ENGL 3200: Creative Writing

Dr. Margaret E. Mitchell

Fall 2006 MW 12:20-1:40 Hum 208

Office: TLC 2235

Email: mmitchel@westga.edu

Website: http: //www.westga.edu/~mmitchel

Phone: 678.839.4852

Office Hours: MW 3-4; T 10-11 and 1-4; F 11:30-12:30; by appt.

 

 

SCROLL DOWN TO THE SCHEDULE FOR SPECIFIC ASSIGNMENTS!

 

Class Description

This class will provide an introduction to the writing of fiction and poetry.  Readings in poetry and short fiction will strengthen your familiarity with the contemporary literary landscape and encourage you to situate your own emerging voice among those of other writers: you cannot hope to write unless you read and read and read. Workshops will allow you to benefit from intense discussions of your own work and that of other students. You will explore a variety of literary forms, techniques, and strategies and seek to adapt them effectively to your own work. We will emphasize revision; by the end of the semester you will have produced a polished portfolio of your best work along with a critical introduction.

 

Texts

Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction; The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry; A Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver; Making Shapely Fiction, Jerome Stern.

 

Requirements

◊Your active participation in discussions and workshops is essential. Whether we are discussing readings or workshopping another student, I expect you to come to class with thoughtful questions and comments prepared.  There will be several formal assignments throughout the semester, as well as numerous in-class exercises. You must keep a reading journal in which you chart your critical engagement with each week’s readings, noting how each text illustrates or complicates the ideas we have been discussing in class, and reflecting on challenges you confront in your own work. At the end of class you must turn in a portfolio of ALL your work along with a critical introduction.

◊A note on workshops: student work will be made available to you online. It is your responsibility to print it out, mark it up, and bring it to class. Your comments should be honest but constructive; remember that pointing out what works well is as important as identifying what doesn’t. Avoid vague assessments of your likes and dislikes; strive to develop a useful critical vocabulary for discussing your own literary efforts and those of your fellow students.

◊I have built an unusual amount of flexibility into this class. I have created general areas of focus—concerns relevant to both fiction and poetry. Within these loose guidelines, though, I want to be able to select short stories and poems based on directions the class ends up taking; to allow the reading assignments, up to a point, to reflect the interests and concerns of the class. In other words, I want to make sure the class can develop organically, rather than imposing a structure on it before I have met you or read your work. You’ll see that your schedule specifies some early readings, while the rest are designated TBA. I will always give you plenty of notice about reading and writing assignments, but this flexibility makes it doubly important that you check my website and your email regularly: this is entirely your responsibility. I will also provide detailed guidelines for individual assignments as we go, making it very clear what you are being asked to do.

 

Grading

20% Participation

10% In-class writing & miscellaneous assignments.

10% Journal

60% Portfolio (grade will be based on strength of final work, evidence of extensive revision, and critical introduction that incorporates discussion of at least two authors from our anthologies; detailed guidelines will be presented later).

◊You will receive provisional grades on formal assignments throughout the semester in order to give you a sense of your standing; ultimately, though, it is your final portfolio that counts.

 

Policies

◊Please come to class on time. If you are late three times it will count as an absence; lateness may also affect your ability to complete in-class assignments within the amount of time allowed. Please turn off cell phones and other potential sources of electronic disturbance before you enter class and remove them from your desk or your person. If such a device does go off during class, I will mark you late.

◊Your active presence is essential to the success of the class. In-class exercises cannot be made up regardless of the reason for your absence unless we have made arrangements in advance. You may not turn assignments in late. If you miss more than three classes, your grade will suffer. There is no such thing as an excused absence. I assume that illness or other pressing circumstances may legitimately cause you to miss three classes in the course of the semester; I don’t need to know your reasons. Beyond that, however, absences will lower your final grade by half a letter grade each. If you do miss class, it is your responsibility to find out what you missed and arrange to obtain relevant readings or assignments. If you miss 6 classes, you will not pass. (If you have truly extraordinary circumstances documented by the university, you should look into obtaining a hardship withdrawal.)

◊I check my email regularly; this is always a good way to contact me. Please note that, for legal and confidentiality reasons, I am not permitted to read or respond to emails from any non-westga accounts. Make sure to use your My Westga portal when you write to me.

◊I expect you to preserve an atmosphere of courtesy, respect, and intellectual maturity in the classroom, to take your own work and that of the other students seriously. The success of this class absolutely depends upon this. Any form of disruptive behavior may result in your removal from the class.

◊If you have special needs of which I should be aware, please meet with me as soon as possible to discuss satisfactory arrangements.

