Writing partnerships

Now that you have your writing partner for this piece, please take a moment and send her/him an email. Please do this even if you know them well, as the questions I would like you to address are specific to the process. Please cc me in the email.

In this email, please tell your partner 1-2 sentences about yourself in terms of your personality or preferences, likes or dislikes (this can be general or specific to your partnership) and then answer the following questions:

1. What is important to know about you as a writer?
2. What are you nervous about in terms of letting other people see your work?
3. Ideally, what feedback are you looking to get?
4. What do you most want to improve?

5. Any additional information which would be helpful to your partnership can be added at the end.

Homework for week of 9/23

You will continue to write one page a day. But this week, you have two other assignments.

Assignment #1: The Moth Storytelling
If you haven't already, prepare a story to tell the class. It can take one of three formats:
1. Improvisational: You stand up and don't use notes, but instead perform a story from your memory.
2. Reading:You write a story and read it to the class live.
3. Podcast: You record a story in Garage Band and then play it for the class.

Assignment #2:Revision
Pick a piece of writing you have started in class and revise it to share with your writing partner. You will need to have that piece ready to show someone by Monday, September 30th.

Prompts and work for week of 9/16

Monday: Take your personality test here: http://icould.com/buzz/
After you get your animal, please send me an email, answering the following questions:

Which strengths do you share in common with your animal?  What challenges do you face because of your personality type?  What helps you reduce stress or be more successful?  What should another student working with you know about you to make the partnership work well? A related thought you may include in your e-mail to help me when I assign writing partners:  Is there anyone I should avoid pairing you with?

Homework for rest of week: Continue to write each day, at least one page. Weekly check will happen on Friday, 9/20.
Also, FOR NEXT WEEK: 2-3 minute story about a telling moment in your life. You will share this story in one of three ways:
1. Improv style: no notes, just telling us a story.
2. Written: come up to front of class with a written piece that you share.
3. Recorded (with video) and projected during class.

You can check out "The Moth" website for ideas of this genre. See Resources on the right-hand side of the blog.

We'll make a schedule on Monday.



 

Prompts and homework for the week of September 3

I am thoroughly grateful to my friend and colleague Jeff Kass who teaches creative writing at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, MI. Many of these ideas come from him and can be found in his book: Underneath.

Exercise #1: Writers are like archeologists. Our job is to keep digging. This exercise helps to begin to do this. You may not have one perfect poem, but you should have several interesting ideas you may want to explore further. The work here is to keep unpeeling the layers, keep making connections from one idea to the next. The poem will all start the same:
Underneath my shirt is my skin
Underneath my skin is my heart
Underneath my  heart is...

Exercise #2: Go outside and find something which is often overlooked. Take notes, observe small details. Make sure to focus on the sensory: see, hear, taste, touch, feel. Then write a descriptive paragraph from the point of view of that object, answering the question "Who Am I?"  Make sure your paragraph is descriptive, but does not name the object directly.

Homework:
Good writers pay attention. This, on occasion, involves eavesdropping on other conversations. I want you to go to a public place: Hannaford's, the mall, a soccer game, a street in Portland. Then, listen to snippets of conversation. Pay attention to the phrasing and language. Write down your best observations. The snippets won't be long  (3-4 lines maximum) and won't necessarily make sense as a whole story. Bring in your evidence by next Friday, 9/13.

Also, keep writing!! One page a day. I mean it. I'll check in on Friday, 9/13.

Expectations for Homework and Generating Writing

Your homework for this course is simple: you should write every day. As I noted in the syllabus, I'll eyeball that writing for volume each week. For this first week, the expectation is you will have four pages of writing, one for each day of this week. This includes the day you are not in class! After this week, we'll set personal goals which may or may not exceed this expectation. Some of this writing will be brilliant and some will be terrible. That is the norm. For now, make sure you are writing!