Monday, September 29

You did some writing into your emotions today for your writing journal. Most of the prompts you have been writing into this term are connect in some way to patterns psychologists have identified as in some way related to how we categorize memories. Smells, personal associations, bodily sensations/traumas, emotions and so on are all part of the "old brain's" methods for organizing/recollecting experience so it is available to us at the point of need. After we discussed the readings - you began to analyze some of your entries to your journals. In these exercises you took a look at which processes for "remembering" or "connecting to" your memories/experiences worked best for you. You counted which kinds of prompts got the most ideas, and you did some reading to assess which prompts gave you the "best" material. Then you began to look for patterns: you looked for repeating images/language and topics, and if we'd had time you would have looked for repeats in particular stories and concepts. Hopefully this writing gave you some new ways to look at your journal. From your comments, it sounded like some of you were able to use these techniques to see patterns/ideas in your journal entries that might have gone unnoticed with a less analytic reading.

Keep working on writing into a topic for your draft for your personal essay. If anyone is stuck - or wants to talk through some ideas, bring your writing so far to my office for a conference.

For the next week or so we are going to be thinking about "truth" and we are going to start with the O'Brien piece. Hopefully you all have a copy by now. For your Blog - write about what you see as the "truth" in this story. What kind of truth is it? Is it a valuable truth? How can you tell it is true? And is it creative nonfiction or just fiction?

See you Wednesday.

Wednesday, September 24

In class we talked about "Alive" and "Westbury Place" and paid attention to how both of these essays derived their power from making there readers feel as if they were "there." With Drummond we felt the fear, peered over our own shoulders, and went back to the places and times when we were afraid. With Danticat we were inside a reflective process, remembering, noticing again (her experience and ours - as Matt pointed out) and seeing our experiences - present and past- differently.

You then looked at the criteria for your first writing project - and we talked about the overall plan for your work for this term. As you can see as you look through the calendar - you develop your writing through a series of drafts and you will be sharing these drafts (and revising them) through your blog and classroom workshops. The first draft for this project is due October 6.

For your Blog 6, I've asked you to go back through the CNF essays you've read so far (starting with "Out There," "On Keeping a Notebook," and "Superman & me" up through "Decent" & "Crossing the Border") and rank them according to how they meet the criteria for this assignment. The purpose of this writing is for you to do some thinking about form and focus - what your essay will need to look like in order to meet the particular rhetorical demands of this assignment. Check the calendar for the specific demands of this post. I will not be writing back to you about your blogs this weekend. My next response to blogs will be for posts 4- 7. And yes - I have a loop in the numbers for the blogs. It seems no matter how carefully I proofread I always mess up the blog numbering. . .

In class Monday, 9/29, you will spend some dedicated time finding your subject(s) through going back through your journal. You will work on techniques for "mining" a journal and hopefully it will be useful for you even if you've already picked a focus for the present essay (I am assuming you will be writing other essays - and maybe something you discover in your journal will work for a later project).

The readings for Monday are "Decent" (posted) and Thiel's "Crossing the border" (in your book).

I really enjoyed the family stories. There is something tremendously important about the "culture" we create as families - through telling about our shared experiences. Reflecting on these stories will tell you something about yourself - but writing about them can help all of use make a little more sense of who we are and how we share who we are with others.

Have a great weekend and see you on Monday.

Monday, Sept. 22

We talked about segmented essays - though really most of your time was spent planning ideas for how YOU might write a segmented essay. For those of you who would like to look at more than one example of a segmented essay, or who would like to read more about how and why writers choose to write them - I am leaving a copy of Fourth Genre in my mailbox in 301E, and you can pick it up, take it home overnight, etc to read through some examples (segmented essays are listed on xii, and Root's essay on segmented essays is on p. 404). I wanted you to do some brainstorming, planning, thinking about how *you* might write a segmented essay before overloading you with models so you wouldn't get "boxed in" in your thinking. From the brainstorming you were doing it sounds like this is going fairly well for you.

If you look ahead in the calendar - you see that on Wednesday I will finally give a presentation on what is expected for your first essay. I wanted you to have lots of ideas - lots of writing - in your notebooks before you begin to plan any of the essays you are actually going to write. On Wednesday we will look over the assignment sheet for Essay 1 - and you will get started on writing some CNF.

For class, read Danticat, "Westbury Court" - in your textbook, and "Alive" by Laurie Lynn Drummond (link on your web site). In class on Wednesday - and in your blog - do some thinking about focus => what the essay is about. Your essay needs to relate an experience - tell a story - depict events - AND it needs to convey an idea. Your essay needs to be ABOUT something, and that something needs to come through as embodied in the story you tell and the reflective writing that surrounds that story.
Both the Danticat + Drummond have strong narrative lines - but they are also both "about" an idea. In your Blog - write about what that idea is - and how the story/reflecting in these two pieces set up and convey that idea. Describe how the story's structure contributes to getting that point across.

Good class today. I am getting really eager to read some of your writing in the form of an essay!

Wednesday, September 19

I didn't update this right after class - and then I forgot . . . it is always OK to send me an email to remind me.

IN class you wrote listed sensory impressions that connected to memories - smells, physical sensations, tastes - the dark senses, and after we shared some of our evocative experiences, you did a little writing to map out some ideas, experiences you could connect to that sensory memory.

