English 421.001—Advanced Fiction
T/TH 11:00-12:15
Fall 2006
Greg Martin
Office: Humanities 257
Office Hours: W 2:00 – 3:30 and by appointment
Phone: 277-6145
E-mail: gmartin@unm.edu
E-reserve site for English 421: http://ereserves.unm.edu/courseindex.asp password: study421
Course website: www.unm.edu/~gmartin
Note: You must print out the texts on e-reserve and bring them with you to class on the day that they are assigned.
"I write a book, or a short story, at least three times—once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say."
Bernard Malamud
This is a fiction writing workshop focused on revision. The goal of the course is to push you to invest and re-invest in the same piece over sixteen weeks, so that it becomes increasingly complex, resonant, and satisfying. Another goal of the course is to break down what Jane Smiley calls “evasion strategies.” Many undergraduate creative writers are highly skilled at turning out flawed, inspiration-driven early drafts. My hope is that this class will help you produce a draft so compelling that your peers (or anyone) would read your story even if they didn't have to. This class is an opportunity for you to work on a story draft, maybe written in a previous class (321 is a prerequisite for 421) but which, for whatever reason, has yet to be published in The New Yorker.
The structure of the class is designed so that week after week, you’ll be pushing your work to its elastic limits, so that no piece is allowed to lie dormant. Perhaps in the past, after workshop, you’ve told yourself that you need to just let a piece “rest,” so that you can “ponder” it, and then come back to it after awhile. Then a month goes by and you wouldn’t recognize the story if it passed you on the sidewalk. That won’t happen in this class.
Most often in a creative writing workshop, craft (plot, characterization, etc) receives primary emphasis, and there are good reasons for this. But less often is discipline, itself, emphasized. The problem with too much emphasis on craft is that it may lead the apprentice writer to believe that their most important writing problems are craft problems. They aren't. Craft can be taught and learned, but it cannot be assiduously applied. Craft has nothing to do with tenacity or stubbornness or resolve. One might argue that the inner discipline it takes to endure and produce as an artist is itself a kind of craft knowledge. This class is designed to help cultivate your inner discipline.
Three Story Drafts: Each of these story drafts will be workshopped in class, according to a schedule we will devise together. Drafts may be anywhere from 8 to 25 pages (no exceptions).
Because we will be workshopping the same story three times, you are encouraged to begin thinking, from the moment you leave the first day's class, of a story that is urgent enough for you to sustain working on and re-working (and re-working) over 16 weeks. Think hard about this, and feel free to email me or talk to me after or before class, or come to office hours, to talk about what you want to submit to the first workshop.
NOTE: A story draft not submitted on time will not be accepted or workshopped and will automatically lower your final grade for the course by one letter grade.
Reading Responses & Revision Analysis: (See the Calendar for more specifics.)
Peer Responses: 1-2 page typed, responses for each of your peer’s drafts turned in for workshop. These peer responses are to be given to me, and to the author of the piece, on the day the work is discussed. Please always bring two copies. (See Calendar for more specifics.)
The Treadmill Journal
This is a daily journal of your writing schedule and goals. Each day you make seven entries:
The date and the time
How long you plan to work.
What you plan to work on for this day.
Time when you stop writing and total amount of time writing.
Answer the questions: What did you actually do? How well did it go?
What you plan to work on tomorrow
When you plan to work tomorrow and for how long.
Sample Entry
Sept 15, 2005 8:30 am
Work until eleven
Focus on rising action in Macular Degeneration
11:15 Almost three hours
Sluggish until coffee kicked in, then pretty good characterization of Oscar. Didn't get to turning point.
More rising action tomorrow. Must write turning point--as scene, not just a lame sketch.
Tomorrow: 7:30 to 9.
Rules:
You can't take three days off in a row.
If you take two days off in a row, you ought to feel bad, not just about your habits and your lack of discipline, but about yourself as a person.
You must log 8-10 hours of writing time a week. This time must be spent on your story drafts and not on reading for the class or peer responses. (You can write more.) Take a day off here and there, if you must, but I don't recommend it. Why would you? You're supposed to love it. You'll love it more, the more you do it. Wynton Marsalis didn't take a day off practicing the trumpet for two years. That's why he's Wynton Marsalis.