 

Academic Honesty:

Presenting the language or ideas of someone else as your own constitutes plagiarism--whether your source is a friend, a relative, or a critic; whether the uncredited material is a phrase, an idea, or an entire poem or story. Plagiarism will result in a failing grade for the class, and may have consequences at the university level.

 

*This schedule is subject to adjustment or alteration. Changes will be announced in class and online.

 

SCHEDULE

(CAP=Contemporary American Poetry; SACSF= Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction)

 

Week 1: Introduction

M Aug 14 Introduction

W Aug 16 Stern, Part II: A Cautionary Interlude (61-76). Oliver, 7-18. Exercise: writing what you don’t know.

 

Week 2: Place and Space

M Aug 21 CAP: Mark Strand, “Where Are the Waters of Childhood?”; Elizabeth Bishop, “In the Waiting Room” and “Poem”

W Aug 23 SACSF: Margaret Atwood, “Death by Landscape”; Madison Smartt Bell, “Customs of the Country”

 

Week 3: Place and Space

M Aug 28 Readings from Oliver and Stern. Writing Exercise.

W Aug 30 Place and Space Assignment due: one poem or 3 pages of fiction. Student readings, informal critique.

 

Week 4: Characters

M Sept 4 Labor Day—no class

W Sept 6 Discuss readings: Stern (79-100), Oliver (76-99). In poetry anthology: "At the Executed Murderer's Grave," by James Wright (286); "Alzheimer's: The Wife," by C.K. Williams (430). In the fiction anthology: "Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story," by Russell Banks (53). Think about character as you read: how words become people. Bring all 4 books to class. Remember that you should be responding to your reading in your journals as a way of thinking about your own writing. Be prepared for a quick reading quiz on Monday! And please be ready for a lively discussion.

 

Week 5

M Sept 11 Discuss readings

Charles Baxter “Gryphon” (131)

David Gates “The Mail Lady” (306)

Joyce Carol Oates “Ghost Girls”

Exercise:

Carol was a good person/ Carol was a bad person:

            Make a list of five striking ways of illustrating both vague assertions

For Wed.: Character sketch. Think of the kinds of details that bring Miss Ferenczi to like in “Gryphon.” Should be at least half a page.

 

 

W Sept 13 Character, cont'd

Carolyn Kizer “Amusing Our Daughters” (194)

Anne Sexton, “Music Swims Back to Me” (305)

Mark Doty “Brilliance”(563)

Assignment (due Mon): 1 poem or at least 3 pages of fiction (either a short-short story or a complete scene; not just a sketch) emphasizing character. Work to give your characters depth and detail; create people (or a person) your readers will be able to see, understand, imagine. Remember Stern’s list of 5 ways of bringing words to life, or creating believable figures. Keep in mind, too, Banks’s line in “Sarah Cole”: “Character is fate.” In other words, make who this person is somehow central to the situation or setting in which you place him or her.

 

 

Week 6:

Dialogue: Speech and Silence

M Sep. 18. Character assignment due: one poem or 3 pages of fiction. On on one workshop: character, notes for revision.

 

W Sept 20 Discuss readings:

Read: Denis Johnson, "Emergency" (351)

Stephanie Vaughn, "Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog" (612)

Annie Proulx, "Brokeback Mountain" (521)

Mark Strand, "The Dreadful Has Already Happened"

Stern, 113-120: dialect and dialogue

 

Week 7: Perspective

M Sept 25. Discuss reading: Stuart Dybek, "Pet Milk" (257, Fiction); Richard Bausch, "The Man Who Knew Belle Starr" (112, Fiction); Philip Levine, "The Horse" (311, Poetry; Adrienne Rich, "Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff" (354, Poetry).

Dialogue assignment due: one poem or 3 pages of fiction

It is not at all necessary that dialogue dominate this piece of writing: it might, but then again you might choose to use dialogue quite sparingly. The challenge is to use dialogue as thoughtfully and meaningfully as possible. Keep in mind our discussion on Wednesday (and Stern's advice) about the importance of what is not said--of silences, evasions. Think about the kinds of physical details that can give weight to dialogue, of even function as a sort of running commentary on what is actually being said: pay attention to what people are doing with their hands, their feet, their eyes, while talking: do their actions emphasize their words, supplement them, undermine them? All of these are possible. When people do speak, work to capture the natural rhythms of spoken language: pay attention to how people really talk, keeping in mind that everyone has a characteristic way of speaking.

Though your emphasis here is on dialogue, don't forget what you've already worked in terms of establishing character and place: your conversation shouldn't take place in a vacuum.

 

 

W Sept 27 Stern: 178-192. Oliver: 35-54. Writing exercise.

