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Keep a Writer's Journal Like the Pros (10 Weeks)
Learn to emulate the strategies famous writers demonstrate in their journals as well as strategies from literature to keep a journal that is wittier and smarter than you ever thought you could be!
Writers write. That's the simplest definition of the role. And sometimes writers write in journals--when they are between projects, when they need to keep notes for a project, when they are hoping to find something to write about, when they have to rid themselves of distracting thoughts and when they just want to keep the words flowing.
If you like the idea of seeing into the strategies of other writers to find your own smartest, funniest, most sincere, most outrageous, and most I-never-thought-I-could-write-like-that writing, this class is for you. Over ten weeks, we will look at other writer's work and journals and delve into the task of seeing what happens when we take those strategies on for expressing ourselves.
Class Outline
Each week, you will receive emailed courseware that includes writing tasks for that week's journal keeping.
Students will email the outcomes of their exercise writing to the class. Class members as well as the instructor will offer response that shows appreciation for what you have created and how you might use it in future writing. In other words, this class is not about critiquing or criticizing but about response--what happens inside the reader as a consequence of reading the entry--sadness, connection, awareness, happiness, or awe for example. You are also encouraged to tell the writer of the entry where you became confused or distracted or left out--this allows the writer to become aware of opportunities to add more in their writing and to become sensitive to tone changes--the way the mind instructs us to change the subject or summarize when it is worried about vulnerability. You can review the instructor's formal description of this process, called the three-step response method at http://writingitreal.com/cgi-bin/sec_index.pl?ID=279.
Using a less formal version of this response method, journaling participants will provide and receive the kind of empowering help they need to learn more about what they created and how they might use it in future writing.
Here is a course outline, although as the class progresses, some weeks this content might be slightly different than in the outline:
CLASS OUTLINE
Week 1: What is a writer's journal? The lesson includes emailed materials and an online discussion of the tools of the craft of creative writing and how these tools help the journal keeper.
Week 2: Finding the Tourist Within: An exercise with six extensions inspired by the journal writing of novelists Robert Hellenga and Chitra Divakaruni. Students can write in response to as many of the extensions as they please over the course of week one. There will be an online discussion of what we find admirable in the journal entries and how they might lend themselves to a more developed writing endeavor.
Week 3: A Walker in the City (or Town): Inspired Alfred Kazin's words, this lesson offers another journaling exercise with six extensions. Again, students can write in response to as many of the extensions as they please over the course of the week and there will be an online discussion of the writing and the eventual use of the words in a larger project.
Week 4: Whistling: Inspired by a character in Elizabeth Evans' novel Carter Clay, this week's exercise and six extensions will revolve around music. Again, students can post any number of results and in an online discussion we will respond to the writing and share ideas of what each author might want to develop in future writing.
Week 5: Musings, Meditations, and Tidbits: Inspired by the journal excerpts of William Matthews, Denise Levertov and Ron Carlson, this week's exercise and six extensions will have class participants amazing themselves with their wisdom and wit. Our online discussion will focus on the exercise results in light of how this wit and wisdom informs us about ourselves as writers.
Week 6: Dreams, Dreams, Dreams: Information on how writers use their dreams in journaling and story telling and an exercise with six extensions to have you doing it, too (Don't worry--if you can't remember your dreams, you can still do the exercises!). Our online discussion of this week's journaling results will focus on weaving dream state moods into our writing.
Week 7: First You Have to Teach a Lesson: Based on Paula Vogel's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, How I Learned to Drive, this exercise and its six extensions will have you using what you know how to do as metaphor for life knowledge. Our online discussion will focus on the strength of using metaphor in this way and how you can use what you create in a longer piece of writing.
Week 8: Eating Alone and With Others: Inspired by the poetry of James Mitsui, Li Young Lee, and others as well as prose about food at home, overseas and in restaurants, we will try our own hands at melding food writing with writing from the heart about love and loss. Students will respond to up to seven exercises (the main one and its six extensions) and our online discussion will focus on how the journal writing suggests avenues for future writing or can itself become a poem.
Week 9: Self-Reflection: How to use the repeated words, phrases and thoughts in your journaling to find your obsessions and passions and the places you've touched on that are worthy of more exploration (where your writing will reach new heights). Our online discussion will be in response to students posting the results of exercises that have them mining their eight weeks of journal keeping.
