English 423.001—Advanced Creative Nonfiction:
Doubt & Faith: Writing About Spirituality
cross-listed with Religious Studies
T/TH 11:00-12:15
Fall 2005
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 423: http://ereserves.unm.edu/courseindex.asp password: study423
Course website: www.unm.edu/~gmartin
In this course, we will both study and write personal essays which explore questions of doubt and faith--questions not limited to any particular faith tradition. As a 400 level creative writing class, my expectation is that students will have some experience in creative writing. Also, the class is designed for students who consider themselves "questioners" and "seekers," students for whom questions of doubt are as alive as question of faith, and not for students "convinced" of the superiority of their path or tradition. We will define doubt generously, broadly addressing the human impulse to question in order to find meaning and understanding. We will define faith just as generously, neither as a complete acceptance of any particular religion or creed, nor a rejection of doubt. Still, there is a distance between the two terms, and in this class, in our writing, we will be exploring that distance.
This is not a philosophy class, and it is not a religious studies class. It is not a survey of different personal essays covering the world's major religions. We will not be scholars. This class will not be comprehensive.
This is a creative writing class. In approach, the class will be idiosyncratic and eclectic, immersing you, hopefully, in your questions of doubt and faith, based on your lives and backgrounds and religious/spiritual histories. The published essays we read will hopefully expand your sense of form (the way one might write about doubt and faith, like the lyric meditation, or the narrative essay), but most importantly, my hope is that the readings become triggers for your own imagination, standing points for emulation. Together, we will explore our experiences and memories, faith and doubt, attempting to give these notions shape and design, attempting to communicate to the broadest audience possible.
The class should further your understanding of prose craft and technique, and we will focus on the development of the "habit" of art, emphasizing exploration, risk taking, and pushing yourself to write in ways that you could not write before.
Three Personal Essay Drafts: Each of these essay drafts will be workshopped in class, according to a schedule we will devise together. Essay drafts may be anywhere from 5 to 20 pages, written on any topic related to the course description (doubt and faith). Use the published readings as models for structure, characterization, scene and summary, and other craft features.
Students have the option to workshop the same essay three times. (Revisions must be substantive. More on this later.)
Students must submit at least one revision. (If the second draft is an entirely new essay, the third draft must be a revision of either the first or second draft. Or, to say it another way: you can submit two different essays to the workshop, but not three.)
NOTE: An essay 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.
Ten Reading Responses: 2-3 page, typed, responses for each of the courses’ required readings. (See Handout on website)
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 Handout on website)
Final Portfolio:
Some Thoughts on Grading:
Individual essay drafts will not be graded, as this can be fatal to the creative process—especially when the subject matter has to do with one’s thoughts about spirituality. I want you to take risks. Tobias Wolff (author of THIS BOY'S LIFE) calls this "hanging it all on the line":
"The personal essay demands that we jump in with both feet, yelling for all we’re worth. It doesn’t reward authorial discretion, self-effacement, the arts that conceal art. Nor does it reward any of the civic virtues: tact; polish; reasonableness; noble, throatcatching sentiment; correct posture. There are, to be sure, many such writers, and they do very well for themselves, but I have to say they make me see red. I want to reach in and shake them by the jowls until their wisdom and smoothness and certainty crack wide open. All this parading on the high road has nothing to do with the real possibility of the personal essay, which is to catch oneself in the act of being human. That means a willingness to surrender for a time our pose of unshakable rectitude, and to admit that we are, despite our best intentions, subject to all manner of doubt and weakness and foolish wanting. It requires a self-awareness without self-importance, moral rigor without priggishness, and the courage to hang it all on the line. It’s a hard thing to do."
How are we supposed to jump in with both feet, shouting for all we're worth, if we're worried about our @#$#$^%%^ grade? How are we to catch ourselves in the act of being human if we're thinking "Is this a B+ effort, or A-?"
For each draft, I will write a narrative evaluation, or critique, which will describe to you how your essay 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 essay 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 most 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 think I do need to focus my persona, but I’m wondering if the essay 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 the essay.” 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 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 essays 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 writer and critic 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 think it would be helpful to receive a letter grade on a particular draft, we can schedule a conference to discuss a grade and your progress in the class.
Following is a percentage breakdown of the components of the final grade:
20% = Peer Responses
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. Please note: I consider consistent late arrivals and early departures as absences. If you are in this consistent category, I’ll let you know (I’ll give fair warning).
Important Note: No late assignments are accepted.
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.
From Kathleen Norris’s Introduction to the Best Spiritual Writing 1999
"Spiritual writing is a kind of paradox, perhaps even a contradiction in terms. Experiences that people describe as mystical or religious are immediate and intense, while writing requires distance and discipline. Spiritual insights are deeply personal, and often experienced in solitude, while writing, as a form of communication, inevitably entails reaching out to others. I suspect that most spiritual experience is carried silently, in the heart… But spiritual writing is an attempt to describe this experience to another in such a way that the stranger can experience it in their own terms… The best spiritual writing is hospitable to the reader—not dense or impenetrable or pretentious, not full of “sacred lingo.” Its language is approachable, accessible to the many and not just a few.”