Syllabus

To write, one must read. To write well, one must read well. Which means: to read widely, to read with enthusiasm, to read for pleasure, to read with an eye for another's craft. 
– Joyce Carol Oates

The writer studies literature, not the world. He lives in the world; he cannot miss it. 
– Annie Dillard

Here, I walk into class thinking, Really I have nothing to say to these people, the proper study of writing is reading, is well-managed awe, desire to make a thing, stamina for finishing, adoration of  language, and so on...
— Lia Purpura

Week 1           

Thursday, 9/7 — Introductions

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Week 2            NONFICTION

Tuesday, 9/12 — What is Creative Nonfiction? / Creating a Writing Practice

  • Joan Didion: Why I Write
  • Virginia Woolf: Moments of Being 
  • Ann Lamott: Shitty First Drafts
  • Donna Steiner: Exit (print)
  • Stephen Elliot: Where I Slept (print)
  • T Clutch Fleischmann: House With Door
  • WRITING DUE:
    • Read Joan Didion’s essay, “Why I Write” and write a letter addressed to me in which you describe your relationship to writing. Here are some questions to guide you: What has been your experience as a writer? How have you come to writing? What writing experiences have shaped you, or what experiences in your life have influenced your writing (or your call to write)? What is important to you about writing? Even if you don’t consider yourself to be a “writer,” address the role of writing in your life to date. 1 page, single-spaced, typed (please print and bring a hardcopy to class)
    • Bring 1 object & 1 photograph to class
    • Bring a blank notebook to class, exclusively for 125. Within it, list 5 writing goals for the semester.

Thursday, 9/14 — Researching Your Lives, Finding Subjects / Place, Home, & Family

  • Eliot Sloan: The Green Room (print)
  • Gabrielle Hamilton: The Lamb Roast (print)
  • Jo Ann Beard: Cousins
  • [Optional— T Clutch Fleischmann: excerpt Time is the Thing a Body Moves Through]
  • WRITING DUE:
    • Moment of Being Exercise: Read Woolf’s Moments of Being excerpt and write a brief/flash essay evocatively describing 1 moment of being in your life, however you define this, in as much detail as possible in the present tense of the moment; bring it alive in language. (For example, Jo Ann Beard’s “In the Current” evokes a “moment of being.”) 1pg max. Post.
    • Letter: Write a letter to your childhood self. 1pg max. Post.
    • Reading Response (see 125 tab)

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Week 3            NONFICTION

Tuesday, 9/19 — Writing Landscape

  • Annie Dillard: Total Eclipse (print)
  • Rebecca Solnit: The Blue of Distance (print)
  • WRITING DUE:
    • Write a travelogue flash collage that sensorily evokes a moment of journeying / a trip
  • Class in The Botanic Garden of Smith College

Thursday, 9/21 — Writing Culture (Food/Art/Politics)   

***DUE: ESSAY—Produce 1 essay that you will continue to revise during this unit. It must be a piece you care about and will remain invested in. It can be a 1-page flash essay or a longer essay; memoir or journalistic; a meditation on a subject of interest; a story from your memory or someone else’s. You may revise any of our writing exercises (moments of being, autobiographies, object stories, family vacation stories, photograph stories), or create something new. Use the readings as models. You have total freedom here. 

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Week 4            NONFICTION

Tuesday, 9/26 — Experimental Prose

Thursday, 9/28

*Conferences

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Week 5            NONFICTION

Tuesday, 10/3

  • Workshops
  • WRITING DUE:
    • Write down your most favorite line that you have written so far and bring to class
    • TWO-in-ONE Exercise: Take 2 specific, disparate scenes from anything you’ve written this unit and link them within a single cohesive storyline.
    • [Optional: Take a straightforward piece of prose from this unit and scramble its form/style/tone into something new.]
    • DUE: Peer Review Forms/Letters

Thursday, 10/5

  • Workshops
  • podcast “Kiese Laymon on Revision as Love, and Love as Revision”
  • WRITING DUE:
    • Note: these revision exercises will not be formally turned in, but my hope is that you will test the possibilities of your Essay in unexpected ways, and perhaps discover new revisionary paths, or more clarity/confirmation about what does work in your first draft. [The energy of revision is the energy of creation and change, which is also the energy of destruction. —Maggie Anderson]
      • Rewrite the opening in a dramatically different way. Change the POV of your essay. Use a highlighter to mark every moment of tension in your essay. What do you notice / where does tension come? Reduce your essay by half without compromising meaning or impact. Reorder the paragraphs. What happens? (If possible, put scissors to hardcopy.) Write the essay backwards.
      • [Optional: Hidden Titles: Find the 10 most commonly used words in your writing this unit and use these words as “hidden” titles for individual flash stories. (Let the words instigate writing without being a known presence, then eliminate them altogether in the end.)]

