of journals where you might publish CNF.
If there is time left after the presentations, we will work on setting up the portfolio using the google.sites ap from your Kean account. The model portfolio is posted to the right, if you want to fool around with it ahead of time.
Have a great Thanksgiving!
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
11.12 Journal Choices
Note: You all should have received the Revised long essay with comments. If you have questions, be in touch.
Tonight's class was mostly focused on preparing for the rhetorical analysis assignment. We reviewed the assignment sheet (posted to the right) and conducted an analysis of Brevity.
The first request on the assignment sheet is for you to talk about "what kind of" CNF the journal publishes. We generated a list of categories for the different kinds of CNF we have read this term. Some of the "kinds" of publications we identified include the following.
If you haven't chosen a journal yet - send me an email and I will add your choice to the list.
Journal Choices:
Briana Literal Latte
Christina Defunct
Cristal vela
Florie The Normal School
Holly Sweet
Mary Ellen The Collagist
Matt Gul Coast
Melissa Creative Nonfiction
Osza Paper Darts
Patrice Terrain
Patricia Zone3
Stephanie The Pinch
Tonight's class was mostly focused on preparing for the rhetorical analysis assignment. We reviewed the assignment sheet (posted to the right) and conducted an analysis of Brevity.
The first request on the assignment sheet is for you to talk about "what kind of" CNF the journal publishes. We generated a list of categories for the different kinds of CNF we have read this term. Some of the "kinds" of publications we identified include the following.
- personal essays (essay-y writing with the focus on self, like Lopate and The Patch, lots of analysis the point either embedded in the analysis or stated straight out)
- cultural/political essays
- Journalistic pieces
- long or short essays
- classifications by topic/focus
- preferences for particular forms (narrative, experimental, reflective, multimodal/visual, etc)
- location based (may be about a place, or sometimes only writers from a particular geographical region are accepted)
- special interest (travel, horticulture, war, motherhood stories, religious)
- student publications
We then conducted an analysis of just 3 of the stories from Brevity, in terms of the categories listed on the sheet and came up with the following.
Ordinary shoes: (noticed = woman author, woman characters, mostly women commenters)
Subject: realization, mother/daughter
Voice/tone: reflective, somber, nostalgic
Form: personal essay, traditional, memoir (though she does skate with the mother in the photograph)
artistry/literariness: 3
27
subject: coming of age
voice: objective, descriptive
form: poetic, literary
artistry: 4
Cake
subject: forbidden self fullfillment
voice: intimate
form: narratve/reflective
artistry: up there
If you haven't chosen a journal yet - send me an email and I will add your choice to the list.
Journal Choices:
Briana Literal Latte
Christina Defunct
Cristal vela
Florie The Normal School
Holly Sweet
Mary Ellen The Collagist
Matt Gul Coast
Melissa Creative Nonfiction
Osza Paper Darts
Patrice Terrain
Patricia Zone3
Stephanie The Pinch
Read: Zion, 402+ On writing Zion, 410 by Stanton, Pope, Teacher training, 388, Composing 'Teacher training'" 394.
Blog 12: Short essay 2 brainstorming
As discussed in class, next week we will start with some talk about writing "process" essays or craft essays as they call them in CNF. These readings are to give you an approximate model for the reflective introduction to the portfolio assignment. After that, the rest of the class will be workshop, with conferences on the short essay scheduled in class. During this class, you will have an opportunity to work on the draft short essay 2, the portfolio introduction, or the rhetorical analysis presentation.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
11.5 Short CNF
Journaling: You started by writing a scene where you are with someone you love. I asked you to use dialog if you can remember it. Describe what you were doing. But NOT to interpret your actions or say what they meant.
Next I asked you to write a definition of what you believe constitutes "love."
We then spent way longer than I anticipated analyzing our definitions of love. We looked at the kinds of actions (thinking/feeling) and qualities implied in the language. We considered what kind of agency or control someone invested in that definition would feel as the lover or as the beloved. We noticed that most of the definitions were about giving rather than receiving love. We also considered, valence, outcomes (results of believing in un/conditional love, love as selflessness etc) and the power dynamics, and we talked about whether we were able to choose our definitions of love, or whether they just "happened" to us.
Although we didn't have time in class, the intention was that after thinking about these features of our definitions (actions, qualities, agency, valence, outcomes and power dynamics) => you would go back to your definitions and characterize your ideas about love. Finally, I was going to ask you to go back to your description, and see how/whether your "description" of what happens in a loving relationship matches your definition.
This kind of brainstorming can open up ideas within a piec. It's one way to "see through" cultural assumptions or ways of talking about who we are and what we do. It can help define questions and/or construct ways to think about the possibility of choosing new definitions for belief systems which we might otherwise think of as "given".
Short essays. We spent the rest of class talking about short form CNF, first talking about Accident, and then Fallout, and for five minutes at the end checking in on the other reading assignments.
As I said in class, I will be grading the long essays and probably will not be replying to your blogs until just befoer class next week, which means it will be of much use to you if you put out questions abotu material for your short essay. So - if you want some input on the short draft - email me.
For next week:
Read: http://brevitymag.com/category/current-issue/ Try to read at least 9 stories from the Fall/14 issue (the link is on the landing page). In class we will use a discussion of Brevity as an example of how to do the Rhetorical Analysis of a Publication Venue.
Blog 11: Post Short Draft Essay 1
Also, in addition to posting your Long essay => please send it to me as an attachment. Have a great week and I hope to have these back to you by next class.
Next I asked you to write a definition of what you believe constitutes "love."
We then spent way longer than I anticipated analyzing our definitions of love. We looked at the kinds of actions (thinking/feeling) and qualities implied in the language. We considered what kind of agency or control someone invested in that definition would feel as the lover or as the beloved. We noticed that most of the definitions were about giving rather than receiving love. We also considered, valence, outcomes (results of believing in un/conditional love, love as selflessness etc) and the power dynamics, and we talked about whether we were able to choose our definitions of love, or whether they just "happened" to us.
Although we didn't have time in class, the intention was that after thinking about these features of our definitions (actions, qualities, agency, valence, outcomes and power dynamics) => you would go back to your definitions and characterize your ideas about love. Finally, I was going to ask you to go back to your description, and see how/whether your "description" of what happens in a loving relationship matches your definition.
This kind of brainstorming can open up ideas within a piec. It's one way to "see through" cultural assumptions or ways of talking about who we are and what we do. It can help define questions and/or construct ways to think about the possibility of choosing new definitions for belief systems which we might otherwise think of as "given".
Short essays. We spent the rest of class talking about short form CNF, first talking about Accident, and then Fallout, and for five minutes at the end checking in on the other reading assignments.
As I said in class, I will be grading the long essays and probably will not be replying to your blogs until just befoer class next week, which means it will be of much use to you if you put out questions abotu material for your short essay. So - if you want some input on the short draft - email me.
For next week:
Read: http://brevitymag.com/category/current-issue/ Try to read at least 9 stories from the Fall/14 issue (the link is on the landing page). In class we will use a discussion of Brevity as an example of how to do the Rhetorical Analysis of a Publication Venue.
Blog 11: Post Short Draft Essay 1
Also, in addition to posting your Long essay => please send it to me as an attachment. Have a great week and I hope to have these back to you by next class.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
10.29 Journal mining and more about truth
We started class with some work on coming up with a title for the revised long piece. We noted that the title sets up or frames the essay for the reader in important ways. It both gives the main idea away by stating it outright, but because the reader has so little context, often s/he does not "get it" until s/he has read the whole essay - when the title can take on a deep rich resonance with the ideas, events, and feelings from the essay. Think of how "The Patch," "Silent Dancing," "Out There," and "Stripped for Parts" told us about what the essay was about on multiple levels.
The revised essays are due next week, as a blog post.
Mining your journal. The writing prompt tonight was really more of a reflective analysis. I asked you to look back through your in-class writing to look for patterns. I asked you to look for any kind of pattern that came up. They might be patterns in content, emotions, or the particular materials you worked with.
Content: repeated ideas or subject materials. These may involve different material - but evoke the same themes or topics.
Emotions: is there a dominant emotion in your entries? We did some work earlier where you made a list and noticed yoru dominant emotion. Was the emotion for that list the dominant emotion for your journal as a whole?
Particulars: do you refer to the same people, places and things = across ideas and feelings?