The rest of class was devoted to discussion of Montaigne and Orwell. We listed the features we have identified as belonging to CNF and rated the two readings - to get an idea for how close a fit they were for the current definition. Montaigne did not use features of "fiction" nor did he develop as much reflective exploration of self or recurring, circling ever deeper questioning as we expect in CNF - however - for an essay written more than 400 years ago - the sensibility was remarkably modern. Orwell was a closer fit, but again was less self conscious and more direct and less literary (though he was clearly working with a central metaphor) than some of the other CNF essays we have read. It seems readers came to these texts - especially Montaigne - with different expectations - expectations that reflected their time.

Monday we will be talking/writing about segmented essays and we will use Mimi Schwartz' "My Father Always Said" as an example. For those of you who do not have a copy, there are copies available in my mailbox in 301E. For Blog 4, work through the questions on the calendar: "What is the overall focus of this essay? What is the focus of each section? How does Schwartz use the gaps between sections?" I am looking for you to start thinking about how putting two "sections" next to each other works to make a larger meaning.

I will be reading your blogs over the weekend - and will send you an email, probably Sunday, with my response for posts 2 & 3. See you Monday.

Thinking some more about what we mean by CNF

Your journal prompt was about scars, disease, and broken bones - traumas that you carry with you in your body. You made a list and did some thinking about what you might say about how such experiences shape your lives or open your minds or relate to larger patterns in "the way things are."

The rest of the class was devoted to discussing Lott and Kincaid. Our discussion of Lott examined his essay's tone, content, and structure. You may find this analytic process useful when you begin to look for publication venues for your writing. Scoping out a journal's preferences in terms of subject material, tone and form will help you choose the right place for your essays. Often - getting your work published is more about finding the right venue than about the quality of your work. We approached discussion of Kincaid a little more holistically, but in the end we again considered content, structure and tone - though we added on some reflections about her "vehicle" - the method/material she used to "carry" the main focus of her essay. We noted that the central ideas in her essay were conveyed through presenting a more or less chronological series of memory snapshots (to supplement the central snapshot of herself in the yellow dress) and that these images were sensory rich. We also noted that Didion's central ideas were conveyed through returning to "snapshots" of writing from her journal, that Beard's were conveyed through a storyline, and that Lott's relied heavily on examples from other writers' writing. So now you have four different models for presenting your ideas. In this class - copying is OK, even expected - so long as you do it with a twist.

For Wednesday, read the Montaigne and Orwell essays (the links should be here). These essays were written before creative nonfiction was invented - or at least before it was named. So if CNF is the child of these essays - do some written thinking in your blog about what it inherited from its parents, and what it generated on its own.

Figuring out what makes nonfiction creative

Today in class you got started on some exploratory writing in your journals. You wrote into some of your childhood memories and started to think about how you might use those memories to develop a creative nonfiction essay. We also talked some about particular features of creative nonfiction texts - how the authors used character, scenes, narrative, themes/symbols, reflective analysis, and so on. You then looked at the three sample texts that you read for homework and took a close look at how the authors "built" their essays. From my talk with your groups - it sounds to me like you are beginning to talk like writers => digging into the structure and figuring out how the essays "work".

For Monday, read Brett Lott's essay on defining creative nonfiction, and Jamaica Kincaid's "Biography of a dress." In your blog, continue to write into your understanding of what creative nonfiction is and how it works. Note and analyze any new features that you find in Kincaid and Lott. I read and commented on blogs posted before class. Take the comments as feedback and I will send you a number score and an explanation of how I assigned it in an email. FYI scores for first blogs were on the generous side. As we get into the course I will be looking for you to write into the prompts more deeply.

Good class today and I will see you Monday!

First Day of Class and what to do for Wednesday

We got off to a good start - you've all got a blog set up and are working on putting in the links to classmates blogs (I've got a start on that and will finish up tomorrow). I suggest that you edit the blog titles so that they all list the owner's name.

The readings for Wednesday (as listed on the calendar) will set you up with some "evidence" for the writers of those pieces think creative nonfiction is - and after reading their essays do some more thinking about what CNF is and how it works (how it connects to readers) finish your first post.

Be sure to read about keeping a writing journal and to bring a writing journal to class. In class - we will talk a little about how you want to use your journals, and then you are going to get started with some writing to generate material for your essays.

If you have questions or concerns - of if the technology is feeling intimidating - send me an email and we will work things out. I am looking forward to reading your work!

Addresses for your blogs

Jennifer http://thetruthstates.blogspot.com/

Dan http://sirlusciousleftfoot.blogspot.com/

Shannon http://dunkindonutslover.blogspot.com/

Matt dempseym73.blogspot.com

Suzanne http://woozie300.blogspot.com/

Camille http://camillejoyadalla.blogspot.com/

Liz http://lizdamnit.blogspot.com/

Edgar http://edgardinzey.blogspot.com

Diana http://d-mitchell.blogspot.com/

Jose http://return2sender-josemaria.blogspot.com/

Nicole http://nicmacs.blogspot.com

Angel http://superblogissuper.blogspot.com/

Lauren http://www.laurenjw.blogspot.com/

Shamira http://shamiranonfiction.blogspot.com/

Jenna http://www.jennacwnf.blogspot.com/

Angela http://angelacreativenonfiction.blogspot.com/