EGL 51: Creative Expression in Writing: A Multi-Genre Course Spring 2014 Wednesday, 6:30-9:20 Kirstin Valdez Quade Course Description: Creative Expression in Writing is a writing class that explores daily creative practice. This quarter, you ll be challenged to push your creative limits and to take risks in your work. Together we ll explore how we can become more alert to the world and how, through language, we can respond in fresh ways to the events of our lives. In this class, you will be a member of a community of writers prepared to challenge and support each other as we navigate the process of creation. This class is, above all, about process. Through close readings, writing exercises, imitations, word games, Acting Improv, writing workshops, and discussion, we ll practice thinking flexibly and seeing inspiration all around us. You ll imagine other realities, engage in a conversation with the long tradition of art, practice recognizing opportunity in failure, and experiment with form. By the end of quarter, you will have created a portfolio of creative work and completed an examination of your own artistic practices. Required Materials Reader, available from Copy America, 344 S. California Ave, Palo Alto. (Readers will be delivered the second day of class ($40); please bring cash or check made out to Copy America.) At times you will be required to provide copies of your work to your peers, so please budget for this expense. You should also have a notebook for notes and in-class writing exercises. Requirements Participation (45%): Participation means coming to class and lab prepared and on time, texts read, marked, and in hand; contributing thoughtfully to discussions; reading and responding insightfully to published or peer work; participating fully in group improv and activities. You must have your reader and journal with you in class every day. This class depends on the full participation and engagement of its members. Please keep your tone professional, constructive, and respectful; it is possible to be both generous and rigorous. Written Exercises (45%): Over the course of the quarter, you will complete many written exercises, both in class and out. These exercises will include imitations, flash fiction, poetry and prose poems, observations, and illustrations. I expect you to challenge yourself. Unless specified in the homework assignment, your pieces can be in any genre you choose: fiction, nonfiction, poetry. I will collect and read the homework assignments each class; however, since this course privileges process over product, you will choose which of the pieces you will get feedback on. You will keep a daily creativity journal. At the end of the quarter you will
compile and turn in a portfolio of your work, which will include revisions of some of these exercises and a creative manifesto. More on this later! Collaborative Project (10%): End-of-term collaborative project, to be presented to the class. Details to follow. Content of Creative Pieces Because this class is based on collective trust, you should not include references to any instructors or students in your work. If you feel you must, you should discuss this with me before you submit the piece. Furthermore, I ask that the content of other students work not be discussed outside of class. Email Policy I do not accept any work submitted through email, though I encourage you to ask questions and/or voice concerns via email. I ll usually respond within two days. Academic Honesty All work submitted for this class must be your own and written for this class. Obviously. Please familiarize yourself with Stanford s Honor Code: http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/judicialaffairs/policy/honor-code Late Assignments The highest grade any late assignments will receive is a C even if you ve just forgotten to print out an exercise for class. Work later than a week will receive a zero. Please don t email me late work put it in the box outside my office. Late work will not receive written feedback. Laptops, Cell Phones, Food Laptops may be used only during in-class writing exercises, with WIFI off. Feel free to bring them to class, but don t leave them on the table or open during general discussion. Because ringing and buzzing and One Direction are disruptive, all cell phones should be switched off prior to entering the classroom. If for some reason you must be reachable, please talk to me before class. Snacks are permitted (encouraged if there s enough for everyone!) as long as they are eaten quietly and neatly and all garbage is disposed of, and as long as you can still participate fully in the discussion. Students with Documented Disabilities Students who may need an academic accommodation based on the impact of a disability must initiate the request with the Office of Accessible Education (OAE). Professional staff will evaluate the request with required documentation, recommend reasonable accommodations, and prepare an Accommodation Letter for faculty dated in the current quarter in which the request is being made. Students should contact the OAE as soon as possible since timely notice is needed to coordinate accommodations. The OAE is located at 563 Salvatierra Walk (phone: 723-1066, URL: http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/oae).