Your observations of patterns included: lots of references to family, mothers, coming of age, relailizations, jobs, co-workers, relationships.
There were also some observations about persona - some of you presented your selves as listeners, watchers. Others noticed that they presented experience as "not one thing or another" but the good mixed up with the bad, and/or with time mixed up (moments stretched into multiple events or longer times). Or you noticed the kinds of experiences you wrote about: "can't explain" or "don't understand" (not sure what happened) expereinces, or stories about me + a man. Another observation was that the WAY you wrote changed as you wrote into an entry - that as you approached the emotion of the experience, the writing kind of fell apart. Some of us write questions, some of write tragedies and comedies.
So what do we make of this? Journal mining can be used to get a glimpse of your unpremeditated self. It might suggest what you are interested in, how you represent things, what you are stuck on (or not); what you might want to write about that you are not letting yourself write and what motivates you to write the things that you do write.
The point of this exercise is to think of journals as a snapshots of who we are. They portray what we are thinking, feeling, wondering about at a particular point in time. And that allows us to see ourselves - from the new perspective of where we are.
More about truth and creative nonfiction
We talked briefly about Jill Talbert abd Dinty Moore's discussion of truth in creative nonfiction, and then came up with a set of general points in the debate.
1. It's the truth that counts.
changing minor details doesn't change the larger truth versus all details are part of the larger truth and or why change them?
2. CNF as a label makes a contract with readers for a certain kind of "truth"= no lies
Nobody expects 100% truth, all truth is selectve and memory is partial, versus writers should tell the best truth they can tell, no intentional lies, and there are writerly ways to confess and finesse when info is missing or uncertain
3. CNF is a literary form and therefore has certain obligations to the way the piece sounds (the art of the sentences/words).
truth can ruin prosody versus there are many writerly alternatives to lying
4. What is important is the lived truth - not necessarily the facts.
truth is what you remember versus checking facts, revisiting memories with other witnesses can create fuller more valuable truth
We argued both sides of all these general statements - and then you took some time to write a personal position statement on "truth" in creative nonfiction.
Short essays:
At the end of class we took a few minutes to take a look at the assignment sheet for the short essays. You have the option to create multimedia pieces - or to stick with text. For your brainstorming for Blog 9, I encouraged you to think about medium and content - and to cast a wide net. If you have an idea you'd like to try but are unsure of how to realize(create it as a multimodal text) put it out there and your classmates and I will be there with some ideas.
Blog 10: Revised (best) Long Essay
Thanks again for the great class - and see you next week!
The revised essays are due next week, as a blog post.
Mining your journal. The writing prompt tonight was really more of a reflective analysis. I asked you to look back through your in-class writing to look for patterns. I asked you to look for any kind of pattern that came up. They might be patterns in content, emotions, or the particular materials you worked with.
Content: repeated ideas or subject materials. These may involve different material - but evoke the same themes or topics.
Emotions: is there a dominant emotion in your entries? We did some work earlier where you made a list and noticed yoru dominant emotion. Was the emotion for that list the dominant emotion for your journal as a whole?
Particulars: do you refer to the same people, places and things = across ideas and feelings?
Your observations of patterns included: lots of references to family, mothers, coming of age, relailizations, jobs, co-workers, relationships.
There were also some observations about persona - some of you presented your selves as listeners, watchers. Others noticed that they presented experience as "not one thing or another" but the good mixed up with the bad, and/or with time mixed up (moments stretched into multiple events or longer times). Or you noticed the kinds of experiences you wrote about: "can't explain" or "don't understand" (not sure what happened) expereinces, or stories about me + a man. Another observation was that the WAY you wrote changed as you wrote into an entry - that as you approached the emotion of the experience, the writing kind of fell apart. Some of us write questions, some of write tragedies and comedies.
So what do we make of this? Journal mining can be used to get a glimpse of your unpremeditated self. It might suggest what you are interested in, how you represent things, what you are stuck on (or not); what you might want to write about that you are not letting yourself write and what motivates you to write the things that you do write.
The point of this exercise is to think of journals as a snapshots of who we are. They portray what we are thinking, feeling, wondering about at a particular point in time. And that allows us to see ourselves - from the new perspective of where we are.
More about truth and creative nonfiction
We talked briefly about Jill Talbert abd Dinty Moore's discussion of truth in creative nonfiction, and then came up with a set of general points in the debate.
1. It's the truth that counts.
changing minor details doesn't change the larger truth versus all details are part of the larger truth and or why change them?
2. CNF as a label makes a contract with readers for a certain kind of "truth"= no lies
Nobody expects 100% truth, all truth is selectve and memory is partial, versus writers should tell the best truth they can tell, no intentional lies, and there are writerly ways to confess and finesse when info is missing or uncertain
3. CNF is a literary form and therefore has certain obligations to the way the piece sounds (the art of the sentences/words).
truth can ruin prosody versus there are many writerly alternatives to lying
4. What is important is the lived truth - not necessarily the facts.
truth is what you remember versus checking facts, revisiting memories with other witnesses can create fuller more valuable truth
We argued both sides of all these general statements - and then you took some time to write a personal position statement on "truth" in creative nonfiction.
Short essays:
At the end of class we took a few minutes to take a look at the assignment sheet for the short essays. You have the option to create multimedia pieces - or to stick with text. For your brainstorming for Blog 9, I encouraged you to think about medium and content - and to cast a wide net. If you have an idea you'd like to try but are unsure of how to realize(create it as a multimodal text) put it out there and your classmates and I will be there with some ideas.
For next class:
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://vimeo.com/17548246 Les Cruel Shoes)
Blog 9: Post Brainstorming Short essay 1Read: 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://vimeo.com/17548246 Les Cruel Shoes)
Blog 10: Revised (best) Long Essay
Thanks again for the great class - and see you next week!
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
10.22 Creative Nonfiction and writing the "truth"
We started class by listing the lies James Frey put into his memoir. We then classified the lies in terms of what we felt were the most damaging, and then we ranked them (starred entries had the highest ranking).
Frey lies:
conneected himself to the train accident
special relationship to girl who died
closeness to the family of the girl who died
**made himself the "third victim"
**drug addict, alcoholic, rebel, troublemaker, dealer => makes himself into a romantic hero
made policeman "fat" + aggressive
made jail term longer, changed charges
claims multiple arrests + long jail sentences
wanted in 3 states
**got jailtime reduced by a judge influenced by a ganster
hit a cop
crack use/dealing
set record for blood alcohol
**story about Lily - who died for love of him (creates fictional woman = romantic heroine)
**rehab not necessary = went cold turkey
air plane/vomiting bleeding
root canal without anaesthetic
trip to France
**lied about lying
books he read to Porterhouse (Leonard)
said he was suicidal
creates persona of self that matches a romantic hero
maximum security prison
We did not agree exactly on the ranking, but we seemed to be in the same ballpark in terms of what kinds of lies were most egregious in CNF:
lies that perpetuated damaging (and probably untrue?) stereotypes about people (women who die without their man,thugs with a heart of gold), institutions (the police, government)
lies that may touch the lives of real, struggling people (quitting drugs cold turkey)
lies that re-write or damage the lives of real individuals (lying about the connection to the girl who died in the train accident, lying about the policeman);
and lies about lying => lies that compromise the way readers regard creative nonfiction.
The discussion of Daisey was not so extensive, but we identified a short list of lies that raised similar (and different) issues.
Daisey lies:
security guards guns
solvent/shanking
union meeting at starbucks
moment with translator
worker with ipad
workers talked to him in English
lied about lying
We summed up the differences by suggesting that Frey lied to sell his book, a menoir, and that he (under inescapably exposure) owned up to the lies and didn't really justify them (after he stopped lying).
Daisey told his lies for a "higher truth" connected to social justice, and he put his work forward as journalizm, though after he was caught, he switched to representating it as art as a rationalization for rounding corners, changing facts, and telling outright lies.
At the end of class you wrote a list of times you've been lied to. After you had your list, you chose one or two incidents, and considered:
motivation
power dynamics
who benefits
how it plays out
And, we talked about it.
As usual. this write up does not do justice to the discussion. What a great class. Thanks!
Conference schedule:
Monday 10/27: MaryEllen 12:00; Matt 3:30; Christina 4:00
Tuesday 10:28: Patrice12:30 ; Holly 1:00.