*Conferences

DUE FRIDAY, 10/6: Nonfiction Portfolio — by midnight, via email

  1. Revision of Essay
  2. Draft of Essay w/my comments
  3. Three Peer Response Forms/Letters that most helped your revision process
  4. Writer’s Memo: Share a reflection of your journey through nonfiction – discuss your progress, process, questions you have of your own writing, goals that have arisen out of this experience, discoveries about what you prefer as a reader (what is the essay or who is the nonfiction writer that most influenced your writing), insights about what has inspired writing from you, what you’ve realized about your writing habits, if/how your idea(s) for what makes a good essay changed over the course of this unit, the most important thing you’ve discovered about NF in general and in your writing, how you see yourself making the transition into the fiction unit, etc. (1-2 pages); at the end of this, offer a Grade Proposal, considering what you have done to address issues of your first draft; ways that you’ve addressed workshop comments or my feedback; how the essay is improved (and, if you wish, what might still need work), etc.
  5. OPTIONAL: Include up to 3 nonfiction pieces written anytime during this unit that you’d like me to see.

*NOTE: Please include in your email subject: the assignment name (ie. Nonfiction Portfolio). Please attach your Revision and Memo as google doc or .docx (no pdfs accepted). Each attached document file name must include your first & last name and assignment name (ie. Stacie Cassarino, Essay, Revision). Hard copies will also be accepted on Thursday in class, otherwise email the portfolio by midnight on Friday. *You must also post your ESSAY revision to our blog as a way of sharing your work with the class (I’ll create a space entitled ESSAY) by next week.

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Week 6            FICTION

Tuesday, 10/10 — FALL BREAK

Thursday, 10/12 — the Real vs. the Fantastical / Microfictions

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Week 7             FICTION

Tuesday, 10/17 — Characters

  • NOTE: laptops permitted for discussion
  • Flannery O’Connor: Good Country People
  • Kate Braverman: Tall Tales From the Mekong Delta
  • Toni Morrison: Recitatif
  • [Optional: James Joyce: Eveline ; Michael Ondaatje: 7 or 8 Things I Know About Her (A Stolen Biography)]
  • WRITING DUE:
    • Reading Response
    • Interview: Write a list of 100 short fragments about 1 character you are working on in your story (or could imagine inventing); the sentences don’t need to connect or follow in a logical way; the idea is for you to outrun your own ideas of this character; don’t be monotonous; ask everything you can of this character, everything you must know…not just physical attributes, but also what they typically eat for breakfast, what they dream about, what they keep in their pockets or under their bed, who they love or have loved, the rituals, habits, and nuances of their personality and lifestyle, the events that have shaped their lives so far, the futures they imagine, etc. Remember, these 100 characteristics will not all make it into your story, but you as the author need to know what they are in order to write the character as realistically and consistently as possible.

Thursday, 10/19 — Voice/POV/Dialogue

  • NOTE: laptops permitted for discussion
  • Jamaica Kincaid: Girl
  • Raymond Carver: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
  • Amy Hempel: In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried
  • [Optional: Ann Beattie: The Burning House]
  • WRITING DUE:
    • Accident Exercise: Write the accounts of an accident from the perspectives of 5 people who are witness to it, all 1st POV. Use as many varied characters as possible. OR 1 Event 5 Ways: Take a simple event and describe it using the same characters and elements of setting in 5 radically different ways (change style, tone, sentence structure, voice, psychic distance, POV, form, etc.).
    • Dialogue Exercise: Write a dialogue in which each of the two characters has a secret. Do not reveal the secret but make the reader intuit it.

*DUE: STORY!!!!!

