Document Type

Syllabus

Publication Date

Spring 2024

Course Description

OVERVIEW & OUTCOMES: Creative writing liberates your imagination to invent new worlds, and to say the unsayable. This Intro to Creative writing class is a gateway course to a suite of classes that allows you to become an English Writing major or minor. This semester you will write poetry and prose. The three genres sometimes overlap. A poem can have dialogue or use prose. Sometimes the line between fiction and nonfiction can seem porous. Readers of fiction often wonder, “How much of this is based on the writer’s life?” Conversely readers of nonfiction wonder, “How much of this is embellished?” All prose utilizes scene, dialogue, description, and narration. Poetry can do all that and more. Good writing is good writing.

My approach to teaching literature is two-pronged. It’s primarily a practice-based model, by which I mean you learn by reading deeply and writing often. You can read about riding a bicycle, but until you are sitting on a bike, you are in the world of theory. However, writing without immersive reading becomes hollow. Social media culture trains us to skim quickly and not marinate in text. In this class I encourage you to print out the PDFs made available to you on Moodle. Circle words. Diagram. Make notes in the margins. You are what you read. When you don’t read, it shows up in your writing. You get good at what you practice. Shut your phone off and commune with the texts.

Student Outcomes

Here’s what I hope you take away:

  • Developing a vocabulary for reading closely and offering insightful critique.
  • Learning to live and work in creative community.
  • Deepening appreciation for all three genres.
  • Experiencing what it’s like to generate and get engaging in texts in a transcendent way.
  • Creating at least one piece of writing that will be treasured for years to come

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