Welcome - Course Intro

“I’m fascinated with language. I see words. I hear voices. I feel compelled to rant and to record, to scream and to scribble down. I can’t get enough good reads. What’s wrong with me?”

Nothing at all, you’re showing standard symptoms of a burgeoning relationship with creative writing, and you’ve come to the right place, so get ready to eat, sleep, and breathe imaginative texts. I expect only that upon embarking on this adventure you are reading and writing regularly or want immediately to begin a regular writing and reading schedule and will take on the responsibility of immersing yourself in creative written works. That includes reading as much as possible.

In this class, we will assume (1) access to canonical literary texts exists in libraries and other course offerings here at the university and (2) that creative writing is an active and living art ceaselessly in production around us. In this light, we’ll opt to pour over exciting selections of contemporary writing by living writers. We will occasionally listen to audio recordings of these writers and attend readings on campus during the Visiting Writers Series. The greater focus of the course, however, will be to challenge ourselves on the page by writing works in multiple genres that respond to our course texts as we set out to answer some essential questions on how/why texts are composed and how/why texts make meaning, while building upon your own interests in, and knowledge of, creative writing in a workshop community.

With innovative gusto, this class will engage you in both writing and reading workshops. We will spend as much time seeking to expand the potential of your own first draft writing as we will looking to enrich our vocabulary, understanding, and appreciation of imaginative texts through reading responses. While each week caters to our attention a particular thematic focus, we will regularly take up considerations of form and genre throughout the semester, as represented by our reading list of writer’s working in multiple or cross-genres, and will look to establish an understanding of traditional and non-traditional definitions of both, where lines blur between a poem and a story, or a letter and a dream. Finally, a continual and guided examination of the way we respond to texts will prove beneficial in enriching our ideas about writers, writing, and writual. So, grab a pen and notepad. Welcome to the workshop.

Writing Experiment (Week 1)

Spend an hour in a busy public space recording on paper as much dialogue (or monologue - hoorah for cell phones!) as possible.

Construct a poem using only parts or entireties of your recorded speech, OR, write a small sample of fiction where two characters find themselves in a precarious situation, but restrict their dialogue to your found speech.