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Week 8            FICTION

Tuesday, 10/24 — Form

  • Workshops
  • NOTE: laptops permitted for discussion of readings
  • Lydia Davis: Five Stories 
  • Donald Barthelme: Rebecca / The School
  • Charles Yu: Fable
  • Margaret Atwood: Happy Endings
  • [Optional: Susan Minot: Lust ; T Kira Mahealani Madden: Judy in Her Good Robe ; Daniel Orozco: Orientation]
  • WRITING DUE:
    • Write a 1-sentence story (in. 250 words). See Machado’s “Mary When You Follow Her” (or convert something you’ve written for an exercise in this unit into a 1-sentence story)
    • Write a brief passage on some stock subject (a journey, landscape, sexual encounter) in the rhythm of a long novel, then in the rhythm of a tight short story.
    • Write a 10-minute story told backwards from the end to the beginning

Thursday, 10/26

  • Workshops
  • WRITING DUE:
    • Following Hemingway’s 6-word story (which we’ll review in class), convert the major story you wrote for this unit into a 6-word story. Then explain why you need all those pages to tell your story.
  • DUE: Peer Letter via Email (cc me): Carefully read the writer’s story. Then reread it. On your second reading, highlight or underline anything that could be improved in clarity and style. Write marginal notes to the writer regarding problematic or troubling spots. Next, draft a letter to the writer in which you articulate, in your own words: 1. what the story is doing—main ideas; 2. the strengths of the story; 3. two or more elements on which the writer should focus in revisions, along with specific examples—specific spots in the draft—that help to explain why these elements need attention. 4. Any other comments or suggestions you think might assist the writer. Remember, the recipient of the letter can only benefit from honest criticism, as well as encouragement. Please refresh your memory of questions on the Peer Review Forms; you do not need to fill this out (although you may do so to provide additional helpful detail for the writer), but you should address as many of those elements in your thorough, close-reading of your peer’s story. This is also an exercise in letter-writing, a beautiful, lost form that can collapse distances, especially now.

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Week 9            FICTION

Tuesday, 10/31

  • Workshops
  • Optional Revision Exercises:
    • Note: these revision exercises will not be formally turned in, but my hope is that you will test the possibilities of your Story in unexpected ways, and perhaps discover new revisionary paths, or more clarity/confirmation about what does work in your first draft. Trying some of these out can lead to breakthroughs or deepened understandings. [The energy of revision is the energy of creation and change, which is also the energy of destruction. —Maggie Anderson]
      • Rewrite opening page from the perspective of a minor character. Reflect on why you should or should not adopt this perspective.
      • Write the opening of your story in a dramatically different way, try changing voice/pov, diction, sentence length, adjectives; play with language and structure
      • Rewrite the opening paragraph of your story three times – in 1st, 2nd, 3rd POV
      • Reduce your story by half without compromising meaning or impact.
      • Use a highlighter to mark every moment that shows tension in your story. What do you notice? Does tension come from language, structure, setting, character, voice? Then, use different colored highlighters to mark parts that: 1. tell something about character, 2. tell something about plot, 3. tell something about setting: Consider how often the colors overlap; for each sentence that performs only 1 function, ask if this is a sentence that tells the reader something – try to make it show instead of tell. (Try this out with a published story we’ve read as a reading exercise.)
      • Write the story backwards, considering how structure is useful to content
      • Intensify and magnify the tension, the trouble, the issue to shrillness, even to the point of absurdity. Be extreme, and then think about what this exercise tells you about your story (have you resorted to cliché?)
      • Change the story into a letter being written to someone
      • Draw your story’s shape
      • Identify the crucial moment of the story; what is in your character’s pockets at this moment? Who just walked in unexpectedly? What is going on in the background? In the weather? Step outside the story and write the five-minute story of this moment.
      • Add a character to the story. Take one out.
      • Change the time: if the story occurs in the past, write it in the present or vice versa. Should you keep the change?
      • Change the form.
      • Fracture the story plane into several fragments, put them out of order and rewrite the story. / OR Use scissors to cut the story into paragraphs and parts, reordering them, then taping them into a new version.
      • Cut off the first page. / Cut off the final paragraph.
    • Optional Story Test: Provide 1 sentence or more for each of these questions:
      • Your character is a plant. What type and why?
      • Your character’s future is a sound. What is it and why?
      • The plot is a type of weather condition. What is it and why?
      • The story is a smell. What is it and why?
      • The ending of your story is a color. What is it and why?
      • Choose 6 words at random and ask: How do they relate to your character?
    • Optional Hidden Titles: Find the 5-10 most commonly used words in your writing this unit and use these words as “hidden” titles for individual flash stories. (Let the words instigate writing without being a known presence, then eliminate them altogether in the end.)