 

Week 8: Perspective

M Oct 2  Perspective, point of view: cont'd:

Writing exercise:

Think of a character. This person is about to get on a plane: the rest is yours to invent. Begin to tell this person’s story…

1. in the first person

2. in third person limited

3. third person unlimited OR second person

 

This exercise might lend itself to prose—however, you could try it with poetry, too.

Don’t turn it in develop each into about half a page—due Mon.

 

Also: read

Allen Ginsberg—from “Howl”—225-229 (poetry)

Raymond Carver—“Errand” –209-218 (fiction)

Alice Munro—“Meneseteung”—470-487 (fiction)

W Oct 4 Discuss readings. 

    Perspective assignment:

Write a poem or short piece of fiction told from an outsider’s perspective: a narrator who is an observer rather than a participant (or who constructs themselves that way). In other words, there will be no “I” at the center of events. The subject matter is up to you.

Everyone: check website Wed. or Tues. for works to be workshopped. Print them out, write comments on them, be prepared to talk seriously about the choices each author is making, and how they work. You should be constructively critical, but keep in mind that positive feedback is just as constructive in its own way as criticism.

--Kim and Larry: please email me the assignment by Monday (yes, that’s over break) so I can post it on the web. Thanks for agreeing to go first!

No additional assigned reading, though I always encourage you to read around in the anthologies.

F Oct 6 Last day to withdraw with a W.

 

Week 9:  Oct 9

W Oct 11 Perspective assignments due. Workshop.

 

Week 10: Objects, or Life and Still Life

M Oct 16 Alice Walker, "1955" (624 Fiction Anthology). Poetry: Elizabeth Bishop, "Filling Station" (35), Heather McHugh "The Typewriter Is the Kind" (541)' Sharon Olds, "The Glass" (500)

W Oct 18 Alice Walker. Bring a peculiar or suggestive object: details later.

Write a poem in which you convey an idea or emotional state—an abstraction, in other words—through the representation of an object. Use a thing as a way of conveying insight about something less tangible.  Strive for what Oliver calls “detailed, sensory language incorporating images.” No clichés, no obvious descriptors, no easy emotional descriptors like “sad.”

Also: In Oliver, read the chapter on Imagery (92-108).

 

 

Week 11: History, or No One Lives in a Vacuum

M Oct 23 Object assignment due: one poem or 3 pages of short fiction.

W Oct 25 Discuss readings:

Poetry: Nemerov: "Because You Asked About the Line Between Prose and Poetry" (122), "The War in the Air" "123"; Komunyakaa: "Facing It" (537); Justice: "The Assassination" (202). Fiction: Sherman Alexie: "This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona" (21).

--Revision of object assignment due either today or Monday.

 

Week 12: History, or No One Lives in a Vacuum

M Oct 30 Fiction: Sherman Alexie: "This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona" (21). In Stern, read p. 5-57 "The Shapes of Fiction." Writing exercise. Object poem due if you haven't yet turned it in.

W Nov 1 In-class structure exercise (bring newspaper headline)

 

Week 13: Time

M Nov 6 History/structure assignment due.

Assignment: choose one of the 3 following "shapes" outlined in Stern: "Trauma," "Bear at the Door," or "Aha." (See Stern for full descriptions of these basis narrative structures)  and craft a short story inspired by your headline. Emphasize two things: structure (a beginning that generates tension, a middle that explores it, and end that achieves some form of resolution) and specificity of time & social setting. Introduce signs that  ground your reader in a particular  historical moment, whether it’s the present or the 1980s or colonial America—references to pop culture, cars, events in the outside world, whatever. Even if the characters aren't aware of themselves as being part of a larger social world, make your reader see the characters that way.

You may use your own headline or the one I gave you in class. If you were in class, you may choose to use one of the sketches you developed in the exercise as a starting point.

 

W Nov 8 focus on revision

 

Week 14: Workshops: Revising and Presenting your best work.

 

When you are scheduled for a workshop, make sure you email your work to me at least 48 hours in advance so that I can post it to the website. Everyone is responsible for accessing and printing out all stories and poems being workshopped; bring them with you to class. I would also like you to write a short, thoughtful response--about half a page--to each piece under discussion. I will collect these.

 

M Nov 13 Workshops: Matt, Larry, Kim, Emmanuel

W Nov 15 Workshops: Holly, Chelci, Matt, Kristal

 

Week 15: Workshops

M Nov 20. Workshops: Jenny, Katie, Andrea

W Nov 22 Thanksgiving—no class

 

Week 16

M Nov 27 Workshops: Kenya, Marquita, Breana

W Nov 29 Jenny, Ashley, Kenya.Conclusion.

 

F Dec 1: Portfolio due (all drafts from semester; polished, revised work, including 3 poems and 2 short stories or 5 poems and one short story).

 

 

Course Goals

Program Goals