SCHEDULE BY UNIT
Creative Writing Mixed Genre
January 16-April 23
FICTION UNIT 1
Weeks 1-5
Week 1 Writing as a Process, Genre, Time Sped Up and Characterization in Fiction
January 16: Intro and Syllabus Review, the Writing Habit, Defining Genre
January 18: Read Lydia Davis, “Ten Recommendations for Good Writing Habits” (on Lit Hub); bring in a (short) poem or a (short) passage from a novel, play, or short story to share with class. Be prepared to discuss what you like about it.
Writing Assignment: Life Story
Write a life story: summarize lyrically the entire life of one character. Make sure that you convey a sense of what makes that person different from others. Difference—whether in fiction or real life—defines characters. The point of fiction is not to be relatable—relatable to whom?—but engaging, engrossing, even, dare I say it, entertaining. 2pp max.
Week 2: Time, Pacing, Scene v. Summary, Consciousness Slowed
January 23: Read Joy Williams, “The Farm” and Dino Buzzati, “The Falling Girl”
January 25: Workshop Group A
Writing Assignment: Consciousness Slowed
Develop a passage or moment from your life story, or one newly made up but involving the same character/s. It can be momentous but need not be obviously so; a good story can hinge on big moments – the day Yun made the winning play – and small – the morning Rodrigo returned his overdue library books. Write this moment out as scene, i.e. show a reader that moment using action, description, dialogue. You might consider using repetitions or near-repetitions of sentences to slow time and concentrate on the interplay between a character’s perceptions of an event and the actual event. 2pp max.
Week 3: Tone and POV
January 30: Read George Saunders, “Puppy” and Manuel Gonzalez, “Farewell, Africa”
February 1: Workshop Group B
Writing Assignment: Setting the Tone
Tone in fiction may be defined as the attitude of the narrator toward their subject/s. It can be serious, empathetic, ironic, disdainful, etc. Another definition of tone, given by Robert Boswell, is the distance between the narrator and the character. Tone and point of view are, therefore, linked; maybe inextricably.
With that in mind, rewrite your “consciousness slowed” exercise OR develop another passage involving the same character/s and setting/s, only from a different point of view—not necessarily from the POV of another character. You could, for ex., change first-person POV to distant third person or second-person POV. Think about how this changes your attitude – and a reader’s – toward the material and character. Also, if rewriting, you should do more than just change pronouns! 2pp. max.
Week 4: Dialogue, Subtext, Conflict
February 6: Read Toni Cade Bambara, “My Man Bovanne” and Amy Hempel, “Today Will Be a Quiet Day”
February 8: Workshop Group A
Writing assignment: All Talk
Write a scene in which two characters from the same setting of your earlier exercises, characters who know each other well, are involved in a complex activity (restoring a roof, baking a fancy cake, repairing a car, etc.). Write the scene with a lot of dialogue—60-80%. The characters should be talking about something other than the activity. Make sure to:
- Incorporate gesture and silence into the dialogue
- Use dialogue tags only when absolutely necessary (mostly stick to “h/s/t said; no tags with adverbs like “loudly” or “angrily” UNLESS it serves real purpose!)
- Remember that these characters have a shared history, so a lot is left unsaid, spoken in “code,” perhaps even buried.
Max. 3 pp.
Week 5: Fiction Workshop, Revision
February 13: Revision Workshop A
February 15: Revision Workshop B
February 16 (makeup day): How to Read a Poem: In-class readings TBD.
POETRY UNIT 2
Weeks 6-10
Week 6: Poetry. Intimacy, Address, Voice
February 20: Read Human Noise Packet
February 22: Read Language Borrowed from Environment Packet
Writing assignment: Poems of Address
Write a poem that uses apostrophe, one that addresses a “you.” It should either:
“Guide” a general reader or yourself home and borrow language from your local environment: the slur of car wheels, the brickwork of an apartment building, the ding of an elevator. The directions should be associative and imagistic, rather than matter of fact, and can include the surreal (see Herrera’s “an ant writing with the grace of a governor”).
