Week 1 Prompts: Know thyself....
Prompts 1-4, Week One. (Revised Instructions)
React to three (3) of these on your own blog, not here.
React to the weekly theme material however you like; shoot from the hip.
But deal with the three weekly prompts very differently--they're a big part of the course; they're where you strut your stuff, show your goods, and blow us all away with your prose, insights, wit, wisdom, madness, clarity, logic, poetic feeling, or whatever else it is you bring to creative non-fiction.
Don't take the prompts too literally: they aren't test questions or punchlines; they are springboards for your writing. Each week's prompts are an attempt to figure out a way to help you get into the week's theme, which this week is you. It's pretty hard to do anything with the prompts below without using yourself as a source and tool.
Take a step back from your daily hassles and concerns. That's why I start you alone in a room, however unlikely that is in your real life. So that you will stop, think about you inside and the world outside, and then imagine a response that involves and does justice to both.
What do the prompts remind you of? What feelings do they bring up? Are they like something else? Is there a story you remember, an incident? Or what--? But again and again, and all semester again, --these are not test questions and I'm not looking for answers.
Prompts 1-4. Choose three.
1. Alone in a quiet room. Listen. What do you hear?
2. Alone in a quiet room. What do you see?
3. Alone in a quiet room. How did you get here?
4. Alone in a quiet room. But what's really happening?
And, dirty little secret:
Some of you had Eng 101 with me and if you did, you have seen all these prompts already.
In ENG 101, the dirty little secret is that, although I read and commented on each prompt, I only assigned them as warm-ups, as exercises, as a way of forcing you to write something regularly. In themselves they were not the meat of the course but more the parsley on the steak kind of thing.
But in ENG 162, they are different. First of all, the prompts are meant to match up to the week's themes. They need a little thought. Second, they (and the weekly theme) are the real meat of the course. They're your shot at writing creative non-fiction. I have expectations and hopes for them and hope that you do too. I will certainly comment on each one, and I may kick them back for more work.
So, if you had ENG 101, you will have to overcome the old mindset from that course and get into this new course and its demands.
React to three (3) of these on your own blog, not here.
React to the weekly theme material however you like; shoot from the hip.
But deal with the three weekly prompts very differently--they're a big part of the course; they're where you strut your stuff, show your goods, and blow us all away with your prose, insights, wit, wisdom, madness, clarity, logic, poetic feeling, or whatever else it is you bring to creative non-fiction.
Don't take the prompts too literally: they aren't test questions or punchlines; they are springboards for your writing. Each week's prompts are an attempt to figure out a way to help you get into the week's theme, which this week is you. It's pretty hard to do anything with the prompts below without using yourself as a source and tool.
Take a step back from your daily hassles and concerns. That's why I start you alone in a room, however unlikely that is in your real life. So that you will stop, think about you inside and the world outside, and then imagine a response that involves and does justice to both.
What do the prompts remind you of? What feelings do they bring up? Are they like something else? Is there a story you remember, an incident? Or what--? But again and again, and all semester again, --these are not test questions and I'm not looking for answers.
Prompts 1-4. Choose three.
1. Alone in a quiet room. Listen. What do you hear?
2. Alone in a quiet room. What do you see?
3. Alone in a quiet room. How did you get here?
4. Alone in a quiet room. But what's really happening?
And, dirty little secret:
Some of you had Eng 101 with me and if you did, you have seen all these prompts already.
In ENG 101, the dirty little secret is that, although I read and commented on each prompt, I only assigned them as warm-ups, as exercises, as a way of forcing you to write something regularly. In themselves they were not the meat of the course but more the parsley on the steak kind of thing.
But in ENG 162, they are different. First of all, the prompts are meant to match up to the week's themes. They need a little thought. Second, they (and the weekly theme) are the real meat of the course. They're your shot at writing creative non-fiction. I have expectations and hopes for them and hope that you do too. I will certainly comment on each one, and I may kick them back for more work.
So, if you had ENG 101, you will have to overcome the old mindset from that course and get into this new course and its demands.
posted by johngoldfine | 8/27/2011 05:48:00 PM
3 Comments:
When I was little, I was sometimes given little journals in which there was enough space to write the outline of the day's events. Since I had them, I tried using them, but it always fizzled out in the end. After a while, I would forget or just not bother to write and, by the time I got back to it, I would have forgotten what happened on each day and just wrote "had fun" for as many days as I had forgotten. This was so common a comment I abbreviated it to "hd fun" (bound to happen because most of my comments were abbreviated anyway). I always gave up in the end until next time I got one. When I was ten, I got one long enough to write the whole day down in and since I had the journal, I once again tried keeping one. It took days to just get three quarters of the day down, so I ended it with "Since I write slow and for other reasons"… (that was as far as I got.)
Well, I certainly have more patience and a little more speed when it comes to writing now. It’s only for a week. Surely I will not have resort to “hd fun” in such a short time frame.
I think this was supposed to go with the journal part
Sorry, felicia--my screw-up. The prompt reactions go on your own blog, not here. Faulty directions, my bad--if you will move this to your blog when you have it, I will comment there and then.
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