English 2060

Introduction to Creative Writing

Spring 2010

Section 01  MW 2:00-3:15pm  CRN 10362   Humanities 206

Dr. Katie Chaple
Office: TLC 1113-E

Phone: 678-839-4860
Use your WebCT course email to contact me.

Web address: http://www.westga.edu/~kchaple

Office Hours:

Monday: 9:00-10:00

Wednesday: 8:30-12:30

& by appointment

Writing Center Schedule:        

Monday: 10:00-12:30 & 5:00-5:30

But all art is sensual . . . .  It is directly, that is, of the senses, and since the senses do not exist without an object for their employment all art is necessarily objective.  It doesn’t declaim or explain, it presents.

—William Carlos Williams

Required Texts:

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft 7^th Edition Janet Burroway & Elizabeth Stuckey-French

Writing Poetry: Creative and Critical Approaches  Chad Davidson & Gregory Fraser

The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction R. V. Cassil & Joyce Carol Oates, Eds.

A sturdy, hardback journal

Additional readings online and as handouts.

Like in every English course, you need an excellent dictionary and thesaurus

COURSE DESCRIPTION

As an introductory creative writing course, English 2060 aims to familiarize students with the tools and forms of poetry and fiction and to apply those to both creative and academic work. Students will participate in the workshopping process, where we will become a community of writers who practice and hone our critical thinking and close reading skills. In addition to working on students’ individual creative endeavors in both prose as well as poetry, we will study a wide variety of writers across genres and cultures, engaging with the texts with the eyes of “engineers,” examining texts for how they work and function to convey meaning. This is not a genre writing class—i.e. sci-fi, romance, etc. We will be looking at how to break away from cliché, sentimentality and formula in order to produce work that is more surprising linguistically and formally.

COURSE GOALS

·         Students will demonstrate an understanding of how individual creative work necessarily exists in dialogue with other writers, both creative and critical, through assignments that consciously create intertextual relationships with precursors

·         Students will apply critical understanding of theories of creativity and imaginative writing in at least four (4) creative works, in weekly peer critiques within a workshop setting, and in at least two (2) written critiques of peer work

·         Students will be able to write an argumentative preface to their creative writing that situates their work within broader literary an cultural contexts

·         Students will articulate an understanding of multiple literary genres and schools of literary reception in their own imaginative writing projects and  in critical analysis of others’ creative work

·         Students will collaboratively edit and compile a course anthology to demonstrate editorial skills specific to literary writing and their own emerging aesthetic philosophies

PROGRAM GOALS

• This course fulfills one of the departmental requirements for the completion of the creative writing minor
• This course broadens students’ desire and ability to take pleasure in their encounters with literature

DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR:

Students may be dismissed from any class meeting at which they exhibit behavior that disrupts the learning environment of others. Such behavior includes—but is not limited to—arriving late for class, allowing cell phones to ring, speaking disrespectfully to the instructor and/or to other students, checking email or surfing the web, and using personal audio or video devices. Each dismissal of this kind will count as an absence and will be applied toward the attendance requirements above.

I expect civil and polite behavior. I do not mind limited food or drink, but do not show up with your McDonald's cheeseburger and fries.

LATE WORK: 

All work is due on the day listed.  Any assignment turned in a day late (THE NEXT DAY, NOT THE NEXT CLASS MEETING) will be downgraded a letter grade—any more than a day late, without an exceptional, documented excuse, and the work will not be accepted and will be awarded a zero.

I will not accept emailed work. If you are not in class for assignments and responses, I will not accept them.

ATTENDANCE:

I require regular and punctual attendance. In a class designed in semi-workshop fashion, your daily contributions and participation is absolutely critical. Failure to actively participate in workshop on a daily basis will affect your overall grade according to the grade determination below. ***Students will be administratively withdrawn from class based on the following attendance policy. For classes that meet twice a week, a student is allowed three absences.  Upon the fourth absence, the student will be withdrawn.  Be aware that no distinction exists between excused and unexcused absences.  In addition, students should be aware that if the withdrawal date falls before March 2, the student will receive a “W.”  If the withdrawal date falls after March 1, the student will receive a “WF.”

PLAGIARISM & ACADEMIC HONESTY:

It is always disappointing to discover a student has plagiarized. If you have any questions regarding incorporating outside material, ask me. Ignorance will not be an excuse. Because of the way in which this class is organized, if you plagiarize it will be immediately apparent to me. Do not risk it. ***If you turn in plagiarized work in regards to any assignment, you will immediately fail the course. This policy also refers to a student turning in work/essays that you have written for any other class or professor.

