September 29

We spent some time this evening working through a prompt that moves from feelings, to ideas, to stories - rather than staying in feelings, or moving directly to stories. The idea was to explore some writing strategies that help you think about writing concept or idea centered essays - essays that have strong stories to draw the reader in - but that are also definitely ABOUT something.

The rest of the class was devoted to clearing up questions about some of the terms and forms we have been discussing with respect to creative nonfiction. We went back through the different kinds of structures CNF writers have identified as useful in organizing their work, we re-visited the differences (and fundamental similarities) between "I" and "eye" essays, and we went through a point-by-point discussion of your first assignment. Hopefully I answered your questions; if not, be in touch.

Your revised calendar should be posted by the time you read this. There is still a gap in the blog sequence (there is no Blog 13 - sort of like there is no 13th floor) - but the major confusions with dates are revised. Thanks for your patience - and if there are other mistakes that I just didn't see - let me know.

For Monday

Blog 6: Brainstorming as far as you've gotten for Project 1, Draft 1. At a minimum, develop some writing that identifies/reflects on what your essay is "about"(these direct statements may or may not end up in your final essay - but they can be important to help you be clear in your mind about what your stories need to "do") - and some of the stories, scenes, descriptions, information, characterization that develop what your essay is about.

Read: Lopez., 271. His essay is the counterpoint to the insistence that CNF be idea focused. While he is writing about "landscape and nature" set in a particular place - this is also an intimate story about writing - on the purpose and mystery in how "a story draws on relationships in the exterior landscape and projects them onto the interior landscape."

September 27

We started out making a list of stories that changed us - but before you wrote into a particular story we talked about factors that swayed us to choose one story over another. We used this discussion both to classify some of the common types of stories that get written (or that it is our first impulse to write) - and to think about why it is that some (good, important) stories don't get written. We noticed that coming to a resolution or having an (acceptable) ending played a role in defining stories, and in driving us to tell them. We also noticed that stories that weren't "resolved" pressed us both to tell and not tell them. So this is sort of an unstorylike post in that it doesn't come to a clear conclusion about why we write what we do (and don't) - but then I think maybe that is accurate.

You wrote and shared some "stories that changed you), and we covered some serious ground in terms of grappling with experiences that left us wondering - or at least thinking. Thanks for the good talk.

We then talked about John McPhee's "The Patch." And while it may have had more information about pickerel than some of you necessarily wanted to know, it also used the fish, its ways, and McPhee's contemplation of fishing as a metaphor to a much more emotional message. As we talked in class this essay was "about" McPhee's relationship to his father, a contemplation of learning to "listen" be aware of our fellow beings, a wish to take part in human connection, and a perhaps a commentary on - if not hospital care - at least one conception of "care" that often plays out in hospitals. And while this essay clearly is filled with detailed observation and facts characteristic of "eye" essays, I included it as an "I" essay precisely because that observation so stands in for the "I" the narrator "gives"" to his father.

For Wednesday:

Read: an "I" essay or two from your text

Blog 5: For whatever essays you chose to read - what is the main concept/idea in these essays (what is the 'point')? How do authors develop their ideas? What kind of structures do the essays use to build the dramatic impact for that concept?

The point of this post is to get you thinking about a conceptual focus for your essay. OFten the story wells up and you feel it and you know that is what you want to write about - but the "what is it about" comes with more difficulty. In class Wednesday we are going to talk about the idea part - and you will (finally) get your first writing assignment.

Great class tonight. I am really getting quite impatient to start reading your writing!

Wednesday, September 22

Smells. They ground the reader in your writing perhaps more effectively than any other appeal to the senses. We shared a list of smells that have strong associations, thought about how smells can set a mood, define a character, evoke a place, imply a story - and raised the possibility of a smell-based essay.

We then moved on to the readings - and talked about how an essay's organization/order of presentation IS a central component of the content. The ordering of information and the relationships between juxtapositions create the reader's line of response. While the readers' construction of what an essay is about generally takes place at the unconscious level - it is powerfully present. You won't necessarily be able to construct a line of presentation that works at multiple levels to evoke the kind of complex story we found in Cofer's piece in your first draft = but stepping back, thinking through the parallels, contrasts, narrative (dis)continuities, gaps (for the reader to fill in) that writers create in the white space between sections will allow you to create more powerful, more artful writing as you revise.