Wednesday: 2:00 Cristal; 2:45 Briana; 3:30 Patricia; 4:00 Florie (if you still want a conference after the comments)
After class: Melissa + Osza.
For next class:
See you next week!
Frey lies:
conneected himself to the train accident
special relationship to girl who died
closeness to the family of the girl who died
**made himself the "third victim"
**drug addict, alcoholic, rebel, troublemaker, dealer => makes himself into a romantic hero
made policeman "fat" + aggressive
made jail term longer, changed charges
claims multiple arrests + long jail sentences
wanted in 3 states
**got jailtime reduced by a judge influenced by a ganster
hit a cop
crack use/dealing
set record for blood alcohol
**story about Lily - who died for love of him (creates fictional woman = romantic heroine)
**rehab not necessary = went cold turkey
air plane/vomiting bleeding
root canal without anaesthetic
trip to France
**lied about lying
books he read to Porterhouse (Leonard)
said he was suicidal
creates persona of self that matches a romantic hero
maximum security prison
We did not agree exactly on the ranking, but we seemed to be in the same ballpark in terms of what kinds of lies were most egregious in CNF:
lies that perpetuated damaging (and probably untrue?) stereotypes about people (women who die without their man,thugs with a heart of gold), institutions (the police, government)
lies that may touch the lives of real, struggling people (quitting drugs cold turkey)
lies that re-write or damage the lives of real individuals (lying about the connection to the girl who died in the train accident, lying about the policeman);
and lies about lying => lies that compromise the way readers regard creative nonfiction.
The discussion of Daisey was not so extensive, but we identified a short list of lies that raised similar (and different) issues.
Daisey lies:
security guards guns
solvent/shanking
union meeting at starbucks
moment with translator
worker with ipad
workers talked to him in English
lied about lying
We summed up the differences by suggesting that Frey lied to sell his book, a menoir, and that he (under inescapably exposure) owned up to the lies and didn't really justify them (after he stopped lying).
Daisey told his lies for a "higher truth" connected to social justice, and he put his work forward as journalizm, though after he was caught, he switched to representating it as art as a rationalization for rounding corners, changing facts, and telling outright lies.
At the end of class you wrote a list of times you've been lied to. After you had your list, you chose one or two incidents, and considered:
motivation
power dynamics
who benefits
how it plays out
And, we talked about it.
As usual. this write up does not do justice to the discussion. What a great class. Thanks!
Conference schedule:
Monday 10/27: MaryEllen 12:00; Matt 3:30; Christina 4:00
Tuesday 10:28: Patrice12:30 ; Holly 1:00.
Wednesday: 2:00 Cristal; 2:45 Briana; 3:30 Patricia; 4:00 Florie (if you still want a conference after the comments)
After class: Melissa + Osza.
For next class:
Read: 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/
http://ww
Blog 7: Write some notes about which essay you will revise, and what you will do to revise it.
See you next week!
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
10.15 Workshop, and introduction to journalism, CNF and => LIES
What we did in class.
Brainstorming: scenes by focus
1. started by writing a list of ideas/realizations/feelings that you might want to use as the focus/aboutness for an essay = what you want your reader to "know" after s/he reads your essay. This is not necessarily something that can be said in a word or even a sentence, so we will designate it as *****.
2.write the places, times, feelings, incidents, people associtaed with/important to ****.
3. write what you want to tell someone, what you want your reader to know related to *****
4. as you think about /write into 3, you might add to the places, times, feelings, incidents, people list for 2, and you might even slightly edit, add to, or revise 1 in light of more in-depth thinking about what you want to tell your reader
5. write a scene that will get the reader to feel/know what you wrote in 4. Use materials from 1-4 to develop this. In this piece of writing, use description, setting, characterization - but NOT reflective narration where you interpret or tell what the scene means.
Moving back and forth between directed writing for focus/scenes and the particular needs of a draft can help to sharpen & develop the focus for the piece. You can also use it to create specific scenes - for the intro or conclusion or to develop one aspect of your focus. Finally, you can also use it as a beginning brainstorming technique, to generate materials/find something you want to write about.
Workshop
The last part of class you workshopped whatever you had so far for Long Essay 2. You designated a timekeepr to make sure everyone had time to work on their piece, and then followed (approximately) the following protocol.
The group reads the author's brainstorming/plan.
1. Author presents an overview of the piece/the form & focus = what s/he is trying to accomplish.
2. Author describes what kind of feedback s/he is looking for,
3. Conversation between author & peers about how to work on the piece
Talk about audience!
4. Who do you see as the audience for this piece?
5. What in your piece (focus/scenes/style) do you think will interest this audience the most?
6. How have you made this focus available to your audience?
7. How might you make this piece more effective for your audience?
For next week:
Read: Smoking gun expose of A Million Little Pieces
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/million-little-lies
Brainstorming: scenes by focus
1. started by writing a list of ideas/realizations/feelings that you might want to use as the focus/aboutness for an essay = what you want your reader to "know" after s/he reads your essay. This is not necessarily something that can be said in a word or even a sentence, so we will designate it as *****.
2.write the places, times, feelings, incidents, people associtaed with/important to ****.
3. write what you want to tell someone, what you want your reader to know related to *****
4. as you think about /write into 3, you might add to the places, times, feelings, incidents, people list for 2, and you might even slightly edit, add to, or revise 1 in light of more in-depth thinking about what you want to tell your reader
5. write a scene that will get the reader to feel/know what you wrote in 4. Use materials from 1-4 to develop this. In this piece of writing, use description, setting, characterization - but NOT reflective narration where you interpret or tell what the scene means.
Moving back and forth between directed writing for focus/scenes and the particular needs of a draft can help to sharpen & develop the focus for the piece. You can also use it to create specific scenes - for the intro or conclusion or to develop one aspect of your focus. Finally, you can also use it as a beginning brainstorming technique, to generate materials/find something you want to write about.
Workshop
The last part of class you workshopped whatever you had so far for Long Essay 2. You designated a timekeepr to make sure everyone had time to work on their piece, and then followed (approximately) the following protocol.
The group reads the author's brainstorming/plan.
1. Author presents an overview of the piece/the form & focus = what s/he is trying to accomplish.
2. Author describes what kind of feedback s/he is looking for,
3. Conversation between author & peers about how to work on the piece
Talk about audience!
4. Who do you see as the audience for this piece?
5. What in your piece (focus/scenes/style) do you think will interest this audience the most?
6. How have you made this focus available to your audience?
7. How might you make this piece more effective for your audience?
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
A complete transcript is available at: http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/special/TAL_460_Retraction_Transcript.pdf
As you read the reports on Frey and Daisey = pay attention to: the kinds of lies Frey and Daisey told; and why the authors told those lies (not "to get famous/published", which is the obvious answer=> but why did they tell THOSE particular lies, how did telling the different kinds of lies change the way readers received their writing?). Then, think about whether it matters that they told those lies.
Blog 7: Due Draft long essay 2
I will be writing feedback for Blogs 4,5 & 6 over the weekend - so if you want feedback on your brainstorming, make sure it is posted.
A complete transcript is available at: http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/special/TAL_460_Retraction_Transcript.pdf
As you read the reports on Frey and Daisey = pay attention to: the kinds of lies Frey and Daisey told; and why the authors told those lies (not "to get famous/published", which is the obvious answer=> but why did they tell THOSE particular lies, how did telling the different kinds of lies change the way readers received their writing?). Then, think about whether it matters that they told those lies.
Blog 7: Due Draft long essay 2
I will be writing feedback for Blogs 4,5 & 6 over the weekend - so if you want feedback on your brainstorming, make sure it is posted.
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
10.8 Brainstorming for Essay 2 and more about form
We started class with an exercise on moments of realization. You did a freewrite - not so much to get material but to open up your mind - get the editor turned off, and then you wrote a list of reailzations. Points in your life, moments in time when you knew something more or differently after what ever that point in your life was. After you wrote your list we talked through the different kinds of realizations we had:
After talking through these realizations, you wrote a "scene" from in or around the moment when you realized whatever it was. The place, the people, your thoughts and feelings, any conversation you remember. Then I asked to you look at the details you provided, and pointedly ask yourself what you left out, or if there were any other ways of representing what you put down, if there were things you weren't sure of, or if there was someone else who was there and if they would represent it differently.