Or address a particular you, another character in the poem. Pay close attention to the relationship between speaker and character, i.e. to the attitude of speaker toward that character. This kind of poem operates, on one level, like fiction: it hinges on tone and asks readers to tease out a narrative. If you’re struggling to come up with a situation, try writing a poem of insincere apology or ungrateful thanks, one that creates an exciting contradiction between subject and tone: an apology for missing a party you didn’t want to attend, a thank-you card for some mistreatment at the hands of the universe.
Week 7: Register, Tension, Voice continued
March 5: Read Altitudes of Register Packet
March 7: Workshop Group A
Writing assignment: High/Low Upload (Group B)
Write a poem with an investment in register that either:
Treats a “high” subject, like a Roman God or the Great American Novel, in a low or middle register, i.e., in ordinary speech. Your poem might begin: “What I dig about Moby Dick is the two guys love each other.”
Elevates a “low” subject to a high style. Take a subject you consider too humble for poetry and treat it with the manner of high poetry. Write, for example, an ode to armpits or a meditation on Fitbit. Your poem might begin, “O Red Bull, nocturnal jolt…”
Week 8: The Poetic Line
March 12: Read the Line Packet
March 14: Workshop Group B
Writing Assignment: Short/Long Submit (Group A)
Write a poem with an investment in lines and line breaks that either:
Employs short, heavily enjambed lines (4-6 syllables) and has one or two carefully placed end-stopped lines.
Employs long, end-stopped lines (12-14 syllables) and has one or two carefully placed enjambed lines.
Week 9: Image, Metaphor
March 19: Read Image Packet; hand in line poems (group A should have copies for everyone)
March 21: Workshop Group A
Writing Assignment: Image Upload (Group B)
Write a poem with an investment in images which either:
“Describes” a landscape by providing a catalog of images—1 or so per line. The more particular the better. Consider the arrangement, the tensions and ambient mood derived by juxtaposing discrete images. Title your poem after the landscape—a wheat field, the laundromat, Trastevere, but avoid “saying” anything about how you feel about the landscape.
Takes an abstract subject for a title: an emotion (joy, confusion), a quality (spirituality, division), or a concept (capitalism, race). The body of the poem should illustrate the abstraction through narrative and/or description. The abstraction itself cannot appear by name in the body of the poem.
Week 10: Received Forms (the Sonnet) and Inherited Subjects (Ekphrasis)
March 26: Read Sonnet/Ekphrasis Packet
March 28: Workshop Group B
CREATIVE NONFICTION UNIT 3
Weeks 11-14
Week 11: Creative Nonfiction: Memoir and Lists
April 2: In-class reading: Joe Brainard, “I Remember” and Vauhini Vara, “My Decade in Google Searches”
April 4: Read Gheeta Khotari, “Listen” and Meghan Daum, “Music Is My Bag”
Week 12: Creative Nonfiction: Personal Essays
April 9: Read Zadie Smith, “Joy” and Mary Ruefle, “My Private Property”
April 11: No Class. Thanksgiving.
Week 13: Creative Nonfiction: (Self?) Portraits and Moments of Being
April 16: Read Ta-Nehisi Coates, “I’m Not Black, I’m Kanye” and Joan Didion, “Georgia O’Keefe”
April 18: Read Annie Dillard, “Total Eclipse” and Virginia Woolf, “Death of the Moth”
Creative Nonfiction Essay Assignment due (All)
Choose any of the essays we have read and use it as a model to write your own 3-6-pp. creative nonfiction essay. You could, for example, write a memoir as a series of anecdotes revolving around one season or one emotion; write about a single day in your life from shifting perspectives; write an essay about a person (not family) who has been important to you and include, within that portrait of the other, a portrait of yourself.
Week 14: Creative Nonfiction/Revision
April 24: Revision and final thoughts