October 6: National Day of Writing, Emotions and Truth

National Day of Writing Plans

We spent the first part of class firming up plans for the National Day of Writing at Liberty Hall on October 20. I have reserved the Carriage House for an Open Mic reading from 4:30 - 7:30. You have signed up for readings according to the following schedule:

5:00 Robin

5:10 Nashira

5:20 Marjorie

5:30 Hamilton

5:40 Marilyn

5:50 Yasmin

6:00 Ashley

6:10 Josh

6:20 Fran

6:30 Elizabeth

6:40 Casey

6:50 Chelsea

7:00 Erin

Wednesday, October 13. At the beginning of class - I will set you up in groups and go through the protocol for practicing your reading. In general- the practice reading takes longer than the performance.

As you can see from the schedule, you will each have 10 minutes (more or less). That would probably be around 8 pages of prose - depending how fast you read. For poetry - I can't really guess. Decide whether you want to include time for providing background for your piece, or a short introduction about your self - or why you wrote this piece, etc. In general, reading slower - rather than faster - is better. Your listeners need to take in both your words and the effect - so they might need some time.

What we did in class October 6. Your journal writing was on emotions. I presented some of the background from the research in psychology and neurology that bears out connections between thinking and feeling. Feelings not only help orchestrate access to our memories, they are also influence our interpretation and representation of what our memories mean. The series of prompts we used were meant to set you up to see patterns between your emotions and the particular events you call to mind, the kinds of stories associated with particular emotions, and your "attitudes" toward your emotions. The particular stories you shared with class - as well as your observations about how your emotions connected to your lists of stories - were rich and thought provoking - and should make good material for essays.

We spent an extremely short time talking about O'Brien and truth - and made a brief comparison of his understanding of truth to Lopez. As Chelsea pointed out, O'Brien published his work as fiction (even though it has been anthologized as an essay) - so maybe what we are looking at is the difference between the way fiction and nonfiction writers regard truth? We will continue this discussion when we get to the discussion of Frey and the analysis of his work on The Smoking Gun.

For Monday, October 11:

Blog 8: Post Draft Essay 1

Come to your conference (see earlier post for revised schedule - anyone who wants to meet Monday night should send me an email to make an arrangement).

For Wednesday, October 13:

Come to class prepared to practice reading the piece(s) you will read at The National Day of Writing.