Below is a list of what you noticed about your representations of your "moments of realization."
hazy on the details
tendency to leave out the hard stuff
leave out what confilicts with our ideas of what happened
leave out people things that seem "inconsequential" to the focus
leave out interpretatons
hazy on the feelings
can't recall the context (cause)
We then had a short discussion of what this process of identifying moments of realization, writing the details/a scene of that realization, and then noting the features of your representation can do for you as part of a brainstorming process. We noted that this kind of a process might be particularly important when writing about material that we are particularly invested in. Good enough.
During the last section of class we talked about The Patch, and Silent Dancing in terms of how they were "built" and how the structure created the meaning.
The Patch and Silent Dancing.
We talked about these two essays. I meant to get to some more detailed analysis of how the structure worked but we didn't quite get there. First we generated a list of what the essays were "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. 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 Long Essay 2
Next class will be devoted to work on drafting long essay to, so come to class with some material to work with.
- about parents - that they are human
- about loss and how we try to avoid it but avoiding it cuts out so much of what we cherish
- about unexpected feelings of sadness brought on by seeing something in particular (a short funeral procession)
- about how we are really just like that person who does that thing we can't stand (we do it too)
- how we can go to the same place and see more of it - that we never really see all that is there and it will be different each time we go to it
- how someone is not the person we thought they were but if we think about it they were always the way we see them now only we couldn't "see" it
- how someone had a different interpretation of what they said or did than we understood (the story about the phone number)
- that some people do things right in front of our face that we interpret as OK but when we think about it - it's not quite right (the priest story)
- how we often assume behavior is normal and act accordingly and forget that some people are really different
After talking through these realizations, you wrote a "scene" from in or around the moment when you realized whatever it was. The place, the people, your thoughts and feelings, any conversation you remember. Then I asked to you look at the details you provided, and pointedly ask yourself what you left out, or if there were any other ways of representing what you put down, if there were things you weren't sure of, or if there was someone else who was there and if they would represent it differently.
Below is a list of what you noticed about your representations of your "moments of realization."
hazy on the details
tendency to leave out the hard stuff
leave out what confilicts with our ideas of what happened
leave out people things that seem "inconsequential" to the focus
leave out interpretatons
hazy on the feelings
can't recall the context (cause)
We then had a short discussion of what this process of identifying moments of realization, writing the details/a scene of that realization, and then noting the features of your representation can do for you as part of a brainstorming process. We noted that this kind of a process might be particularly important when writing about material that we are particularly invested in. Good enough.
During the last section of class we talked about The Patch, and Silent Dancing in terms of how they were "built" and how the structure created the meaning.
The Patch and Silent Dancing.
We talked about these two essays. I meant to get to some more detailed analysis of how the structure worked but we didn't quite get there. First we generated a list of what the essays were "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. 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 Long Essay 2
Next class will be devoted to work on drafting long essay to, so come to class with some material to work with.
Thursday, October 2, 2014
10.1 Things I'd never write about and Monopoly
Conference schedule (if I have you in the wrong slot or you need to switch - let me know):
Monday, October 6: Christina 12:30; Stephanie 1:00 Cristal 4:30; Florie 5:00
Wednesday, October 8: Patricia 3:00; Briana 3:30; Holly 4:00
Things I Won't Write About List. We started class by making a list of stories you would never write about. After you had your lists, we talked about the "kinds of things" (categories) you wouldn't write about. This is more or less what we came up with:
done with it
shameful
conflict with identity
gross
sexuality
too scary
rather forget about it
victim
too private
not ready to write about
religious stories
not my story
not right (ownership or voyeuristic issues)
fear of cultural reprisals
As we talked through this list, we noticed that many of these categories (shameful, identity conflicts, sexuality, too scary, want to forget about, victim stories, private) actually correspond (in a general way) with the kinds of things CNF writers write about: personal, private, contested materials contemplated with the relentless interrogation described in Lott's essay. We also noted, (or at least I admitted), that reading "true" essays on this topic can be extremely valuable to readers - that writers who take on these topics perform a service in a very real sense.
I haven't really captured the complexity of this discussion - you raised considerations about audience and the problems that public writing encounters in terms of presenting a "self" to a broader range of people than your story might actually be directed toward (as with the religious stories), and you pointed out that in some sense decisions about what to write about often hang on whether or not you have something important to say on the topic - and whehter or not you feel it is "worth saying". So I am hoping that whatever you took away from this exercise is in your notebooks, and that you keep this list, and go back to it. Just in case there is material here worth contemplating.
We didn't make the "why do this exercies" that we usually do at the end of the opening prompts - mostly because we had already gone over the allotted by 15 minutes, so I will pose that question here. How might it be useful to you to reflect on materials you "won't consider" writing about? What might looking at the kinds of topics you put on this list tell you about yourself as a writer? In what ways might it help you re-consider ideas that otherwise would have remained out of bounds, and is this worthwhile?
This was a great discussion.
As pointed out at the end of the discussion, this essay was first published in the New Yorker, and the indirectness of the point may have made this argument more palatable to that magazine's readers.
I chose this essay as the reading for the day we did the "things I would never write about" prompt in the hopes that the way it presents its "subject" might be useful to you in exploring/articulating/presenting to an audience topics that might feel contested or uncomfortable. By making his points indirectly - through intertwining related stories - McPhee enlists his reader in creating (exploring) the takeaway for his essay => the reader has to come up with what the juxtapositions/parallel stories "mean". This allows for a less didactic, more open consideration of the subject material; and for topics we are not ready to write, or that we feel shamed by or fear cultural judgment about - this might be a possible way to open a conversation.
For next week:
Monday, October 6: Christina 12:30; Stephanie 1:00 Cristal 4:30; Florie 5:00
Wednesday, October 8: Patricia 3:00; Briana 3:30; Holly 4:00
Things I Won't Write About List. We started class by making a list of stories you would never write about. After you had your lists, we talked about the "kinds of things" (categories) you wouldn't write about. This is more or less what we came up with:
done with it
shameful
conflict with identity
gross
sexuality
too scary
rather forget about it
victim
too private
not ready to write about
religious stories
not my story
not right (ownership or voyeuristic issues)
fear of cultural reprisals
As we talked through this list, we noticed that many of these categories (shameful, identity conflicts, sexuality, too scary, want to forget about, victim stories, private) actually correspond (in a general way) with the kinds of things CNF writers write about: personal, private, contested materials contemplated with the relentless interrogation described in Lott's essay. We also noted, (or at least I admitted), that reading "true" essays on this topic can be extremely valuable to readers - that writers who take on these topics perform a service in a very real sense.
I haven't really captured the complexity of this discussion - you raised considerations about audience and the problems that public writing encounters in terms of presenting a "self" to a broader range of people than your story might actually be directed toward (as with the religious stories), and you pointed out that in some sense decisions about what to write about often hang on whether or not you have something important to say on the topic - and whehter or not you feel it is "worth saying". So I am hoping that whatever you took away from this exercise is in your notebooks, and that you keep this list, and go back to it. Just in case there is material here worth contemplating.
We didn't make the "why do this exercies" that we usually do at the end of the opening prompts - mostly because we had already gone over the allotted by 15 minutes, so I will pose that question here. How might it be useful to you to reflect on materials you "won't consider" writing about? What might looking at the kinds of topics you put on this list tell you about yourself as a writer? In what ways might it help you re-consider ideas that otherwise would have remained out of bounds, and is this worthwhile?
This was a great discussion.
The Search for Marvin Gardens.
This discussion identified the three threads/narrative lines in McPhee's essay:1) playing the game Monopoly with comments on the strategies/practices/objects of play; 2) walking through Atlantic City, noticing the urban decay, on a search for Marvin Gardens; 3) historical commentaries on how Atlantic City was built (and by whom). These three strands were broken up into segments that were interspersed among one another.
You noted early in the discussion of what the essay was about that :
the competitive play took the fun out of the game
it was all about competition and winning
it tells the story of McPhee walking through Atlantic city - seeing poor parts of town/all broken down
he is "living" a monopoly game finding the real places from the board
And you pointed out that the juxtaposition and paralles in the focus of the segments imply connections among the game play, the condition of Atlantic City, and the city's history.
