Syllabus for Multi-Genre Intro to Creative Writing Course

Goals of this class:

In this class you will grow to see yourself as a writer with her\his own authority and autonomy. You will become comfortable engaging with your work as well as the work of your classmates in a constructively critical manner with respect for individual process and approach. You will be trying your hand at all three genres: poetry, fiction and nonfiction.

Class Format and Expectations:

This is a discussion-based class with occasional lectures. You can expect to participate in group exercises, reading of your work in class, in-class writing and brainstorming as well as other creative approaches to learning about and sharing writing. The expectation is that you as students will be active seekers of new approaches and techniques in respect to your own writing, critiquing and learning processes.

End of the Semester Project:

The target writing project for the end of the semester is fifteen polished pages of creative work. The expectation is that they will have gone through at least one round of revision. The fifteen pages can be made of any mixture of the genres that you chose, or can focus on one that you find most appealing. These can be works created in class or generated outside of it, but must be generated during the course of this current semester as to be concurrent with your success and growth in this time period.

Class Overview:

In the beginning part of the semester, “mock” workshops will take place, along with analysis of texts and use of formal devices. The latter part of the semester will consist of both reading texts for inspiration and work shopping student pieces. I have attached guidelines and etiquette for critiquing.

Role of Reading:

The works that will presented in this class will range in terms of being members of a “literary cannon” or not, in terms of which cannon they can be placed in and in respect to form and time period, running the gambit from experimental to traditional, classic to contemporary. The focus of the selected readings is on modeling characteristics of narrative and poetry, which will serve as thought provokers.