Week 10: Now What? Journaling exercises to keep you writing like the pros for months, even years, to come!
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Keep a Writer's Journal Like the Pros, Two (10 Weeks)
A continuation of Journal Like the Pros
This class includes ten more weeks of journal writing exercises from
popular poet, author and teacher Sheila Bender. During this course,
you will continue to journal using tricks of the writer's trade every
week, daily or anything in between. If you've worked with Sheila
before, you know her exercises keep you writing. If you haven't yet,
join in now. You can always catch up with the beginning class after you
do this continuing class. Journals are like that!
With every exercise you do, you'll learn ways to emulate strategies
famous writers demonstrate in their journals as well as strategies from
literature. Your journaling will be wittier and smarter than you ever
thought you could be!
If you want more time to see into the strategies of other writers to
find your own I-never-thought-I-could-write-like-that writing, this class is for
you. You will once again delve into the task of seeing what happens
when you take writers' strategies on for the purpose of expressing
what's at the bottom of your heart and mind.
Each week, you will receive emailed courseware that includes writing
tasks for that week's journal keeping. Students will email the outcomes
of their exercise writing to the class. Class members as well as the
instructor will offer response that shows appreciation for what you
have created and how you might use it in future writing. In other
words, this class is not about critiquing or criticizing but about
response--what happens inside the reader as a consequence of reading
the entry--sadness, connection, awareness, happiness, or awe for
example. You are also encouraged to tell the writer of the entry where
you became confused or distracted or left out--this allows the writer
to become aware of opportunities to add more in their writing and to
become sensitive to tone changes--the way the mind instructs us to
change the subject or summarize when it is worried about vulnerability.
You can review the instructor's formal description of this process,
called the three-step response method at http://writingitreal.com/cgi-
bin/sec_index.pl?ID=279.
Using a less formal version of this response method, journaling
participants will provide and receive the kind of empowering help they
need to learn more about what they created and how they might use it in
future writing.
Here is a course outline, although as the class progresses, some weeks
this content might be slightly different than in the outline:
Class Outline
Each week, you will receive emailed courseware that includes writing ideas for every day of the week. You can choose among them or do them all, emailing the results to the class as frequently as you write them. Class members as well as the instructor will offer response that addresses the feelings the writing provokes as well as the associations the reader makes. Response might also address what kind of writing the sample might become
in a finished form. The best help in appreciating what you have created and how you might use it in future writing comes from response, not criticism, and using the instructor's three-step response method, students will learn to give the kind of empowering help they need to learn more about what they created and how they might use it in future writing.
Week 1: Introduce yourselves to the group and learn the 3-step response method. Write about day trips (even if you don't go far from home) based on the journals of novelists Kathleen Alcala and Al Young.
Week 2: Write meditations based on the journal of novelist Lisa Shea.
Week 3: Write about projects inspired by the journal entries of poet Maxine Kumin and non-fiction writer David Mas Masumoto.
Week 4: Write letters to your loves inspired by Pam Houston's journal entries
Week 5: Fish around for stories using the example of novelist Robert Hellenga in his journal.
Week 6: Learn from the list poems of poets William Stafford and Gary Snyder and make journal entries from inspired lists
Week 7: Journal in response to literature--find some favorite literary voices (or use the ones Sheila sends this week) and adopt them in your journal.
Week 8: Writing dialog like playwrights Israel Horovitz and Beth Henley to explore a memory.
Week 9: Time for reflecting on the eight weeks of journal keeping: More ways to use the repeated words, phrases and thoughts in your journaling to find your obsessions and passions and the places you've touched on that are worthy of more exploration (where your writing will reach new heights).
Week 10: Now What? Even more journaling exercises to keep you writing like the pros for months, even years, to come! .
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Keep a Writer's Journal Like the Pros, Three (8 Weeks)
A continuation of Journal Like the Pros
This class includes eight weeks of journal writing exercises from
popular poet, author and teacher Sheila Bender. During this course,
you will continue to journal using tricks of the writer's trade every
week, daily or any amounts in between. You've worked with Sheila
before, so you know her exercises keep you writing and lead to stories,
articles, essays and poems.