You spent about 15 more minutes looking at how McPhee built his essay. We noted that the points the three threads were contemplating were set up in the title, metaphorically - with Marvin Gardens standing in for the middle class (though we don't know that until he makes the connection in the very last sectdion). The essay is in many ways about the absence of a middle class and all three threads lead to a contemplation on the importance of economic and political and social structures associated with a middleclass. McPhee guides us in a contemplation of Monopoly (the game), monopoly (as it was practiced by the "robber barons" of industry at the turn of the last centuy) and monopoly (the consequences, as seen in Atlantic City). He does not preach at us or argue with us. Rather, he tells us stories that get us to "feel" or intuit his conclusion.
As pointed out at the end of the discussion, this essay was first published in the New Yorker, and the indirectness of the point may have made this argument more palatable to that magazine's readers.
I chose this essay as the reading for the day we did the "things I would never write about" prompt in the hopes that the way it presents its "subject" might be useful to you in exploring/articulating/presenting to an audience topics that might feel contested or uncomfortable. By making his points indirectly - through intertwining related stories - McPhee enlists his reader in creating (exploring) the takeaway for his essay => the reader has to come up with what the juxtapositions/parallel stories "mean". This allows for a less didactic, more open consideration of the subject material; and for topics we are not ready to write, or that we feel shamed by or fear cultural judgment about - this might be a possible way to open a conversation.
For next week:
Read: Cofer, p.54, Silent Dancing; "The Patch" by John McPhee (link sent through email)
Blog 5: plans for revising Long essay 1
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
9.24 Thinking about your stories & segmentation
Announcements: We started class with a reminder that the blogs you post are public documents, and that you need to consider content (nothing illegal or anything that might compromise your future) of your writing.
We then previewed the way McPhee uses segments in "The Search for Marvin Gardens", You noticed that at the beginning he moves between descriptions of playing Monopoly, and walking through Atlantic City - the place with the streets/places that that gave the Monopoly properties their names. He later includes sections which fill in the history of the game and theories of game play, as well as the history of Atlantic City. As you read this essay, notice how the sections work together to develop a "meaning" - really a set of interrelated meanings - that work more effectively than if he pounded readers with his points.
And, you signed up for conferences (schedule at the end of this post). If you need to change your time - send me an email
Activity to reflect on your predispositions in telling stories (about yourself)
We started with you writing 3 adjectives to describe your self.
Then I asked you to mak a big list of the k stories you tell about yourself. And you did. After everyone had at least 10 stories, I asked you to classify the stories in terms of the following questions/features.
1. Did you edit your list or jsut put down every story that came to mind?
2. Classify your audience: close friends/family = intimate audience; for a rhetorical purpose; anybody= good story,
3. Describe the dominant feeling
4. Were you active or/passive? Did you act upon events and make them happen, or were you responding to events/people acting on you.
5. Was your story resolved or unresolved?
6. Which pieces would make a good CNF piece for you?
You then did some reflecting on yours classifications, and you shared a description of patterns you noticed in the kinds of stories you told. In this discussion, each of you presented a slightly different profile in the kinds of stories you told to represent yourself. .There were not good or bad patterns - what was important was for you to notice what your patterns were.
For the final part of the exercise, you went back to the adjectives you used to describe yourself and noticed how the adjectives did or didn't connect to the features of the stories you tell about yourself.
We observed that the only one who can interpret what these similarities/differences mean is you, because the request for adjectives to describe yourself (at the beginning of class) was in a sense a request for a story meant for a particular audience, and only you know what audience you imagined. At the same time, this reflection might suggest some of the differences in the way you "tell" your self (through a set of assessments in the form of adjectives) and the way you "show" yourself (as a story).
Why would you do this exercise? What does it tell you?
1. what kinds of stories you have a tendency to tell about yourself, and in light of that, what you might block from yourself
2. CNF is writing about yourself = examine the kinds of stories you have a tendency to tell
3. examining differences between how you would "tell" your self and how you would "show" yourself.
4.illustrating the differences between showing and telling
5. begin to think about the different ways you tell your stories for different audiences
6. think about why you tell the stories you do and for what purposes (why you write)
7. be conscious of the implications of a story
Analysis of segmented essays
You divided into groups to analyze the three essays you read. Each group was asked to do the following.
1. Noticing what is there: What do the segments look like? how many sections?
2. Interpreting how sections work: What does each section do (what is its function)? how do they create the flow of the narrative? how do the sections contribute to the story?
3. Generalizing how the sturcture works: How does the structure contribute to the meaning?
Teacher Training
regular font + italicized = alternates
regular - expereinces in classroom as a teacher in the present
italicized, in the past, in the 5th grade, experiences with Mrs. Crane
Transitions from experience as teacher to experiences as a student, each paring illustrates what she learned from her experience as a student
Segments work in pairs, to make a series of XX experiences
Sequential AND interconnected
Below are my notes from your reports on what the essays "did"
Stripped for Parts
3 segments
each of the three segments focuses on organ donation from a diffrent focus
1. background and research + focus on dead man
2. organ donation in gnerl and set in ICU
3. surgery + where the organs are goingmore or less unfavorable presen
works as a story, points are there but not in your face
the last sentence of each section casts an unfavorable prespective
My Father Always Said
sections are clear and separate but not stark like they are in Pope. Facilitate the flow of the story as a progression. Each segment is related to the next, build on one another,segments are chronological,
set in a dual perspective = Schwartz and Father with respect to how they feel about their past
they approach that past from different perspective: Father re-;iving it, Schwarts discovering it
Their perspectives on their past change
Father goes from idealizing past = to letting it go
Schwartz goes from not caring about her past to valuing it
Workshop:
You only had about 10 minutes left, So I asked you to use your time in your groups to talk to each other about what kind of feedback you would like on your brainstorming - feedback to help you work the piece into a complete draft - as well as some conversation about what kind of feedback you DON'T want.
Groups were as follows.
Patrice, Osza, Cristal, Holly
Melissa, Christina, Brianna, Mary Ellen
Patricia, Matt, Stephanie, Florie
Then - give comments to the people in your group. Be sure to edit Blog 3 to include a request for the kind of feedback you want. That way I will have some direction in writing comments.
Finally, here is the conference schedule:
Monday, Septermber 29: Stephanie, 12:30; Mary Ellen 4:00; Osza 4:30
Tuesday, September 30: Patrice1:00
Wednesday, October 1: Matt 4:00 Melissa 7:30
Monday, October 6: Holly 12:30, Flora 4:00; Cristal 4:30
Wednesday, October 8: Patricia 3:00; Christina 7:30
For next week:
What a great class this was! Thank you for your awesome participation.
We then previewed the way McPhee uses segments in "The Search for Marvin Gardens", You noticed that at the beginning he moves between descriptions of playing Monopoly, and walking through Atlantic City - the place with the streets/places that that gave the Monopoly properties their names. He later includes sections which fill in the history of the game and theories of game play, as well as the history of Atlantic City. As you read this essay, notice how the sections work together to develop a "meaning" - really a set of interrelated meanings - that work more effectively than if he pounded readers with his points.
And, you signed up for conferences (schedule at the end of this post). If you need to change your time - send me an email
Activity to reflect on your predispositions in telling stories (about yourself)
We started with you writing 3 adjectives to describe your self.
Then I asked you to mak a big list of the k stories you tell about yourself. And you did. After everyone had at least 10 stories, I asked you to classify the stories in terms of the following questions/features.
1. Did you edit your list or jsut put down every story that came to mind?
2. Classify your audience: close friends/family = intimate audience; for a rhetorical purpose; anybody= good story,
3. Describe the dominant feeling
4. Were you active or/passive? Did you act upon events and make them happen, or were you responding to events/people acting on you.
5. Was your story resolved or unresolved?
6. Which pieces would make a good CNF piece for you?
You then did some reflecting on yours classifications, and you shared a description of patterns you noticed in the kinds of stories you told. In this discussion, each of you presented a slightly different profile in the kinds of stories you told to represent yourself. .There were not good or bad patterns - what was important was for you to notice what your patterns were.
For the final part of the exercise, you went back to the adjectives you used to describe yourself and noticed how the adjectives did or didn't connect to the features of the stories you tell about yourself.
We observed that the only one who can interpret what these similarities/differences mean is you, because the request for adjectives to describe yourself (at the beginning of class) was in a sense a request for a story meant for a particular audience, and only you know what audience you imagined. At the same time, this reflection might suggest some of the differences in the way you "tell" your self (through a set of assessments in the form of adjectives) and the way you "show" yourself (as a story).
