Thursday, September 10

Today you got started on your writing journals. You wrote stories, feelings, associations about your earliest memories, and then we sort of randomly shared thoughts and ideas with those experiences. In some ways - that is the essence of what creative nonfiction is: a personal experience that is then opened up or explored in terms of a focus on an idea or thought. Thanks for your good contributions to this discussion. It sounds like you have some good material to work with.

We then (without quite enough time) talked about the different ways writers use writing: to persuade, to inform, to tell stories, to create imaginary worlds and "truths"; to explore new possibilities with their readers; to think (or figure out what they think); and to represent / create the different selves they step into as they live and grow. You then looked at the three essays with a mind toward deciding what these authors did. Our object was to then see if we could find what the 3 essays have in common - so we can keep building on our definition of creative nonfiction - but we ran out of time. And that's OK - we will pick up this discussion on Monday after you have read Lott and Kincaid's essays.

For Monday:
Read: Lott: "Toward a definition of creative nonfiction," 270; Kincaid, "Biography of a Dress," 209
Blog 2 : What does Kinkaid's essay add to ideas of creative nonfiction that are not so strong in the essays by Didion, Beard & Alexie? How did Lott's discussion of creative nonfiction add to your ideas about how to define CNF?

FYI I do not comment on student blogs online - rather I will be sending you an email with feedback. I will send you an email with comments for Blogs 1 & 2 after the second post is due (Monday).

Have a great weekend and thanks for the good class.