In Cofer's piece we noticed the movement between two separate perspectives - the home video (a representation of family caught in the past - showing themselves at a particular point in time - without the ability to speak) - and Cofer's narrative recollections which included interpretations of her past life and of the movie. The while at first the two representations were distinct - by the conclusion they seemed to merge as Cofer dreamed herself into the movie. This structural move set me up , as a reader, to feel the inescapable connection between past identities (represented in the movie) and the interpretations of those identities. In the conclusion - they bring forward all their conflicts (in the personae of the different characters) while at the same time presenting themselves as part of a single, dream-logic conversation. The structural identification of the two perspectives (movie/Cofer's recollections) followed by the move to orchestrate them as a single cacophonous voice IS, in a sense, a kind of model for the feel/problem she represents in this text = her conflicting relationships to her Puerto Rican/American identities, her family, and her past.

Our list of the sections on the board documented some of the (lovely, artful) connections and transitions as she moved from section to section - the presentation of the women, the men, and the children - in the movie and her recollections. We might think of the sections as working to set up the physical spaces where we could visit the connected but separate perspectives at work in her past.

In his essay "Collage, Montage, Mosaic, Vignette, Episode, Segment," Robert Root names segmented structures in terms of the relationships between their sections. The following listing is taken from his essay, with a few modifications.

• juxtaposition - arranging one item alongside another item so that the comment back and forth on one another
• parallelism - altermating of intertwining one continuouse strand with another (a present tense strand with a past tense strand, a domestic strand with a foreign strand, etc)
• patterning - choosing an extra-literary design and arranging literary segments accordingly (for example, using the structure of/associations with the seasons, a musical piece, preparing a meal as the sequential frame for an essay)
• accumulation - arranging a series of segments or scenes or episodes so that they add to or enrich or alter the meanings of previous segments with each addition, perhaps reinterpreting earlier segments
• journaling - actually writing in episodes or reconstructing teh journal experience in drafts (this approach may include notes, earlier versions of the essay, reflections on how to revise earlier sections, etc.)

We have barely scratched the surface for working the connections between structure and meaning. Tonight's class really just opened the conversation. Hopefully each of you will write into the possibilities - both for Blog 4 - and in your essays.

For Monday

Blog 4: Do some exploratory writing to think about how you might develop an essay that uses segments to develop/enhance your focus. This doesn't have to be an essay you would actually write. Just do some on-the-page thinking about how you might use the form of an essay to set up a particular idea. You can use forms from the list above - or you can model your ideas on the segmented essays we've read so far (Grealy, Koesterbaum, Cofer, Simic, Atwood).

Read: "The Patch," by John McPhee, in The New Yorker, February 8,2010, p.32 - available through the Kean University Library Databases - click on periodicals, select The New Yorker.

In class on Monday we will continue to think about how CNF essays are built - only this time from a more narrative perspective - in terms of scenes, backstory, characterization riffs, and other devices.

Enjoy the beginning of fall (and the coming of those good smells!)

Monday, September 20

Tonight we used Phillip Lopate's essay on becoming a character in your writing as a basis for your writing prompt. After characterizing yourselves in a list-y sort of way using his categories + some of our own - you developed some sketches/stories that are "so you" and we shared them - and they were AWESOME. Clearly you are developing some strong material that could serve as a basis for a CNF essay.

Two caveats= 1. do not choose/dedicate yourself to a topic too soon -work at staying open so you can spend some time window shopping; 2. remember that CNF is both a story AND the exploration of an idea. In otherwords CNF is about something that makes "sense" of what otherwise could degenerate into an anecdote.

We then talked about Kidder's emphasis on point of view - and the importance of making the truth believable, followed by an overview of Lott's listing of what CNF is. For Lott - we paid attention to the structure of the essay (since it is in itself a CNF essay) and noticed both his use of segments - and the recurring refrain where he restated his points.

Great stories tonight - I am getting really excited about reading your work.

For next class:

Blog 3: Continue to develop your definition of CNF. How does the concept of believability fit into your definition? point of view? your self as a character? and what about the elements on Lott's list? Use your blog to contemplate one or more of these features in terms of what you feel CNF is or ought to be.

Read: 3 more "I" essays => Cofer, 83; Simic, 166; and Atwood, 288.

Wednesday, September 15

Tonight we started with a visualization exercise to connect to "felt" experiences associated with place. I talked you through a visit to your memories using techniques derived from work in active dreaming. In discussion of the writing you developed from this, we noticed how watching these places while you are awake calls up experiences metaphorically - in the nonverbal, visual language of dreams. This kind of exploration can open up perspectives that might not be available to you in a more conscious, directed approach to your material.