Why would you do this exercise? What does it tell you?
1. what kinds of stories you have a tendency to tell about yourself, and in light of that, what you might block from yourself
2. CNF is writing about yourself = examine the kinds of stories you have a tendency to tell
3. examining differences between how you would "tell" your self and how you would "show" yourself.
4.illustrating the differences between showing and telling
5. begin to think about the different ways you tell your stories for different audiences
6. think about why you tell the stories you do and for what purposes (why you write)
7. be conscious of the implications of a story
Analysis of segmented essays
You divided into groups to analyze the three essays you read. Each group was asked to do the following.
1. Noticing what is there: What do the segments look like? how many sections?
2. Interpreting how sections work: What does each section do (what is its function)? how do they create the flow of the narrative? how do the sections contribute to the story?
3. Generalizing how the sturcture works: How does the structure contribute to the meaning?
Teacher Training
regular font + italicized = alternates
regular - expereinces in classroom as a teacher in the present
italicized, in the past, in the 5th grade, experiences with Mrs. Crane
Transitions from experience as teacher to experiences as a student, each paring illustrates what she learned from her experience as a student
Segments work in pairs, to make a series of XX experiences
Sequential AND interconnected
Below are my notes from your reports on what the essays "did"
Stripped for Parts
3 segments
each of the three segments focuses on organ donation from a diffrent focus
1. background and research + focus on dead man
2. organ donation in gnerl and set in ICU
3. surgery + where the organs are goingmore or less unfavorable presen
works as a story, points are there but not in your face
the last sentence of each section casts an unfavorable prespective
My Father Always Said
sections are clear and separate but not stark like they are in Pope. Facilitate the flow of the story as a progression. Each segment is related to the next, build on one another,segments are chronological,
set in a dual perspective = Schwartz and Father with respect to how they feel about their past
they approach that past from different perspective: Father re-;iving it, Schwarts discovering it
Their perspectives on their past change
Father goes from idealizing past = to letting it go
Schwartz goes from not caring about her past to valuing it
Workshop:
You only had about 10 minutes left, So I asked you to use your time in your groups to talk to each other about what kind of feedback you would like on your brainstorming - feedback to help you work the piece into a complete draft - as well as some conversation about what kind of feedback you DON'T want.
Groups were as follows.
Patrice, Osza, Cristal, Holly
Melissa, Christina, Brianna, Mary Ellen
Patricia, Matt, Stephanie, Florie
Then - give comments to the people in your group. Be sure to edit Blog 3 to include a request for the kind of feedback you want. That way I will have some direction in writing comments.
Finally, here is the conference schedule:
Monday, Septermber 29: Stephanie, 12:30; Mary Ellen 4:00; Osza 4:30
Tuesday, September 30: Patrice1:00
Wednesday, October 1: Matt 4:00 Melissa 7:30
Monday, October 6: Holly 12:30, Flora 4:00; Cristal 4:30
Wednesday, October 8: Patricia 3:00; Christina 7:30
For next week:
Read: McPhee, p.
128, "Search for Marvin Gardens"
Blog 4: Draft Long essay 1
I will try to give you some feedback on Blog 3 soon enough so that it might be of some use to you as you draft your essays. If you want your feedback ASAP - send my an email and I will put you at the top of the list.
What a great class this was! Thank you for your awesome participation.
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Book Drive
Sigma Tau Delta is partnering with Reach Out and Read to collect books for children from infancy through age 5. Reach Out and Read prepares America's youngest children to succeed in school by partnering with doctors to prescribe books and encourage families to read together.
Please help us nurture literacy by donating books appropriate for children through age 5 to the English Department Office located on the 3rd floor of CAS September 22 - September 25.
See attached flyer for information about Reach Out and Read.
For more information on the book drive or Sigma Tau Delta, please contact us at sigmataudeltakean@gmail.com.
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
9.17 Active imagination and finishing up definitions
At the beginning of class we started off with some "brilliant statements" to sum up what creative nonfiction is or does, and you came up with the following.
CNF has a measure of truth, is life written down; is a way to keep from passig away altogether the life we have lived; has standards for reliability; makes stories that put readers in an active role (works the reader); places one's sef in relation to the subject at hand. Nice - and I appreciate the strategic references to the readings for this week.
Active imagination. We spent the next chunk of classtime working on another technique for indirect brainstorming. For this practice, you closed your eyes and got to the "watching" state like last week, only once you got there you intentionally called up a dream place and interacted with what came up. You seemed to make good use of this approach - and it was only your first time! In our discussion afterwards you came up with the following list of reasons for why you might want to resort to this practice.
For next class:
CNF has a measure of truth, is life written down; is a way to keep from passig away altogether the life we have lived; has standards for reliability; makes stories that put readers in an active role (works the reader); places one's sef in relation to the subject at hand. Nice - and I appreciate the strategic references to the readings for this week.
Active imagination. We spent the next chunk of classtime working on another technique for indirect brainstorming. For this practice, you closed your eyes and got to the "watching" state like last week, only once you got there you intentionally called up a dream place and interacted with what came up. You seemed to make good use of this approach - and it was only your first time! In our discussion afterwards you came up with the following list of reasons for why you might want to resort to this practice.
- to access the past (supplement what you remember in your more conscious mind)
- to see how you feel => going there & watvching
- to look at differnt points of view + details
- to more fully understand/relate to characters=maybe people from life look differently in your dreams
- to open up to things you wouldn't otherwise think about
- to gain a more focused & directed look into your "unconscious" than you get from the "just being there" meditation
- to connects to nonverbal thought
Long Essay Assignment (posted to the right).At the beginning of the second half of class we looked at the assignment sheet. I'm hoping this gives you enough direction so so you can get started on your first long essay. If you still have questions - don't worry, we will come back to this sheet as we work through the drafting process.
Brainstorming. After going over the assignment you spent some time looking for an idea. I suggested that you go through your journal, or develop a list of possible topics through some other process - and then evaluated the possibilities in terms of which ones would give you both: a concept/focus, and some good stories to develop that focus. As we talked through some of the examples you came up with we noticed how this part of the invention process involves moving back and forth between the stories and the concept to see how the materials work together. It also involves looking for "natural" connections between the subject material in the stories and the concepts associated with your central idea. For example, Melissa's story about going to the grand canyon with her family and the differet family members having different interests (associated with age/identity) seemed a good match for the Grand Canyon's layers of stone from different time periods, next to on another but distinct = each embodying a different system.
Lott & Gutkind. You did an amazing job summing up these two readings in the 15 minutes we left for them. Clearly you read and understood them. You pulled out important points from each. We will definitely be returning to the discussion of "compression" and "responsibility to innocent victims" from Gutkind, and to the list of points identified by Lott. These readings were meant to put out a frame for you both to acknowledge and push against as you write.
For next class:
Read: Schwartz,
p. 194, Pope,388, Kahn, p. 95 => as you read these essays, notice how the authors use segments: their purpose, and how the structures effect those purposes.
Blog 3: invention
writing for Long essay 1. This post should include writing to dig into both the concept and the stories you will use to develop that concept; this writing does not need to be in "polished form" - rather it should provide a bases for opening a conversation where you work with your classmates to further refine your essay's central idea & to explore & identify stories that will open up that idea. If you get stuck - do some writing about what you want to do, why you are stuck, and if possible pose some questions.
Thursday, September 11, 2014
9.10 Indirect brainstorming and analyzing creative nonfiction
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 about:
noticing the external world
feelings of sleepiness - in a daze - awareness of level of awakeness
realizing that you are alone in our head => can yell and scream in here and no one will know
chains of association: heart beat=> girl friend=>responsibilities
body sensations (feel hands disappear)
connections to music
visuals associations to places = see some place from past images => projecting into the future
image from recent experience (digital clock)
This is all pretty regular. You also noticed that sometimes 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 noticed that this kind of "brainstorming" can help access the unconscious; it can turn of the noise/editor in our heads and make room so we can see what is there in the quiet. We also noted that it can work to put the on-going narration of self on pause - so that we might actually have a moment to re-see ourselves outside those narratives. We also noted that it could promote creativity by opening up new channels for "thinking" other than in words. What came into your head took the form of images, sounds, movement, felt understanding, sensations AND words. We also noted that this form of invention/gathering material could take some of the stress out of writing. It can be a part of writing that is not so hard. Along a similarline, it can also make a safe place to encounter ideas/feelings that might be too scary/difficult to deal with in words and outside of our own head. So there are lots of reasons for engaging in indirect/meditative forms of invention.