Thursday, 11/2 — NO CLASSES

***DUE: Fiction Portfolio — by midnight 11/3 via email

  1. Revision of Story
  2. Draft of Story w/my comments
  3. Writer’s Memo: Share a reflection of your journey through fiction – discuss your progress, process, questions you have of your own writing, goals that have arisen out of this experience, discoveries about what you prefer as a reader (what is the story or who is the fiction writer that most influenced your writing), insights about what has inspired writing from you, what you’ve realized about your writing habits, if/how your idea(s) for what makes a good story changed over the course of this unit, the most important thing you’ve discovered about Fiction in general and in your writing, how you see yourself making the transition into the poetry unit, etc. (1-2 pages); at the end of this, offer a Grade Proposal, considering what you have done to address issues of your first draft; ways that you’ve addressed workshop comments or my feedback; how the story is improved (and, if you wish, what might still need work), etc.
  4. OPTIONAL: Include up to 3 fiction pieces written anytime during this unit that you’d like me to see.

*NOTE: Please include in your email subject: the assignment name (ie. Fiction Portfolio). Please attach your Revision and Memo as google doc or .docx (no pdfs accepted). Each attached document file name must include your first & last name and assignment name (ie. Stacie Cassarino, Story, Revision). Hard copies will also be accepted on Thursday in class, otherwise email the portfolio by midnight on Friday. *You must also post your STORY revision to our blog as a way of sharing your work with the class (I’ll create a space entitled STORY) by next week.

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Week 10          POETRY

Tuesday, 11/7 — What is Poetry? / Prose Poems / Narrative Poems

Thursday, 11/9 — Lyric Poems

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Week 11          POETRY

Tuesday, 11/14 — Forms

Thursday, 11/16 — Forms

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Week 12          POETRY

Tuesday, 11/21 — Experimental Lyrics & Soundscapes

Thursday, 11/23 — THANKSGIVING

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Week 13          POETRY

Tuesday, 11/28

  • Workshops
    • DUE: Peer Letters via email (cc me): Carefully read the writer’s poem. Then reread it. On your second reading, highlight or underline anything that could be improved in clarity and style. Write marginal notes to the writer regarding problematic or troubling spots. Next, draft a letter to the writer in which you articulate, in your own words: 1. what the poem is doing—main ideas; 2. the strengths of the draft; 3. two elements on which the writer should focus in revisions, along with specific examples—specific spots in the draft—that help to explain why these elements need attention. 4. Any other comments or suggestions you think might assist the writer. Be honest with your criticisms. Remember, the recipient of the letter can only benefit from honest criticism. But, at the same time, try to be encouraging. Your purpose is to help the writer of the poem, who may, at some point in the semester, also be in a position to help you. Please refresh your memory of questions on the Peer Review Forms; you do not need to fill this out (although you may do so to provide additional helpful detail for the writer), but you should address as many of those elements in your thorough, close-reading of the writer’s poem. This is also an exercise in letter-writing, a beautiful, lost form that can collapse distances, especially now.

Thursday, 11/30

  • Workshops
  • DUE: Bring 1 poem NOT assigned this unit (but can be a poem from a poet we’ve read) that you’ve discovered independently during our unit and want to share with everyone because it’s that good

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Week 14          Revisions

Tuesday, 12/5

  • Workshops
  • Kim Addonizio & Dorianne Laux: “The Energy of Revision”
  • WRITING DUE:
    • Bring a clean copy of your favorite poem — one that YOU have written this unit — to class (for an in-class exercise). –> bring Thursday!
    • Final Poem: Take 1 failed poem from this unit and extract 1 line from it that you like. Use this line as the 1st line of a new poem.

*Class will be held in the SMITH COLLEGE MUSUEM OF ART

Thursday, 12/7

  • Workshops
  • DUE: Memorize 1 poem of your choice (to be presented orally)
  • WRITING DUE: Poetry Portfolio (hardcopy)
    • 1) Revision of Poem
    • 2) Writer’s Memo: Share a reflection of your journey through poetry – your progress, process, questions you have of your own writing, goals that have arisen out of this experience, discoveries about what you prefer as a reader (the poem or poet that most influenced your writing), insights about what inspired your writing, if/how your idea(s) for what makes a good poem changed over the course of this unit, the most important thing you’ve discovered about poetry, etc. (1-2 pages); at the end, offer a Grade Proposal
    • 3) Three (or more) poems reflecting your work this unit

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Week 15          Final Presentations

Tuesday, 12/12

Thursday, 12/14