We spent the rest of class identifying and thinking about the structure and "moves" of creative nonfiction authors use to design and orchestrate the effects in their essays. You worked in groups and we created a collaborative set of observations which (appropriately) ended up the perspective of the author in the center of the board. This movement between the author's perceptions/experiences/representations and exploration of a concept prevaded both the "I" and the "eye" essays.

Among other things, we noticed:

• creation of an artistic, thematic sense of wholeness or coherence - as in conventions for fiction (as if experience were organized or meaningful) => using techniques such as foreshadowing, extended metaphors, repetitions, reflectio
• segmentation and varied strategies for placing chunks of story, exposition, and reflection next to one another
• manipulation/intentional rearrangement of time
• dialog & dramatic scene
• characterization, in terms of
  1) the persona of the author,
  2) description/development of personalities in the story, and
  3) personification of place,
  4) reflection across time,
  5) reflection through shifting perspective (representing the pov of other 'characters')
• descriptive power of place
• flashback, backstory, dramatization of past as exposition
• use of historical fact/ invocation of other texts
• casting experience in light of a stance: eg idealization, de-mystification, de-glamorization
• use of lists and other non-traditional narrative forms
• attention to contrasts between different perspectives

And of course, we ran out of time.

For next class, we are going to continue our exploration of what creative nonfiction is and what it does through reading essays about the form itself, and through writing.

Read: Kidder, 67; Lopate, 69; and Lott, 194. Each of these CNF authors presents a slightly different take on the genre.

Blog 2: Do some writing about your perception of what CNF is - and what it does. Because the course - like the book - makes a distinction between "I" and "eye" essays - devote some writing to the differences between these two versions of the genre. The purpose of this post is for you to do some reflecting on expectations for each kind of essay.

I really enjoyed class tonight and I'm looking forward to talking some more on Monday. Have a good weekend

Monday, September 13

We spent most of the evening working through practices for mining your memories for appropriate topics for creative nonfiction essays. Tonights journal prompt was to think back to your earliest memories - from before you could even remember. As you wrote and shared your notes we reflected on the nature of remembering - how it is often surrounded by a haze of uncertainty - while at the same time (paradoxically) existing as a clear, felt (but not in words) knowing or feeling - a glimpse or flash (words two of tonights readers used) - that feels real and "there" inside you.

Then there is the problem of understanding. Our memory is partial - focus on a piece of what happened that may or may not be at the center of what was "really" happening. Our sense of proportion, or attention to specific details, our knowledge base and experience for the memory is located both in the time of the experience and in the always changing present. So while the memory recedes - our understanding of it grows - even as it disappears into uncertainty?

The point of tonight's discussion was to begin both to accumulate a data-base of memories in your journal - and to position ourselves to see these ideas as emblematic - as something more than the events or feelings they report.

We also spent some time discussing the three readings. Within this short talk we moved back and forth between the details of the story - and the ideas the stories engendered.

And you set up your blogs. Hopefully there will be links to your blogs at the right of this post - soon, if they are not there already.

For Wednesday:

Read: Lowry, 48; Vowell, 130; Bellow, 76.

Blog 1: What is your definition of creative nonfiction? What are CNF essays about - and what do they do?

First Class

Tonight we preformed the usual rituals for first meetings of college classes - with a CNF twist. I handed out the syllabus and the calendar (which are also posted here on the blog), and gave you a very brief overview of the text book and what we will be doing for the course. I am hoping you will give the syl + cal a careful read over the weekend and if you have questions we can talk about them on Monday. As you read - take a look at due dates for your writing assignments, notice that you receive extensive feedback (but not grades) for drafts - and that you will be asked to participate (read some of your writing) at the National Day of Writing on October 20 at Kean Hall (across Morris Ave).

As a way to get to know each other, you first did some reflective writing about an experience with writing that changed the way you think or who you are. And then we shared. Your stories were great! Thanks to each of you - both for sharing and for being a receptive audience.

Finally - we spent some time talking about what CNF is - through naming some works that you have read that you think might be CNF - and identifying the features. As you glance through the table of contents of your textbook - you will get an even better idea.

Great class!

For Monday, September 13:

Read: Grealy, 23; Danticat, 89; and Koesterbaum, 184 in your text book.

Write: Send an email to ENG4017@gmail.com from the account that you want to use for this course.

AND bring a writing journal to class - a dedicated notebook to gather your ideas for work for the course (and beyond).

In class on Monday, you will do some journaling, you will set up your blog (you do not need to be tech savvy to do this - we will walk you through this) - and we will talk about what CNF is.