Unplug the phone. (Turn off cell, if you feel you must have one of those)
No email interruptions.
No diary-type notes. Nothing about your cat's urinary tract infection.
Can you tinker with these rules and with these seven steps and "make them your own"? Why would you?
Keep track of how many hours you write each week. Keep track of how many hours you write over the 16 week semester. Don't let yourself off the hook. Feel free to note the relationship between how good your story is getting and how many hours you are revising.
Feel free to not like doing this. But you still have to do it. Try it for a semester. (Bend your will to mine.) If you like it, keep doing it. If you don't, don't.
Final Portfolio:
Some Thoughts on Grading:
Individual story drafts submitted to workshop will not be graded, as this can be fatal to the creative process.
For each draft, I will write a narrative evaluation, or critique, which will describe to you how your story is being read. This evaluation will describe the strengths of your draft, and it will also raise questions for revision, point out places of over-simplification, suggest areas in need of development and possible ways of making the next draft more resonant and satisfying.
Narrative evaluations put the emphasis not on the grade, but on the creative work. Narrative evaluations place the emphasis not on the draft that has already been written, but on the next draft. The emphasis is on constructive, critical encouragement to keep going, to keep making the story better.
By de-emphasizing grades at the draft level, my hope is to get as far as possible away from the temptation to “guess” what I might be looking for or to meet my expectations. My hope is to emphasize the intrinsic satisfaction of writing well and pursuing your concerns. My role is to help you get better. My role is to help you raise your own standards for yourself.
A narrative evaluation is more open to follow-up questions and clarification. Rather than saying to me, “Why did I get a B+ instead of an A-?” (which is a question many students won’t ask), the student might ask in office hours or email, “Can you say more about what you mean when you wrote that the middle of my narrative lacks tension?” Or, “I’m wondering if the story isn’t more about the grandfather/granddaughter relationship? What do you think?)
There is a loophole with this “narrative evaluation of drafts” method. Someone might think, “Well, the draft I have to turn in tomorrow isn’t graded, and the chemistry exam I have to take tomorrow is graded, so I can’t spend much time on my revision.” My response is: plan ahead; know your commitments. I understand that students are often struggling to balance many different classes, as well as jobs and family commitments. Still, if students really care about their work in a class, they will make the time for it, and do the best they can. Also, I put far more time into responding to students who clearly have worked hard on a piece. And finally, your portfolio will be graded, and since the portfolio is based on the culmination of the entire semester's writing work, that grade will be based on how substantially your work has been revised over the course of the semester.
Creative writing is notoriously difficult to evaluate with letter grades, and it can be difficult for students to receive letter grades on their creative writing. For most of the semester we will be using a non-letter grading system: you will simply receive comments reflecting my appreciation and constructive criticism of your writing. When I do give a letter grade for the final portfolio, I will apply criteria for the craft of writing that we will be discussing, and developing, at some length, all semester in class.
In joining the class, you are placing trust in my experience as a teacher and writer to evaluate your writing fairly and constructively. One of my goals as a teacher is to justify that trust by explaining clearly my reasons for a particular evaluation and by being available for conferences at any time during--or after--the semester. If at any time, you would like to know what letter grade a particular draft would receive, if I did such grading, we can schedule a conference to discuss a grade and your progress in the class.
10% = Treadmill Journal
Note on Attendance and Participation:
I conduct an active writer-centered classroom. Your attendance and participation is an integral part 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 "free" absences in reserve for these situations. You should contact me as soon as possible if you must miss class for a legitimate, verifiable excuse, ideally prior to the class you miss, and never later than the following class meeting. 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. Consistent late arrivals disrupt the class. Three late arrivals will equal one absence.
Important Note: No late assignments are accepted. If you are sick or must miss class, and you email me your assignment before 11:00 on the day of class, I will accept it.
1. Creative Work 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.
2. Correct grammar, usage, punctuation and spelling are expected. A piece flawed by pervasive proofreading or mechanical errors will not receive full credit.