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 set up in the introduction to this exercise - memory is deeply associated with the senses. Researchers have found that when we re-member our past, our nervous system actually re-feels the experience. That makes sensory association an important technique for brainstorming - and for writing powerfully evocative prose.
Analysis of features of creative nonfiction.
During the second part of class you worked in groups to identify the "essential" features of the fourssample CNF pieces we read - and to note some of the things they did but that were necessarily essential to making them CNF. I asked you to look at the writing in terms of: focus, organization, directness, literariness, word choice, and point of view.
Some of the points you noted (constructed from memory since I didn't get a chance to copy from the board) as essential were as follows:
told a story
made a point
included real people and places
were descriptive => richly rendered (shown as opposed to told)
constructed in a way best suited to making the main point/exploring an idea (not necessarily chronological)
written in first person (mostly) => but with a broad range of relationships between the narrator and the material
non-essential features included
talk - included dialog or what people said
moved back and forth between showing and telling (between reflecting + telling a story)
included elements of "fiction"
We didn't quite get finished with this classification,. As class end I asked for you to think about one quintessential observation you would make about CNF (one brilliant statement). Spend some time working on that on - and we will start class with some of your insights on what CNF is and what it does at the beginning of class next week.
Also, it said on the calendar that we were going to go over the first assignment (Long Essay - posted to the right), but I decided we would do that next week.
For next class:
We will continue work on indirect, associative brainstorming and finish discussion of how to define creative nonfiction.
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 about:
noticing the external world
feelings of sleepiness - in a daze - awareness of level of awakeness
realizing that you are alone in our head => can yell and scream in here and no one will know
chains of association: heart beat=> girl friend=>responsibilities
body sensations (feel hands disappear)
connections to music
visuals associations to places = see some place from past images => projecting into the future
image from recent experience (digital clock)
This is all pretty regular. You also noticed that sometimes 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 noticed that this kind of "brainstorming" can help access the unconscious; it can turn of the noise/editor in our heads and make room so we can see what is there in the quiet. We also noted that it can work to put the on-going narration of self on pause - so that we might actually have a moment to re-see ourselves outside those narratives. We also noted that it could promote creativity by opening up new channels for "thinking" other than in words. What came into your head took the form of images, sounds, movement, felt understanding, sensations AND words. We also noted that this form of invention/gathering material could take some of the stress out of writing. It can be a part of writing that is not so hard. Along a similarline, it can also make a safe place to encounter ideas/feelings that might be too scary/difficult to deal with in words and outside of our own head. So there are lots of reasons for engaging in indirect/meditative forms of invention.
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 set up in the introduction to this exercise - memory is deeply associated with the senses. Researchers have found that when we re-member our past, our nervous system actually re-feels the experience. That makes sensory association an important technique for brainstorming - and for writing powerfully evocative prose.
Analysis of features of creative nonfiction.
During the second part of class you worked in groups to identify the "essential" features of the fourssample CNF pieces we read - and to note some of the things they did but that were necessarily essential to making them CNF. I asked you to look at the writing in terms of: focus, organization, directness, literariness, word choice, and point of view.
Some of the points you noted (constructed from memory since I didn't get a chance to copy from the board) as essential were as follows:
told a story
made a point
included real people and places
were descriptive => richly rendered (shown as opposed to told)
constructed in a way best suited to making the main point/exploring an idea (not necessarily chronological)
written in first person (mostly) => but with a broad range of relationships between the narrator and the material
non-essential features included
talk - included dialog or what people said
moved back and forth between showing and telling (between reflecting + telling a story)
included elements of "fiction"
We didn't quite get finished with this classification,. As class end I asked for you to think about one quintessential observation you would make about CNF (one brilliant statement). Spend some time working on that on - and we will start class with some of your insights on what CNF is and what it does at the beginning of class next week.
Also, it said on the calendar that we were going to go over the first assignment (Long Essay - posted to the right), but I decided we would do that 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 )
Blog 2: In light of your evolving definition of CNF, some writing about what experiences from your life you might write about, and what you might say about them. (Putting writing up here is not a commitment to a topic: it is practice exploring ideas => like we have been doing in class).
Thursday, September 4, 2014
9.3 What is creative nonfiction?
We started class with a rambling review of the syllabus and calendar. I hit the main points in a kind of random way. It's much more organized in the documents themselves - if you have questions, be in touch.
Class introductions. Writers share their work in writing classes and to do you need to know the people you are working with - so we spent the first part of class getting to know eachother. Not just names (though that is important), but a little about who we are. Because CNF - in many ways - has a contemplation of truth at its center, this introduction exercise was set up as a way for each of us to explore our relationship to lying. You were to engage in "party" conversation, and in that conversation you were to tell at least one lie. All but two of you got to tell your lies (I cut off the conversation too soon for a couple of you), and the conversation after the "event" provided us with some thoughts about telling the truth/lies.
A couple of you observed that it was hard to lie to people you were going to know and work with - that it is different (maybe even a game/playful?) lying to strangers. So when you are writing - are you writing to people you have a relationship with (people you "know") or to starngers? How do you feel about misrepresenting your self and your experience? Is it OK because it is "creative" . . . or not?
As you talked about your experiences, I noticed that some of you told your stories from inside the talking - as the person who was telling the lie. You reflected on how you felt and what you were thinking. Others talked about the experience from the role of the audience - watching for the lie, wondering what was true and what was not. So there were issues of perspective - our relationship to truth=> whether we were the author or the "reader" of what was (presented as) true.
We also talked about issues of intentional versus unintentional lies - and how unintentional lies were perhaps more "natural" and more difficult to reflect on in our writing (since we don't know we are telling them).
And you learned eachothers names, so that the blog list on the side should call up some faces.
What is creative nonfiction?
During the second part of class we got into a more direct discussion of what creative nonfiction is. We identified a list of features associated with a list of text which we put out there as possibilities for creative nonfiction works. These features included:
autobiographical
making a point
real people
real places
description
factual
journalistic - fact based
memoir
. . . and that's a start. I added that creative nonfiction has a storytelling part, and a reflecting part; and that one defining feature of creative nonfiction is that it is as seen through the author's eyes. That said - there are a lot of ways to write creative nonfiction (as illustrated by the readings for next class).
You did a little sample journaling toward the end of class. You made a list of things you might write about. I suggested that you could go for experiences that were/are interesting to you, experiences that make a good story, or that provide what you feel was/is an important revellation. You shared some of your ideas and it sounds to me like you will have LOTs to write about. For now - stay open. Keep adding to your jorunal. Don't choose just yet.
I am still working on revising the blog list. That should be done by tonight.
For next class:
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?
Class introductions. Writers share their work in writing classes and to do you need to know the people you are working with - so we spent the first part of class getting to know eachother. Not just names (though that is important), but a little about who we are. Because CNF - in many ways - has a contemplation of truth at its center, this introduction exercise was set up as a way for each of us to explore our relationship to lying. You were to engage in "party" conversation, and in that conversation you were to tell at least one lie. All but two of you got to tell your lies (I cut off the conversation too soon for a couple of you), and the conversation after the "event" provided us with some thoughts about telling the truth/lies.
A couple of you observed that it was hard to lie to people you were going to know and work with - that it is different (maybe even a game/playful?) lying to strangers. So when you are writing - are you writing to people you have a relationship with (people you "know") or to starngers? How do you feel about misrepresenting your self and your experience? Is it OK because it is "creative" . . . or not?
As you talked about your experiences, I noticed that some of you told your stories from inside the talking - as the person who was telling the lie. You reflected on how you felt and what you were thinking. Others talked about the experience from the role of the audience - watching for the lie, wondering what was true and what was not. So there were issues of perspective - our relationship to truth=> whether we were the author or the "reader" of what was (presented as) true.
We also talked about issues of intentional versus unintentional lies - and how unintentional lies were perhaps more "natural" and more difficult to reflect on in our writing (since we don't know we are telling them).
And you learned eachothers names, so that the blog list on the side should call up some faces.
What is creative nonfiction?