            Plagiarism & Academic Dishonesty

The Department of English and Philosophy defines plagiarism as taking personal credit for the words and ideas of others as they are presented in electronic, print, and verbal sources. The Department expects that students will accurately credit sources in all assignments. An equally dishonest practice is fabricating sources or facts; it is another form of misrepresenting the truth. Plagiarism is grounds for failing the course. See also, excessive collaboration.

The University policies for handling Academic Dishonesty are found in the following documents:

The Faculty Handbook, sections 207 and 208.0401  
http://www.westga.edu/~vpaa/handrev/

Student Uncatalog: "Rights and Responsibilities"; Appendix J.  
http://www.westga.edu/handbook/  

DISABILITY PLEDGE:

I pledge to do my best to work with the University to provide all students with equal access to my classes and materials, regardless of special needs, temporary or permanent disability, special needs related to pregnancy, etc.

If you have any special learning needs, particularly (but not limited to) needs defined under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and require specific accommodations, please do not hesitate to make these known to me, either yourself or through Disability Services in 272 Parker Hall at (770) 839-6428.

Students with documented special needs may expect accommodation in relation to classroom accessibility, modification of testing, special test administration, etc. This is not only my personal commitment: it is your right, and it is the law!

For more information, please contact Disability Services at the University of West Georgia.  

DETERMINATION OF SEMESTER GRADE:

JOURNAL:

To aid you in what we will call “predatorial reading”—that is, reading aside from mere comprehension, reading with an eye for craft, unique structures, ideas, settings, characters, analogies, syntax, formal devices, ambiguities, ironies, and/or anything else you might borrow and incorporate into your own writing—you will keep a journal. Your journal will be intimately linked to your reading, and I require strict reading habits (translate that to roughly 50 pages per week out of your course texts). While that may not seem like much, the type of reading in which you will engage will be much more interactive than you are probably used to. As such, your reading time will increase. Please keep about 1-2 hours per day open for reading and journal writing, with special emphasis on the weekends, when you should be reading and writing much more.

While you are free to write in it whatever, whenever, and wherever you please, I will assess your grade based solely on the following criteria:

1.       Junkyard quotes: At least five entries per week devoted to instances of surprising or charged language—something you either hear, read, or utter outside of our texts—and the reasons why you chose them. These quotes will become your storehouse for ideas. (Length of entries may vary.)

2.       Random impulses: At least two “free entries” per week devoted to anything experiential or linguistic in nature, or simply random freewrites—NOT a summary of your day’s or weekend’s events. These entries should be original “creative writing” pieces. (Each entry should be at least half a page in your journal in reasonably-sized script).

3.       Responses to reading: At least three entries per week based on what you are reading in the course texts, how you see it affecting your aesthetics, or what you find fascinating about it in terms of craft (Each entry should be at least half a page in your journal in reasonably-sized script). You might think of these responses as similar to your web posts, though they will come from your dialogs with the course texts. If there are no reading assignments from the course texts or supplemental texts in class, then journal about what you’re reading outside of class.

Total: 10 entries a week of varying lengths. Any time you put pencil or pen to paper in your journal, date, title, and categorize (one of the three categories above) your entry. If you want me to count it, I have to know under which section your entry falls. Feel free to write extra entries, but title and date everything. Write legibly. Make it easy for me to follow. Your grade on the journal will be the amount of entries completed divided by the amount possible in the semester.

Part of the reasoning here is to encourage you to utilize your journal as much as possible. After only a few weeks, you will have a substantial amount of available language from which to pull and in which to play. This type of “linguistic junkyard” also underscores the belief that writing doesn’t occur ex nihilo but is constructed, rather, piecemeal from multiple sources. My advice is to try and build a sustainable schedule as much as possible. Choose a time daily to respond to what you’ve been reading, what you’ve experienced in terms of language, what poems on the web sites are moving you, etc. Writing requires discipline. Take it seriously.

CALISTHENICS:

Based on readings and discussions, I will be giving you all sorts of calisthenics aimed at stretching your voice. They may be in-class or at-home assignments. You must be present in order to receive credit for in-class calisthenics. No late work accepted. Period. If you are not in class when we do a calisthenic, there is no making it up. I will accept no e-mailed work. To calculate your percentage for calisthenics, I will simply add up the number assigned and match your figure to it. Calisthenics are ungraded. You will get credit for being there and doing it.

WORKSHOP:

Your grade in the workshop involves the following elements: daily attendance, daily written responses to the workshop pieces, fair and thoughtful verbal criticism. You must have workshopped at least one story and a certain number of poems for me to give you credit for them in your final portfolio.

