English 221 : Introduction to Creative Writing
T/TH 11:00-12:15
Mitchell Hall 214
Greg Martin, Associate Professor, English
Syllabus Spring 2008
Texts
Required Materials for Each Class Period
Overview
Bill Watterson, author of Calvin & Hobbes, from his 1990 Kenyon College Commencement Address:
“In the middle of my sophomore year at Kenyon, I decided to paint a copy of Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" from the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling of my dorm room. By standing on a chair, I could reach the ceiling, and I taped off a section, made a grid, and started to copy the picture from my art history book.
Working with your arm over your head is hard work, so a few of my more ingenious friends rigged up a scaffold for me by stacking two chairs on my bed, and laying the table from the hall lounge across the chairs and over to the top of my closet. By climbing up onto my bed and up the chairs, I could hoist myself onto the table, and lie in relative comfort two feet under my painting. My roommate would then hand up my paints, and I could work for several hours at a stretch.
The picture took me months to do, and in fact, I didn't finish the work until very near the end of the school year. I wasn't much of a painter then, but what the work lacked in color sense and technical flourish, it gained in the incongruity of having a High Renaissance masterpiece in a college dorm that had the unmistakable odor of old beer cans and older laundry. The painting lent an air of cosmic grandeur to my room, and it seemed to put life into a larger perspective. Those boring, flowery English poets didn't seem quite so important, when right above my head God was transmitting the spark of life to man.
…my fondest memories of college are times like these, where things were done out of some inexplicable inner imperative, rather than because the work was demanded. Clearly, I never spent as much time or work on any authorized art project, or any poli sci paper, as I spent on this one act of vandalism.
It's surprising how hard we'll work when the work is done just for ourselves. And with all due respect to John Stuart Mill, maybe utilitarianism is overrated. If I've learned one thing from being a cartoonist, it's how important playing is to creativity and happiness.
If you ever want to find out just how uninteresting you really are, get a job where the quality and frequency of your thoughts determine your livelihood. I've found that the only way I can keep writing every day, year after year, is to let my mind wander into new territories. To do that, I've had to cultivate a kind of mental playfulness.
We're not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery-it recharges by running.”
This course is designed to cultivate your mental playfulness. It is a class about recreating constructively, through writing. It is a course designed, through freewrites and exercises, through reading and writing in multiple genres, to encourage you to tap into your own inexplicable inner imperatives. The seeming irony, at first anyway, is that this kind of "play" also requires the cultivation of an equal and corresponding discipline.
This is the second year of UNM's multi-genre Introduction to Creative Writing, a course which serves as a pre-requisite for entry into all 300 & 400 level classes in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. The first six weeks of class will focus on issues of craft related to all three of these genres: image, voice, character, setting, and story.
In the next ten weeks of class, we will turn our attention to developing and revising the freewrites and exercises generated during the first six weeks. How do creative writers decide what material is best suited for a story, an essay, a poem? We will explore this question as we explore each genre in more depth. You'll have the opportunity to try your hand at all three genres--not to prove your mastery but your mettle.
Every class session will include both in-class writing and the discussion of published readings. We will not just be reading literature in order to better interpret and understand it. We will be reading literature in order to make literature of our own—to find models for our own writing. With all of the course readings, we will ask the question: what lessons can I learn from this to help my own writing? One goal of the course is to learn how stories, essays and poems actually work. We will come to understand the “moving parts” of stories, essays, and poems in much the same way a mechanic understands the parts of an engine. Through written reading responses, we will make “exploded diagrams” of craft elements, taking each piece apart and seeing how each part contributes to the whole.
Unlike all the other sections of Introduction to Creative Writing (which are taught by graduate students in our MFA program), this course is linked to another course I am teaching--ENG 535 Teaching Creative Writing, a course designed to prepare graduate students to teach the introductory course. And so I will be using your work, with your names removed to protect your anonymity, as examples in the 535 course. If for any reason you are uncomfortable with having your anonymous work viewed by graduate students outside the class, I suggest that you sign up for another section of the course.
Course Requirements
Freewrites & Exercises (20%): Throughout the semester, you'll be responsible for completing informal, handwritten freewrites in-class, and more formal, typed exercises, which I will collect and grade. The purpose of both freewrites and exercises is to generate material and to practice craft skills.
Freewrites should not be edited at all. Your job is to keep your hand moving. Don't worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. Don't re-read the first sentence, holding it up to the light, before you write the second sentence. Just write.
Exercises must be edited conscientiously, with attention paid to clarity, economy, and grammar.
Reading Responses (15%): To learn from what you read, you must be able to think carefully about what you read, and the best place to think is on the page. Typed responses are required for each of the course's required readings. With each reading response, I'll provide a prompt to guide your writing. These responses will prepare you for discussion and the sharing of ideas with your classmates.