During the second part of class we got into a more direct discussion of what creative nonfiction is. We identified a list of features associated with a list of text which we put out there as possibilities for creative nonfiction works. These features included:
autobiographical
making a point
real people
real places
description
factual
journalistic - fact based
memoir
. . . and that's a start. I added that creative nonfiction has a storytelling part, and a reflecting part; and that one defining feature of creative nonfiction is that it is as seen through the author's eyes. That said - there are a lot of ways to write creative nonfiction (as illustrated by the readings for next class).
You did a little sample journaling toward the end of class. You made a list of things you might write about. I suggested that you could go for experiences that were/are interesting to you, experiences that make a good story, or that provide what you feel was/is an important revellation. You shared some of your ideas and it sounds to me like you will have LOTs to write about. For now - stay open. Keep adding to your jorunal. Don't choose just yet.
I am still working on revising the blog list. That should be done by tonight.
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
Thanks for the great class tonight! See you next week.
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Blog 1
In process!
Because of my teaching schedule (and because I walked to work tonight and just got home and haven't had dinner) I will be completing this post some time tomorrow.
Thanks for the great first class!
Because of my teaching schedule (and because I walked to work tonight and just got home and haven't had dinner) I will be completing this post some time tomorrow.
Thanks for the great first class!
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. .
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. .
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
5.6 End of Term Reading: Program
6:00 Joanna
6:10 Graig
6:25 Megan
6:35 Sharyn
6:45 Adrian
7:00 Kyle
7:10 Jennifer
7:20 Ashley
7:30 Becky
7:45 Alexis
7:55 Brandon
8:05 Brie
8:15 David
8:30 Michele
6:10 Graig
6:25 Megan
6:35 Sharyn
6:45 Adrian
7:00 Kyle
7:10 Jennifer
7:20 Ashley
7:30 Becky
7:45 Alexis
7:55 Brandon
8:05 Brie
8:15 David
8:30 Michele
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
4.22 Presentations on Publication Venues
The talks tonight were well done. Make sure your "handout" is posted to your blog so I can reply to it.
Next week will be devoted to setting up your portfolios and practicing for the end of year reading.
I passed around a sign-up sheet for "what to bring" in terms of refreshments. We will revisit that list next week in class and create the reading schedule
In general, expect to read a piece about 10 minutes long (8-12 is OK, some of you will go short, some a little longer and that's OK). You are welcome to bring a guest, and we have Kean Hall, 127 researved from 5 until 9, so there is time to set up and clean up.
For next week:
Blog 11: Final Short Essay (also send it to me as an attachment, this is the one that will get a grade).
In class you will work on setting up your portfolio and begin work on the introductory essay.
See you next week!
Next week will be devoted to setting up your portfolios and practicing for the end of year reading.
I passed around a sign-up sheet for "what to bring" in terms of refreshments. We will revisit that list next week in class and create the reading schedule
In general, expect to read a piece about 10 minutes long (8-12 is OK, some of you will go short, some a little longer and that's OK). You are welcome to bring a guest, and we have Kean Hall, 127 researved from 5 until 9, so there is time to set up and clean up.
For next week:
Blog 11: Final Short Essay (also send it to me as an attachment, this is the one that will get a grade).
In class you will work on setting up your portfolio and begin work on the introductory essay.
See you next week!
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
4.15 Work on Rhetorical analysis of publication venues; discussion craft essays; portfolios
Note: the revised calendar for the rest of the term is posted here.
Rhetorical Analysis of Publication Venues
Your choices for publication venues are listed here. If you have not yet signed up for a journal - send me an email with your choice ASAP. A list of journals is on the link list to the bottom right of this link - or cruise around the internet for CNF journals. Also - you can check out the choices that last semester's class picked for their reviews (listed at the bottom of this blog post). You need to choose a journal not chosen by one of your classmates. Once you send your choice (and if no one else has spoken for it) I will post your choice to the site.
Discussion of Craft Essays.
We spent some time talking about the very different paths through writing CNF taken by Pope and Stanton. Pope was writing for a deadline, and she found her focus, researched it, developed it, revised it and polished it with a particular purpose in mind. This is very much like "school" writing by a student invested in the work she is producing. Our class discussion revealed that many students view this approach to writing as something they would do for a job application or essay, but way too much work for school. And that the process for reviewing, workshopping, revising and polishing writing is more or less intuitive, and doesn't really need to be taught. I dunno.
Stanton's approach was more organic. She began her writing for herself, and the original writing was not to develop a publication but to "know". Her process was one of getting hold of the huge emotions associated with this piece and putting them into a voice that "worked" so that readers could feel that material. She said that her final piece was very much the same as the original piece in terms of overall form and content, that the changes were to language, tone - the kinds of subtle revisions that make writing available to its audience.
The similarities in these two processes were their resort to readers (peer workshops, professional workshops, colleagues + family), the persistent re-thinking/re-imagining of the material, and a realization that the way they "felt" the material needed some translation to be available to readers.
Craft essays are a subgenre within CNF. We read these specifically as a way to introduce the "process essay" which generally accompanies the senior seminar project for the writing option major. You noted the moves in this genre - discussion of the "origin" of the idea, and a series of vignettes to describe how the piece developed from that idea into a fully realized composition. These vignettes took different forms - sometimes describing the author's internal, felt relationship to the material, sometimes discussing writing process, sometimes presenting sections of text (later rejected or revised), sometimes assessing impediments or useful activities associated with the writing process. So there you are. You have a model, if you need it.
Portfolio
The model for the portfolio you will use to turn in your final project is posted to the right. We will spend class time working on portoflios April 29.
See you next week!
For next week:
Blog 10: Rhetorical analysis of publication venue
Rhetorical Analysis of Publication Venues
Your choices for publication venues are listed here. If you have not yet signed up for a journal - send me an email with your choice ASAP. A list of journals is on the link list to the bottom right of this link - or cruise around the internet for CNF journals. Also - you can check out the choices that last semester's class picked for their reviews (listed at the bottom of this blog post). You need to choose a journal not chosen by one of your classmates. Once you send your choice (and if no one else has spoken for it) I will post your choice to the site.
Discussion of Craft Essays.
We spent some time talking about the very different paths through writing CNF taken by Pope and Stanton. Pope was writing for a deadline, and she found her focus, researched it, developed it, revised it and polished it with a particular purpose in mind. This is very much like "school" writing by a student invested in the work she is producing. Our class discussion revealed that many students view this approach to writing as something they would do for a job application or essay, but way too much work for school. And that the process for reviewing, workshopping, revising and polishing writing is more or less intuitive, and doesn't really need to be taught. I dunno.
Stanton's approach was more organic. She began her writing for herself, and the original writing was not to develop a publication but to "know". Her process was one of getting hold of the huge emotions associated with this piece and putting them into a voice that "worked" so that readers could feel that material. She said that her final piece was very much the same as the original piece in terms of overall form and content, that the changes were to language, tone - the kinds of subtle revisions that make writing available to its audience.
The similarities in these two processes were their resort to readers (peer workshops, professional workshops, colleagues + family), the persistent re-thinking/re-imagining of the material, and a realization that the way they "felt" the material needed some translation to be available to readers.
Craft essays are a subgenre within CNF. We read these specifically as a way to introduce the "process essay" which generally accompanies the senior seminar project for the writing option major. You noted the moves in this genre - discussion of the "origin" of the idea, and a series of vignettes to describe how the piece developed from that idea into a fully realized composition. These vignettes took different forms - sometimes describing the author's internal, felt relationship to the material, sometimes discussing writing process, sometimes presenting sections of text (later rejected or revised), sometimes assessing impediments or useful activities associated with the writing process. So there you are. You have a model, if you need it.
Portfolio
The model for the portfolio you will use to turn in your final project is posted to the right. We will spend class time working on portoflios April 29.
See you next week!
For next week:
Blog 10: Rhetorical analysis of publication venue
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Class choices for the Publication Venue Assignment
Adrian Triquarterly
Alexis Fugue
Ashley The Pinch
Becky Hunger Mountain
Brandon Bellingham Review
Brianne 1966
Danielle
David Slice
Graig Terrain
Jennifer Quarterly West
Joanna Sweet
Kyle Brooklyner
Megan Defunct
Michele Zone 3
Sharyn Narrative Magazine
If you scroll down in this post from last term - you can take a look at the CNF journals chosen for Fall 2013.
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