With every exercise you do, you'll be emulating strategies famous
writers have used in their journals as well as strategies from
literature. As always, you're journaling will be wittier and smarter
than you ever thought you could be!
Writers write. That's the simplest definition of this role. And
sometimes writers write in journals--when they are between projects,
when they need to keep notes for a project, when they are hoping to
find something to write about, when they have to rid themselves of
distracting thoughts and when they just want to.
If you want to continue looking into the strategies of other writers to
find your own smartest, funniest, most sincere, most outrageous, and
most I-never-thought-I-could-write-like-that writing, this class is for
you. You will for a third time delve into the task of seeing what
happens when you take writers' strategies on for the purpose of
expressing what's at the bottom of your heart and mind.
Class Outline
Each week, lessons will be posted on Nicenet. The lessons describe a
writer's strategy, show an example and include writing ideas for the
week. You can post your exercise results to the class whenever they
are ready. Class members as well as the instructor will offer response
that addresses the feelings the writing provokes as well as the
associations the reader makes. Response might also address what kind
of writing the sample might become in a finished form. The best help
in appreciating what you have created and how you might use it in
future writing comes from response, not criticism, and using the
instructor's three-step response method, students will learn to give
and receive the kind of empowering help for creating writing and seeing
how it might be uses in future work.
Week 1: Introduce yourselves to the group. Warm up to writing journal entries by thinking like memoirist Patricia Hampl.
Week 2: Write entries about heroes, sung and unsung, as Craig Lesley does.
Week 3: Conversations (dialog) about difficult subjects or with difficult people. Modeled after work by Philip Lopate.
Week 4: More letter writing entries and how they help us write. Modeled after work by novelist Janice Eidus.
Week 5: How writing about weather helps us write strong pieces. Modeled after work by novelist Reginald Gibbons.
Week 6: Writing little stories about our families. Based on work by Kathleen Tyau.
Week 7: Mixing it all up. Exercises that use bits and pieces from the previous weeks and/or time to revise something into a longer piece.
Week 8: Time for reflecting on the eight weeks of journal keeping: More ways to use the repeated words, phrases and thoughts in your journaling to find your obsessions and passions and the places you've
touched on that are worthy of more exploration (where your writing will reach new heights).
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Write the Persuasive Essay (10 Weeks)
Say you want to write something persuasive about a controversial topic: can you? Will your argument hold up?
Or you want to write about an experience that wounded you, changed you, made you who you are.
Or you want to explore a topic in depth, not simply to inform others, but to inform yourself, to generate insights and understanding for both you and your reader.
In this class, learn to write the serious essay. Don't confuse this with the dry and unhappy writing assignments you suffered in school. We'll be studying eight strategies to discipline your thinking and your Writing, whether your subject is academic or personal, whether you want to write political discourse or a well-researched rant. You can attack an industry or defend one, suggest a new direction to your neighbor or your country, explain the effects of an illness and persuade others to behave differently toward a victim or encourage others to take particular action, be that to make specific changes in their thinking or study a different point of view. Whatever your interest, learn to write about it deeply and persuasively. It's more fun than you think and this creative process will either cement your position or change it entirely. It's always fun to write when there is discovery in it for you as well as your readers.
Class Outline
You will receive emailed courseware, including links to essays on line that will serve as samples as well as other samples included in the email. As a class, we will discuss eight patterns of thinking used by the writers to evoke and mine their experience.
After the introductory week, lessons will include writing tasks toward the development of two polished essay.
On specified weeks, students will email their own development materials and drafts to the class. Class members as well as the instructor will offer response based on questions provided by the instructor. The best help in revising is response, not criticism, and using the instructor's three-step response method, students will receive the kind of empowering help they need to continue drafting and developing their essays.
Week 1: What allows an author to engage in an essay? What helps the reader engage in the essay? How do the eight patterns of thinking work? Answers from a discussion of several sample essays
Week 2: Exercises for finding a way in that is going to work
Week 3: Ideas on how to use your exercise results to write an essay.
Week 4: The essay--first draft. Peer workshop and instructor response
Week 5: Rewrite of the draft using the response of the group.