Reading responses must be edited conscientiously, with attention paid to clarity, economy, and grammar.
Reading Quizzes (5%): These short, in-class quizzes are to help ensure your preparation for class discussion, and also offer you a reprieve from writing a two page reading response for each day's class session.
Short Essay (15%), Short-short Story (15%) and Three Poems (15%): You will receive a specific handout detailing the due dates and expectations for each of these three assignments.
Responses to Live Readings (5%): Throughout the semester, I will include a extensive list of public readings, both off and on campus. You will need to make time to attend at least two readings and to write up a short review. The review is due within a week of the reading and should cover the following:
Final Exam (10%): An in-class short answer and essay exam employing the critical vocabulary learned throughout the semester.
Attendance and Participation:
Your attendance and participation are integral parts of this course. Students may miss two classes without penalty. A third absence will lower your final grade a full letter grade. A fourth absence will lower your grade an additional letter grade. I consider five absences grounds for administratively dropping you from the course. Absences can be excused only for documented, serious situations (debilitating illness or urgent family emergency) or for direct conflict with an official event scheduled by a UNM organization (music performance, athletic competition). Illnesses not requiring a doctor's care might cause you to stay home from class, but they don't count as debilitating illness; keep your two absences in reserve for these situations. You should contact me as soon as possible if you miss class. Absence is never an excuse for coming to the next class unprepared—it is your responsibility to find out what you missed, including handouts and/or changes in the syllabus. Agendas for each class period will be posted on the course website. Consistent late arrivals disrupt the class. Three late arrivals equals one absence.
Note: Woody Allen said that 90% of success is just showing up. If you have perfect attendance, I will enhance your grade by a half letter.
Note: Some writers are writers, in part, because they talk quite a lot less than other people. Some of the best students I've had did not speak every class, not out of smugness or condescension, but because that's the way they were. I respect this. But I will also call on students who struggle to initiate or jump into discussion. From past experience with reading responses, I know that, often, the most insightful comments go unsaid because of student temperament. But I also very much appreciate those students who come to class eager to participate in class discussion, and who have a sense of how much participation is enough and how much is too much. Like the students with perfect attendance, students who participate regularly, with constructive comments and camaraderie, can expect a borderline grade to enhanced upwards.
Coming to class without the readings assigned for the day's discussion or workshop is not acceptable. If you come to class without the readings or workshop materials more than once, I will deduct half a letter grade from your final grade. My expectation is that these readings will be full of pencil notes and marginalia--your questions and insights that help you come to class best prepared to learn.
Important Note : No late assignments are accepted. If, for whatever reason, you must miss class, I will accept your homework via email, if I receive it before 11:00 on the day it is due. Otherwise, do not email your work to me. It is your responsibility to make sure your work is printed out well before class is due.
Grading: It's possible to earn a high grade in this class simply by doing the work and doing it well. You need not be fascinatingly talented. Talent is overrated. You simply must be conscientious, committed, and engaged. Grading creative work is not as subjective as it may seem. Content, what you write about, does not affect your grade. Craft, how you write, does. I understand that you may have little experience with the formal craft features of creative writing; that’s why you are in the class. My expectation is that you will pay attention to these new craft elements, according to the guidelines of each assignment. With each exercise, I will offer suggestions on how to improve your next response or exercise. It is your job to embrace these suggestions and show constant effort at improvement throughout the semester. In general, grades for responses & creative work look like this:
A Papers: Meet the assignment, focusing on appropriate craft features. Display complexity and clarity of thought, artful diction and a sense of personal voice. Are free from grammatical errors.
B Papers: Meet the assignment, focusing on appropriate craft features. Display attention to diction and voice, but occasionally lapse into awkward prose. Have a few grammatical errors.
C Papers: Meet the assignment, focusing on appropriate craft features, yet show little effort in using diction and voice or new craft features, or have numerous grammatical errors.
D Papers: Fail to meet the assignment.
Grades on responses are also based on textual analysis and providing evidence just as a response paper in Freshman English would be. Correct grammar, usage, punctuation and spelling are expected. If you are struggling with issues of clarity and grammar, I will let you know, and we will meet to come up with a strategy for improvement which will likely involve both regular office hours visits, peer editing, and visits to CAPS.
Format
1. Freewriting Journal Entries may be handwritten.
2. All other assignments should be typed, double-spaced, numbered, with one inch margins, on one side of the page, with no cover pages, and stapled. A single spaced heading on the top left should include: your name, the course number and section, my name, the date, the title.
Accommodation
Students who have special needs that may affect their ability to benefit fully from the class, please see me as soon as possible so I can arrange appropriate accommodation.