Speculative Nonfiction: Writing Beyond the Known

Welcome to Speculative Nonfiction: Writing Beyond the Known! In this course, we will explore the elastic quality of the nonfiction essay form, as we discover how metaphor, speculation, and imaginative play can enliven your writing. As you find new doorways into your work, you will explore your values, fascinations, and imaginings, appreciating the power of human intuition to uncover deeper truths.

How to Approach this Course

The overall goal for this course is to help foster excitement about your writing and to help you loosen up as you try out some new approaches. Exercises sometimes ask you to time yourself as you respond to the prompt. This is designed to help jumpstart your writing by seeing what connection your mind makes when you have that parameter. So, have fun with it and see what emerges!

Make the course your own. Try out the writing exercises in your notebook. (I encourage handwriting rough drafts, for the bodily connection to the page that it provides, but if you compose on a computer that’s ok, too.) The more material you amass doing the writing exercises, the more you will have to work with when you go to produce more polished pieces.

On Creation and Revision

In this course, you will produce a lot of material for subsequent editing. Creative production works in a cycle of play (learning to be expansive) and revision (learning restraint). In this course, you will spend much of your time working in the expansive mode—being playful and open to see what comes of that. You will then work with the material to craft it into more polished pieces.

Enjoy!

—Joanna