Welcome to the Creative Writing Seminar!

We will begin meeting on Tuesday, March 21, in Room 204, Building 596 (the training building at MCAS Beaufort), from 1130 – 1230.  We will meet for six weeks on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Our last meeting date is Thursday, April 20.

On Tuesdays, we will hold a craft discussion on writing.  My comments will focus mainly on writing personal narrative. Some of you may be fiction writers and poets, but for this condensed course I would like you to try writing nonfiction.  It has been said that fiction writers and poets often improve in their chosen genres by even brief exposure to writing personal narrative.  Keep in mind that all good writing shares common characteristics.

I have drawn the material we will cover on Tuesdays from a few sources. Considering the short time we will be meeting, I have tried to synthesize the basics of good creative writing from these sources:

Writing Well by William Zinsser
The Art of Fiction by David Lodge
Word Painting by Rebecca McClanahan
Writing Life Stories by Bill Roorbach
Your Life as Story by Tristine Rainer

You do not have to read any of these books prior to our first meeting.  If you should decide you want to read one of these books prior to our first meeting, I recommend Your Life as Story. Tristine draws on her experience in film and as a writing coach. She has written the book as if she were your writing coach. Sometimes it seems as if she is sitting across the room, guiding you through the writing process.  Her book is an essential guide to writing nonfiction, and it is the most complete guide I have found. I will bring you a book on elements of autobiography donated by Pearson Publishers.


On Thursdays, we will break into groups to critique, or workshop, each other’s works in progress. I’ve attached a workshop guide to this email. This guide gives basic rules for productively critiquing creative writing. You can also use this guide to alter your reading habits from reading for pleasure to reading for writing. If you choose to read one of the books mentioned above, use this guide to form a perspective for studying the mechanics of creative writing.

Maybe you have already written a longer work. Maybe you have written very little but want to write more. Maybe you have been studying writing as craft for some time or not at all. Wherever you are is okay. One of the first things Bill Roorbach suggests developing writers do is commit to a personal Generic Disclaimer. “Make up a little card,” he writes, “or maybe a big one.”

Write GENERIC DISCLAIMER across the top of the card, then write a paragraph or so apologizing profusely for how rough and unfinished your exercises and first and second drafts are going to be. Talk about how little time you had, how tired you were, how ornery your computer is, how dull your pencils, how you’re not used to doing exercises, how you just couldn’t think, how you write and work and think differently than other people do. Get it all down, all your best excuses and reasons, all your self-doubt and blaming and delusions of grandeur [you know: I am writing the next great classic; they’ll be fighting over film rights to this story, etc.]. Make it a nice card, and pull it out and have a look at it whenever you feel discouraged about your writing, whenever you feel everyone in the world is farther along than you are. (Roorbach, pp. 25 – 26)

Here is another helpful suggestion from Donald Hall, an acclaimed poet: “Write something better than the best thing ever written. Take all the time you like.”

Understanding your writing process helps you write better stories. During the next few days, carve yourself out a space to write—even if that is writing on a laptop in your car or on a park bench or in the Huddle House. One acquaintance of mine, the author of several novels, does all his writing on his Palm Pilot using a mini-keyboard while riding on the subway or sitting in Starbucks in New York—that is where he is comfortable. Once you’ve decided on a writing space, use it to write at least thirty minutes a day. Begin building a writing structure by devoting a time and place to writing. Writers write and writers read. Read those books you’ve meant to read forever by devoting at least 30 minutes a day to reading. This is how to establish a writing ritual—not too big, not too small, not too time consuming, but enough to keep you writing. Trust yourself, go easy on yourself, and don’t expect the next bestseller; let just one decent sentence be enough at first. Writing is hard work. Allow imperfection. When it comes right down to details, writing is a process of revision—just like life. Give yourself permission to write an awful first draft, and then begin revising it into something readable. This is the point where having readers, those who workshop your work in progress, becomes indispensable. Write for a reader, not to yourself; decide who your audience is and write for that audience. In the case of the revisions you will complete during this seminar, your readers are your fellow participants and I—but don’t write assuming we will understand your topic just because we all have military experience. Your experience is as unique as your individual perception. Remember: What you have to say matters, your life experience is important, and you can reach readers that will relate to your experience.

Narrative appears in all genres; so does exposition.  Narrative takes place in time, tells a story, portrays events, shows ideas.  Exposition takes place outside time, explains things, analyzes events, and expresses ideas directly.  Personal narrative usually has an “I” as its central character, an “I” that is the author’s Siamese twin.  Personal narrative is usually written using a combination of narrative and exposition techniques, or scene and summary as it is sometimes taught these days.  So think of writing personal narrative as writing a series of scenes joined by short summaries that guide the reader from beginning through middle to end of the story. The second email attachment describes some basics for shaping a story.  We will talk more about these elements during our first session, and we will also discuss story timelines and outlines. For now, read the two attachments. Bring your questions to our first meeting or email me before hand if there is something that needs answering right away. After you read the attachments, use the Nine Elements handout to shape the true story you will work on during our time together. Your true story should be typed in Microsoft Word (or a program that can be read with Word – this includes MAC programs; I have an IMAC and use MS Office for word processing), three - five pages long, typed in 12 pt. Times New Roman font, double spaced, with 1” margins all around. Give your story a title. Be sure to insert page numbers and include your name on each page (this will fit in the header with the page number). Write about an important, meaningful event from your past. This event should be something you feel comfortable sharing with others and something that carries a message. You can change names, but you cannot make up events or change the facts of the event. You can use techniques of fiction to tell your story, but you cannot create fiction. You can recreate dialog that is true to the nature of your conversations, but you should not think for another character in your story. In nonfiction, you can know only the thoughts of the character that represents who you were are or are. The exception is knowledge that you have verbatim from another character. Otherwise, all perceptions are your own. Others might have been present at the event you write about, each of them might have their own perception and interpretation of the event – your view is the one that counts. The secret to writing shorter works is to focus on every detail of that one experience, to paint with words an image in the reader’s mind, to transport the experience from your memory into the reader’s memory.  Now this experience does not have to be life shattering.  It could be as simple as a trip to the grocery store, teaching your child to ride a bike, an hour of fishing and what you thought during that hour – but it must be an experience from which you learned something.  Choose any topic you like, but make it one you really like since we will spend this seminar revising your first draft. Just remember to focus on the details of one topic; don’t try to tell your life story in three pages.  And remember: no one expects perfection or the next best American essay. Reread your Generic Disclaimer.

Your essay should be emailed to me on Monday morning, 20 March, as early in the day as possible. Sunday night is best, but I don’t want to cut into writing time. When I receive everyone’s work, I will send out the files to the workshop group for reading and critiquing. When you receive assigned reading, you should print a copy, read each piece through once to get the general idea, and then do a close reading, making notes on the page.  Last, write up a short response on the back of the last page. On Thursdays, you will give this marked up, dog-eared text back to its author following your group’s discussion of the piece. It’s okay if you don’t have workshop experience. The simplest way to describe what you will be doing is asking questions of the work from the perspective of a reader. What do I need to know more about? What is confusing? What really works? What does not? Each week you will revise your work based on what you learn in Tuesday’s craft talk, responses to your work from workshop partners, and my response to your work. Sometimes comments bruise egos—No Pain, No Gain, right?  Both as a reader and as an author try to stay open minded; what makes perfect sense to you may not make-meaning for a reader.  And always remember, these are comments by fellow writers, and not those of an all-powerful alien being.

I look forward to meeting and working with each of you.

Sincerely,
Sally

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