English 221: Intro to Creative Writing
Agenda:  March 13, 2008

In-class Writing: Midterm Reflection & Self-Assessment

1. What were your goals for yourself coming into this class?
2. Are you meeting these goals? How so? Be specific.
3. How have your goals changed for yourself over these first eight weeks?
4. What is the best “thing” (freewrite, essay, poem, story, reading response), you've written so far this semester. Give three reasons why.
5. Look back through Burroway's first five chapters (include also “Shunned” and “Sticks”), what reading have you learned from the most so far? Give three reasons why.
6. What reading have you enjoyed the most? Why?
7. Of the five craft elements we've discussed—Image, Voice, Character, Setting, Story—which do you feel you understand best? Why? (Relate this answer to your understanding of the readings and to your own writing)
8. Of the five craft elements, which do you feel you understand the least? What are you confused about or unsure of?
9. How would you rate your oral participation in class?
10. How often have you met with the instructor outside of class to discuss your work? How often have you emailed the instructor to ask questions about assignments or to clarify any confusion you might have?
11. What is the most important thing you've learned so far this semester?
12. Why is this important to you ?
13. If you were to assign a mid-term grade to your wor k in this course, based upon your:
    • On-time completion of the work assigned : responses, freewrites, exercises, drafts, revisions, quizzes
    • Your attention to and growing command of language: active voice, economy, paragraph organization, Strunk & White principles of good writing
    • Your attention to and growing command of the five elements of craft
    • Your attendance and oral participation (remember perfect attendance and active participation can elevate your grade by a half letter grade)

what grade would you give yourself and why?

Final Question: What are your goals for the second half of class?

FOR NEXT TIME: 3/25

Read: The Meadow

Write: Choose one of the craft elements discussed in the first half of this class—Image, Voice, Character, Setting, or Story—and write a 2-3 page reading response on James Galvin's use of this craft element in The Meadow . Your difficult task will be to comment on not only the use of this element in specific passages and sections (the book is divided into more than a hundred small sections), but also comment on the use of this craft element across the whole book. In writing about one particular element across the whole book, you are looking for a larger pattern: a pattern of voice (point of view), a pattern of imagery, a pattern of characterization, a pattern of story (there are many stories—how do they form a pattern), a pattern of setting.

For this assignment, I won't be looking for any specific number of paragraphs, but I do expect you to look back through the agendas (they are all on the course website if you're not the best collector/organizer) at the specific questions related to each craft element and use these questions to direct your paragraph organization and guide your response.

For example, the following are questions about characterization, taken from the February 14 agenda (on “Sticks”), and modified for The Meadow:

• How does the book characterize Lyle through image?
• How does the book characterize Lyle through speech?
• Through action?
• Through telling?
• Are there other main characters? How are they portrayed in these ways?
• How does the book portray the narrator through image? Action? Speech? Thought?
• What does Lyle want?  What is contradictory about what Lyle wants? How is he consistently inconsistent?
• What does the narrator want?  What is contradictory about what the narrator wants?
• What significant choices does Lyle make?
• How does Lyle change?
• What significant choices does the narrator make?
• How does the narrator change?

There are questions like these, strewn like reading response diamonds, throughout your agendas. They emphasize the critical vocabulary of each chapter. Use these questions, and employ this critical vocabulary to write your response. Good Luck!