The Bottom Line Your grade in this class will be determined by the effort and engagement you bring to your work, your development over the quarter, and the contributions you make to our workshop community. This class will demand a lot from you: openness, generosity, commitment, and, not least, time. If you decide to be in this class, please make sure you are able to commit to your classmates. I will do all I can to make this a supportive creative community for you and to help you feel truly excited about your work and development. CLASS CALENDAR Please note: this is subject to change, depending on the needs of the class! Week 1: CREATIVITY AND CREATIVE PRACTICE What is creativity? What does it mean to develop and maintain a personal creative practice? How do we go about doing it? Sandra Cisneros, My Name Michael Martone, Contributor s Note Shelley Carson, Brainsets and the Creative Process Week 2: BECOMING A PERSON ON WHOM NOTHING IS LOST How is creativity a response to the world as it is? How can we become observers of both the internal world and the external world? How can specific, concrete, and revealing details create an experience of loss, of longing, of pleasure for the reader? Joanne Beard, Behind the Screen A Selection of Haikus Robert Hass, A Story About the Body Some descriptions of faces Scott McCloud, excerpts from Making Comics Elizabeth Tallent, No One s a Mystery Week 3: THE LAND OF THE FIGURATIVE How does writing transcend the actual? What s the difference between what is real and what is true? How do we enter into the metaphorical world? Aloysius Bertrand Five Fingers of the Hand Sandra Cisneros, Hair Jack Gilbert, Michiko Dead
Michael Martone, The Mayor of the Sister City Speaks to the Chamber of Commerce in Klamath Falls, Oregon, on a Night in December, 1996 Sharon Olds, Feared Drowned Jean Toomer, Portrait in Georgia Week 4: ACCIDENTS, FAILURE & PLAYING WITH FORM What are we afraid of in our creative practices? How can trial and error, accidents, and failure (both artistic and personal) be productive? How can we learn to fail better? How does playing with various forms strengthen our creative process? Failure: Lynda Barry, Two Questions Padgett Powell, A Gentleman s C David Sedaris, 175 Things a Man Should Do before He Dies: Read Moby Dick (handout) Playing with Forms: Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings Lucas Cooper, Class Notes Lydia Davis, Letter to a Funeral Parlor, Jury Duty James Richardson, Vectors: 36 Aphorism George Saunders, I Can Speak! Anne Carson, Short Talks Week 5: WORD GAMES How might play influence our creative work? How might rules offer us useful constraints? Abecedarian: Dinty Moore, Son of Mr. Green Jeans Anagrams: Terrance Hayes: Nuclear, Overseas, Masculine Kevin McFadden, I.e. Palindrome: James Lindon, Doppelganger Randell Mann, Order Sestinas: Elizabeth Bishop, Sestina Mark Strand, Chekhov: A Sestina Anton Chekhov, excerpt from The Notebooks of Anton Chekhov (Koteliansky/Woolf, trans.)
Sestina spiral diagram, courtesy of wikipedia.org Rebus Puzzles Triolets: G.K. Chesterton, Triolet Frances Cornford To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train Sandra McPherson, Triolet A.E. Stallings, Triolet on a Line Apocryphally Attributed to Martin Luther Wendy Cope, Valentine Dana Gioia, The Country Wife Peter Kline, Triolet for Late July Week 6: REVISION Why revise? How do we re-see our pieces to make productive changes? How can we develop a vocabulary to talk productively about our own drafts and the drafts of others? How can we complicate and develop our pieces and push deeper into the mystery? Katie Williams Bone Hinge drafts Elizabeth Bishop, One Art drafts (handout) Eliot/Pound The Wasteland drafts (handout) Week 7: WITNESS & CHANGE How does art comment on the larger world? Can art change the world? How does a reader s/viewer s experience of the work change the writer/artist? Anwar F. Accawi, The Camel (handout) Brian Doyle, Leap Brian Doyle, Dawn and Mary (handout) Carolyn Forche, The Colonel W.S. Merwin, The Dachau Shoe Jesse Lee Kercheval, Carapathia Week 8: ART & CONVERSATION How do written and visual arts intersect? How does multi- and cross-genre work change our relationship to our creative process? W.H. Auden, Musee des Beaux Arts Lynda Barry, excerpts from 100!Hundred! Demons!: Introduction, Head Lice & My Worst Boyfriend, Common Scents Richard Blanco, Mango, #61
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Don t Let that Horse Kay Ryan, Every Painting by Chagall Rainer Maria Rilke, Archaic Torso of Apollo William Carlos Williams, This is Just to Say Kenneth Koch, Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams Lawrence Sutin, excerpts from A Postcard Memoir Week 9: PAST, FUTURE, & THE ELASTIC MOMENT: EXPERIMENTS IN TIME What do time, timeliness, and timelessness have to do with art? How does art serve to stop/suspend time? How do we effectively use/ play with/understand/subvert time in our writing, and how can we make the reader experience a moment that no longer exists? How can our memories and hopes/fears for the future fuel our work? Joanna Avallon, All This Amy Bender, The Rememberer John Cheever, Reunion Peggy McNally, Waiting Greg Orr, A Litany John Struloeff, The Man I Was Supposed to Be Tobias Wolff, Bullet in the Brain Week 10: CELEBRATING & CONTINUING THE CREATIVE JOURNEY Presentation of collaborative experiences. Final Portfolios due