Week 6: Peer workshop and instructor response to the developed draft.
Week 7: Starting a second essay--more exercises that help.
Week 8: A second essay on your topic and group and instructor response.
Week 9: A second draft of the second essay and response from the group.
Week 10: Ideas for publishing serious essays on difficult topics.
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Genre Flipping: Becoming Ambidextrous with Poetry and Prose
If you want to write poetry and don't feel that you are a poet,learn how to start with prose and identify and extract lyric elements to shape poetry. If you are a poet and don't think prose is your style, learn to find the narrative qualities in your poetry and lengthen your work. If you have longed to write poetry or to turn poems into longer pieces, or to put more feeling and emotion into your sentences, use this class to accomplish your goals. You can start from scratch with exercises supplied by the instructor or you can work on turning journal entries into finished, focused, moving work. You can also take older work and revisit it to find the poems and stories and essays you may have lying inside them.
Sometimes, for poets, work disappoints, arriving in paragraphs that don't look like they can be made into poems. Sometimes the poem arrives without enough narrative to ground it in the world and make it understandable to the reader. And sometimes, for prose writers, work arrives in "clunky" paragraphs that lack the imagery and emotion that moves readers. In this class, you will learn how to look at what you have written and decide if there is a poem in the prose or if a story or essay might come from the poem you created. In addition to studying lyric and narrative values and how they operate in both poems and prose, you will also explore forms on the borders of the genres: "prose-poems" sometimes called "flash nonfiction" and the "lyric essay." You will receive emailed examples and links to writing online for samples that will serve as a basis for discussion about technique. You will also be assigned writing tasks for creating and developing the poetry or prose you want.
By the third week, students will be looking into their own and their classmates' work with an eye and ear toward changing the genre from the original presentation on the page and developing it into moving prose or poetry. Students will email the outcomes of their exercise writing to the class. Class members as well as the instructor will offer response. The best help in appreciating what you have created and how you might use it in future writing comes from response, not criticism. Students will receive the kind of empowering help they need to learn more about what they created and how they might use it in future writing.
Class Outline
Week 1: Poems Versus Prose: How are they the same and how are they different? How do we know? Class material will contain examples of poems and prose that seem to move the reader similarly, and via email, the class will discuss the writing and its attributes.
Week 2: Students will read articles documenting two people's experience turning one genre into another. Using a prompt, students will write a piece to submit to the group (or they may use a previous journal entry or piece of writing),identifying whether they want it to ultimately become a poem or a piece of prose.
Week 3: Classmates and the instructor will offer response to the writing and the instructor will provide prompts that will help students yield the poem or prose piece they desire.
Week 4: Students will submit a revision of this initial work and the class will notice what happened as the words expanded or contracted into poetry or prose.
Week 5: Students will start a piece intentionally written as "flash nonfiction" or a "prose poem" after reading posted examples and may post work-in-progress for response.
Week 6: Students will start a "lyric essay" or "poem in parts" using the instructor's Three-Days and Three-Nights exercise and discussing other student results.
Week 7: Students will choose one of their pieces from the past two weeks and post it for response. Students and the instructor will offer detailed response to the work.
Week 8: Class discussion will revolve around a further revision of the piece responded to in week 7.
Week 9: The instructor will offer more exercises for beefing up the poetry in your work and for maintaining clarity with narration, to keep you writng for months to come, in poetry or in prose.
Week 10: Students will post one exercise result for class response so they leave class working on revision.
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Revision, Revision, Revision
"Give us your tired, your poor" rings in my ears when I approach revising pieces I have held onto but don't know what to do with--I say these lines from Emma Lazurus's poem "The New Colossus," and think of the Stature of Liberty, where they appear. Why not enroll in a class where you can work on revising older pieces of your work over ten weeks and learn how to use peer response that is truly helpful as well as learn what to look for when you are revising? Whether you have journal entries yearning to be freed as stories, poems and essays or you have promising starts for poems, fiction, and nonfiction, use this class to get professional and peer response and successfully rewrite what you have on hand, producing new versions of up to ten pieces. If you want to concentrate on revision but don't have accumulated work, I'll supply prompts to get you started on writing that you can work out further using the revision techniques shared in this class.
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