Creative Writing per4&5: Preview of the rest of the sem

This week: focus on craft  and techniques to iapply to your writing, last official free-for-all weekly write, getting deeper into your writing (what are your themes? who are your characters? what setting do you know best?), and how to revise

Preview:

Between Thanksgiving and Winter Break

You will work almost exclusively on your “final submission,” which will account for between 15-25% of your grade. This final submission will be 10 pages of your original work that will have been revised no less than 3 times. It may be poetry, nonfiction, or fiction. It may be one complete piece (a short story, personal essay, or memoir), a collection of several pieces (poems, vignettes, flash fiction, shorter short stories), or –for the ambitious among you- a part of a longer work (a memoir or novel you’re working on).

You will have all earlier work returned to you after the Thanksgiving weekend. You should keep this work in your folders, unless you are working on something at home that day. In class, you will be given time to revise past work. OSmetime sthis will be in craft exercises you apply to your work, revision techniques, or just open work time. You need not produce any "new" work during this period (no free for all weekly writes of new material) though the past work may be dramatically changed or added to as you revise.I will meet with each person individually to talk to you about what you will be submitting.

We will also begin writing workshops which I will discuss in more detail after Thanksgiving, but they are essentially small groups of your peers who will read and respond to your work, following specific guidelines I will provide. The goal of the writing workshop is to learn from each other and get exposed to the writing of others and to help each other improve your writing.

During this time, you will also look at a lot of examples of writing, some by published writers, some by other students, and some even from me and some of my writing colleagues. To see what to do and not to do and to get an idea how "real" writers write.

Between Winter Break and the end of the semester:

We will focus on grammar, vocabulary, and craft terms and techniques which you will be tested on in your Final for this class. The grammar section will include grammar direct instruction as well as working on your use of grammar in your actual work.

The total breakdown of your grade for this class will be roughly as follows:

HW/CW/ Writing Practice: 40%

Participation: 20% (15%-25%)

Final (Test): 20% (15%-25%)

Final Submission: 20% (15-25%)

The percentage of each section may be adjusted to allow for the strengths of each writer. In other words, if you did well on your final submission, but haven’t participated much, your test might be 25% and your participation might only count for 15%. Otherwise it will be 20% for those categories.

Also final note, after Thanksgiving I WILL NOT accept any more make-ups for weekly and weekend writes (including those who have spoken to me about raising their grades). Your grade in that area will be fixed by that point. I will TRY to get those final grade for you by this Friday, including this week's 5pg weekly write.