For workshop you will bring class copies (however many classmates you have plus one for me).

In responding to a workshop piece, you must engage the literary work on as many levels as possible. Mere praise does very little for a writer, as does continual scorn. We will be interested in helping other writers as a means of improving our own production. Responses are due in class the day on which the piece is to be workshopped. No late or emailed work accepted.

Because of the inherent nature of the workshop and the writer’s vulnerability, I ask that we all remind ourselves of the function of “writerly” criticism. It may help to think of the workshop not in terms of one person’s being put on the spot but as that person offering a forum in which the entire class may then hone their critical/creative skills. Ultimately, you may not receive the help you desire on a certain piece of writing. The class, however, may benefit greatly from having read and discussed it. Also, the criticism you receive may not be wholly relevant to the piece you turned in, but that criticism, if “meaningful,” will be with you when you sit down to write next time. Finally, try and think of the workshop more in terms of the group of people GIVING the criticism rather than the one person RECEIVING it. The workshop is neither an ego stroke nor a bashing session. We will take the workshop seriously as a critical/creative laboratory.

I will expect a “two-pronged” response, one that includes these two important elements:

1. Local marginalia: comments written directly on the student work, circling, underlining, and writing notes. Here, you want to exhibit your “dialog” with the text, the questions you ask, the problems you experience, the possibilities you see, all at a local level.

2. Global typed response: a thorough, typed response of at least 200 words, in which you discuss the work’s greatest strengths and potential weaknesses, and perhaps even point to professional work in the course texts that seem to “speak” to the work at hand. This is your chance to shoot for global criticism, to contextualize your local marginalia. Refrain from saying things like: “This is neat.” “I love this.” “I hate this.” “I don’t get this.” These types of responses are not helpful—we will discuss the idea of “meaningful response”; however, if you are worried about what a “meaningful response” entails, see chapter six of Writing Poetry. You will receive credit for doing the work and turning it in on time. Your score will simply be the number of responses completed divided by the total number possible.

MIDTERM & FINAL:

These exams will be based on the reading for class and will be divided by genre. The midterm will cover prose and the final will cover poetry.

ATTENDANCE AT LITERARY EVENTS:

This class is about the creative writing process, so you are required to attend at least three events over the course of the semester—one will be the Eclectic release party here at UWG and one must be in Atlanta. The other event can be of your own choosing. The English Department, the Eclectic (West Georgia’s literary magazine), as well as various venues in town all offer an array of readings. Plus, Atlanta houses Poetry@Tech, the Emory University Reading Series, and many events around the other colleges and museums. Check with me to make sure your event will count. Once you attend, you must show proof of attendance either by admission ticket, signed book, or by other means. You will also write a 350-word typed response to each event (MLA formatting), including a discussion of a particularly poignant piece (poem or story, for example) that was performed and why you feel is was poignant. These responses are due no more than a week after you attend.

FINAL PORTFOLIO:

Your final portfolio will include the following items: 1) a table of contents; 2) three rigorously revised poems and one lengthy prose piece; 3) at least three revisions of each piece of writing apart from the final version; and 4) a 5-8 page critical preface (including a statement of your aesthetics, either implicitly or explicitly) in strict MLA format.

You will learn revision strategies—ways of distancing yourself from your own writing—throughout the semester, especially during the workshop sessions. Waiting until the last week to tell me you don’t understand how to revise will not work—come talk to me about the work if you have questions. Revisions will be my sole criterion in assessing your creative work: the distance you’ve traveled from first to last draft.

What is a critical preface? Students often feel puzzled by the critical preface. This is your chance to contextualize your semester, what you’ve learned, how you’ve learned to approach writing and reading, where you began, where you ended, and where you intend to go. Of course, many of you are merely fulfilling an elective credit with no intention of ever being a “serious” writer. That’s fine. The writing and the craft-oriented type of reading you do in this class, however, may still prove important to you. Careful use of language coupled with unquenchable curiosity can never hurt you. Plus, for the next semester at least, you WILL be serious writers.

Calendar of Events:  Note: Reading and writing assignments are due at the beginning of class on the day for which they are listed.  The following is a tentative daily schedule.  Modifications may be needed as we proceed.  I will advise of any deviations ahead of time and will provide detailed instructions for any assignments.  You are responsible for keeping up with any changes and work missed due to absences.  *Always come to class with the following: the homework text(s), your journal and pen. (WF stands for Writing Fiction, NA stands for The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction & WP stands for Writing Poetry)

***Portfolio will be due during the exam period and will be a single, electronically-submitted document. Save your drafts!!!!