ENGW 209 Instructor: Brent Johnson
Spring 2013 Office: Duniway House, 2nd FL
Spring 2013 Office: Duniway House, 2nd FL
Room Warner 22 Office
Hours:
Phone: 503-352-3035
Introduction to Creative Nonfiction Writing
This course is
intended for students interested in creatively writing about real people,
places, and actual events, both in their own personal experiences as well as
those beyond themselves. Creative Nonfiction finds its place along the
continuum of various genres, swinging left to borrow fictional elements of
craft and storytelling while, at the same time, swinging right to remain loyal
to the facts of reality so important to good journalism. Through readings,
discussion and practice, students will work to define the parameters of this
genre in order to produce their own original pieces.
Two primary goals of
the course are to help students see their memories, experiences, and movement
through the world as material for meaningful stories and to practice the skills
of creative writing to best tell those stories. This course is grounded in the
assumption that good writing is borne out of revision; therefore, significant
revision is expected of any piece students may ask others to critically engage. Because of this, a majority of the student’s
grade will be determined by a final portfolio, of at least fifteen pages, which
is expected to have been revised and polished substantially based on personal,
peer, and instructor comments.
Since this class meets
on Mondays and Wednesdays, readings will inform the first half of each week,
providing discussion on how the pros handle various techniques of craft; Wednesdays,
then, will give students the chance to put to practice those techniques through
weekly blogs responding to a variety of prompts. Class sessions run primarily on discussion of
readings and personal writings as well as in-class writing activities.
Required Books:
Pollack, Eileen: Creative
Nonfiction
Grading Process:
First Drafts: 30% Ten Weekly Blogs:
20%
Final Portfolio: 35% Participation/Attendance:
15%
Course Requirements:
Essays: All
essays should be double-spaced, printed double-sided, titled, and written in
MLA style. In the upper left hand corner
of the first page, your name, Prof. Johnson, Intro. to CNF, and the date should
be single-spaced. All first drafts are
worth 10% each.
Essay 1—Memoir: Write a narrative that explores an event in
your life, and through storytelling techniques such as precise details,
characterization, setting, scene development and action, reveal how this
experience changed you and/or your worldview in some way. Successful memoirs interpret, analyze, and
seek meanings beneath the surface of your experience. The story’s meaning, i.e. your theme, should
imply a reflection not on what happened, but on what it means that it did
happen.
Essay
2—Personal Essay: Whereas in memoir, theme and
meaning is largely derived from an examination of the self, the personal essay
uses the self to speak to a larger social context or idea. Or, put another way, the memoir meditates on
the self while the personal essay may use the self to help meditate on an idea
or thing. For this essay, you will
choose a concrete object—hats, abandoned shopping carts, a bird of paradise,
etc.—and using personal experience as well as outside research, write an essay
that explores your object with an intent to discover its larger meaning or
relevancy to our lives.
Essay 3—Literary Profile: Using journalistic techniques of interviewing
and observation, write an essay that creatively captures a person, place, or
event of your choosing. Your role, the
“I,” will be minimized as you utilize interviews, observations, and outside
research to capture the story of an external subject, such as a particular
person or place. While all of this may
sound a bit like the aims of traditional journalism (it comes the closest out
of all three subgenres) it differs from journalism in that the writer is
allowed to bear her personal opinion on the piece as well as employ creative
techniques of structure, characterization, detail, setting, and dialogue to
convey a story and not simply report facts.
Final
Portfolio: The final portfolio
consists of at least fifteen pages of original work that may include one or all
essays, depending on which pieces you feel best represent your work. Revision and polish is crucial to the success
of your portfolio as it will be evaluated holistically, taking into account the
drafting process. Thus, the portfolio
must include both the original draft and peer comments that accompany the final
draft(s) being turned in.
Peer
Reviews: Each of you will be
assigned to a workshop group whom you will work with all semester. In addition, during workshop weeks, you will
comment on drafts being reviewed that week.
While writing on the drafts is certainly encouraged, more formally, you
must turn in a one page, single-spaced, commentary for each draft you
read. Your critiques should strive to
empower the writer to make the best choices for his or her essay. Constructive feedback guidelines will be
provided early in the semester. The
consistency and quality of your peer responses will count significantly towards
your participation grade.
Weekly Blogs: Every Thursday (excepting workshop weeks) we
will train our writing muscles by posting blogs based off of provided
prompts. Not only does this encourage
good writing habits of consistency and pattern, it provides us a friendly space
to put into practice the techniques we’re discussing in class as well. You must post your blog to the main webpage no later than one hour prior to class but
are encouraged to do so sooner. I will evaluate your blogs on process, not
product; in other words, consistency and sincere effort, not a polished product,
is our intention.
Creating your blog: I will host a blog
(http://boxercnf.blogspot.com) that will
provide links to your individual blog pages (use the blog address to check
weekly blog assignments and to see all of your peers’ posts). Everyone will create their own blog using the
free services of www.blogger.com
or use an existing blog, if you wish.
Simply hit the “Create a Blog” button, follow the instructions for
“Creating a Google Account,” make your display name your first name or a chosen
alias and email me (bjohn@pacificu.edu) your entire URL (should look similar to
one above) so that I may create a link on the main blog page. We will discuss as a class how public we want
our blog pages to be.
Participation/Attendance: Group discussion drives the learning in this
course. During class, I hope to hear
your thoughts on how a reading affected you, on how you learned from its
technique and strategies, how it sparked an idea for you in your own work. Likewise, I expect each of you to comment on
one another’s works in a constructive way, especially during workshop
weeks. Because writing does not exist in
a vacuum, sharing of suggestions and comments on one another’s writing is an
integral step in the writing process. In
terms of attendance, missing more than two weeks, regardless of the
circumstances, will result in an automatic withdrawal from the course.
In addition to your peer review
one-page commentaries counting towards your participation grade, I expect for
you to comment on a peer’s blog entry each week. I’ll show you where and how to do this.
Extra-credit: You can earn
up to three extra-credit points by
attending any of the campus readings sponsored by Pacific’s Writer’s Series and
writing a page response that articulates what you learned and experienced from
hearing another’s words and how it, possibly, caused you to reflect on your own
work thus far; please email me your response within one week of the event; a hard copy is not necessary.
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