Notes on in-class brainstorming. We started class with some more practices for looking around in your head for stories you haven't told yet. As made clear in the discussion of Lott later in class, CNF (at least Lott's definition of it), is about serious, reflective interrogation of the self "through the subject at hand". This suggests that you will need to find ways to see things differently (from multiple perspectives), and do some of the scary work of questioning experiences, feelings, and intimations that you might not yet have worked out. So while you might write about a story/experience you have told many times before, for that story to work as CNF, you need to see something new in it, to take your reader with you into that experience in ways that are deeper and more purposeful than in your usual tellings of that story.
So that's what we are going for. To do that kind of creative, opening-up new territory, seeing-things-from-new perspectives brainstorming, it can help if you step into patterns for "thinking" differently. And that was my reasoning for selecting the strategies we've spent time on in class.
Active imagination. The technique I walked you through for spending some time in dream spaces is about giving you a place where you can look around at what is going on in your mind in terms of feelings, thoughts, and ideas that you might not even have words for. You shared some remarkable observations and stories (and I am hoping you wrote even more down). Once you have these experiences on your page - cultivate a generous relationship with them. Be reluctant to name them or say "what they mean" too quickly. They are travelers from a different country and you have a lot to learn from them if you don't try too hard to make them "make sense" in terms of the culture/language you already know. Recognize them as different, ask them questions, ponder what they say and allow that you will probably only get a small part of "what they mean".
Associating to assumptions/beliefs. The second exercise was about getting a quick list of "who you are" along with another list of "experiences from my life". We started out with listing "who you are" in terms of what you like/dislike; believe/don't believe; wonder about/are sure about. . .not a real definite boundary on this list - eh? The second list was of "things that have happened to you" - anything. I started out with "startling" things - but that was not what we were going for - just anything that comes up.
The idea in this brainstorming is that it gives you a place to start in terms of an "aboutness" (who you are, something you came to believe or wonder about) and a story (something that happened to you). Although we didn't get back to the last exercise I had planned after we talked about the assignment & Lott & Gutkind's definitions = the idea was that you might look at your two lists in light of one another. A CNF essay is about a concept (something you are realizing, thinking about, trying to make sense of) and your past experience as an illustration/vehicle for contemplating that idea. Some essays are more story (Beard), and some are more "about" (Ebert). The importance is the rich connetions between the two. So I though if you had list of concepts (who you are) and experiences - you might mix and match? Start wondering about what experineces led you to which beliefs? how you came to think/be some of the things on your list and what it means that you did?
Long Essay 1 & 2. We then went over the assignment sheet for the long essays (posted to the right). IF you have questions - let me know.
Gutkind and Lott.
As our discussion revealed - how CNF writers relate to truth connects strongly to how they define CNF's purpose - or what it does. The definitions we developed last week through our analysis/observations about the 4 essays you read were formal definitions = in that they functioned primarily on the ways CNF is built. Lott's definition was a functional definition=focused on what CNF does.
He developed a list of purposes beginning with the mundane (to keep our lives from passing away) and working the way toward the profound (to answer for our lives). And in between these two poles he points out its inclusion of descriptions of the processes of asking always deeper questions, stepping outside of our own self-interested perspectives, experimenting & taking risks while searching for a personal truth. This definition suggests that the writer's representations of the truths s/he is searching for will necessarily need to be carefully crafted - and that was what Gutkind's piece was about.
Gutkind offered a set of suggestions for how CNF writers need to relate to truth (354). We got to those pretty quickly - though we weren't 100% in agreement about how to "use" them. We spent the most time on allowing the cast of characters in your writing opportunities to read (and to have input into?) your writing. For the purposes of this class, I want to ground assignments in Lott's definition, and any writing you do which is true to the purposes he sets forward, will have a careful - integrity based - relationship to truth (in terms of fabrication, rounding corners, and compression). In other words, if you know you are doing it (sometimes we don't) - you need to give your reader a heads up. ie acknowledging that you don't remember exactly what was said, or pointing out that you compress some time here - because you can't remember it as separate. . . .
In terms of writing work which may upset individuals whose stories overlap with your own - from my perspective, that is up to the individual writer. If you have told your story honestly, how you work out issues with others who might be involved belongs to you. While I may be able to comment on whether or not a piece has explored multiple perspectives and interrogated its own "truths" in complex ways, I'm not really in a position to make moral judgments about who owns what story and who has the right to tell it. I will say that, because we are posting writing on blogs, you should not mention illegal activities - your own or others. From my personal perspective, I am a strong advocate for writers to write their own stories, and I have benefited immensely for the generosity of writers who have told "dangerous" stories about experiences I would have otherwise faced alone. At the same time, each of us has to consider our relationships to the people in our lives who will inevitably be in our writing - and consider how we want to balance reaching out to strangers (our readers), and being respectful and caring of the people we live with.
For next week
Read: Schwartz, 194; Pope, 388; Kahn, 95
Pay attention to how the authors use segments in their work. How are the spaces meaningful? What do they affect the reader's experience?
Blog 2: Invention writing for essay 1
By this time, your writing journals (hopefully) have some lists, some descriptions,maybe some scenes, and some writing you aren't sure what it is. Read through what you've written, maybe add some more freewriting, and then do a post where you "muse" over some ideas for your first essay. Musings might mention: the idea or question, or feeling you are interested in writing about; a list of stories/experiences from your life that are relevant to that focus; and maybe some drafty indication of what you might put in each story.
Or - you might explore several subjects/topics in less detail.
In class we will talk about your ideas - and make comment on each other's blogs. Once everyone has a feel for how to get started, we will talk about segmented essays and how you might use segments in your essay.
Thanks for your good talk tonight! See you next week.
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