rivers_bend

I've been trying to be proactive today. I rang three estate agents and made three appointments for tomorrow for people to come round and do a market appraisal on the house. I emptied the diswasher while breakfast was cooking so that I wouldn't find I'd run out of energy to do it later. I used most of the rest of my iTunes credit from Christmas and bought a few songs and a Tori Amos album. I wrote a drabble and also nearly 600 words (so far) of more Rupert, who amuses me far more than perhaps he should. I can't help grinning when I'm writing dialogue with Rupert though.

I've also been looking at some of the classes on offer for my course. It looks like there is a lot to be interested in. A small sample here,

803.01 Advanced Short Story Writing
Immersion in the processes of writing, reading, discussion & critique is essential to learning to write fiction. This class combines a short story workshop with selected readings and class discussion about the structure and elements of short fiction. The primary focus will be student work, which we will discuss in an atmosphere of respect, trust, and reciprocity. Our workshop goal is fundamentally constructive: helping the author realize his or her intent, by sharing our thoughts and reactions to their work. We will also be open to supportive discussion of the blocks, failures, and moments of confusion we often encounter in the writing process. All students must be prepared to discuss the work of their fellow students, and will be required to give typed comments to the authors.

806.01 The Business of Creative Writing
Prerequisite: Classified graduate student in Creative Writing or consent of instructor. In this class we will explore some aspects of the “business” of creative writing—how writers create audiences for their work, find editors and publishers, and pay the rent—as well as how they create lives in which art and the creative process are central. While this class will not teach you how to become a best-selling writer in ten easy steps, it will provide you with a larger sense of the world of and the business of creative writing, while encouraging you to develop your ability to distinguish between the business of creative writing and the art. The first half of each class will involve lecture & discussion by guest speakers (poets, writers, literary agents, book editors, literary journal publishers, reading series curators, book distribution managers, library acquisition managers, free lance writers and editors, literary nonprofit managers, and the like). The second half will involve whole class or small group discussions. Students will complete weekly writing and research assignment that will lead them into each speaker’s field as well as a final portfolio of revised assignments.

807.01 Developing the Novel
Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing or consent of instructor. This class is a workshop geared toward the early phases of developing a novel. We will approach the novel as an open form with a wide range of possibilities. Though we will work against any set definition of what a novel is or should be, we will look at standard definitions of the novel and at characteristics we expect to see in a novel. Through writing exercises we will further explore some of these characteristics and other issues of style. We will examine how a range of authors set up the beginnings of their novels. Students will write 30 to 50 pages of a novel, and we will critique that work in class. In addition to writing, this course requires a sizeable amount of reading and critiquing.

840.01 FOURTEEN HILLS Literary Magazine +
Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing or consent of instructor. Through assigned reading on different aspects of American literary magazines, students will get an insider's view of the life of the magazine editor, and the particular challenges the job of editor entails. In addition, students will learn how to read and discuss work for the magazine (as differs from discussing work in a workshop), and learn the very marketable skills of double-proofing, copyediting, and proofreading. The students will then apply on a practical level the skills they have learned to the production of Fourteen Hills, taking part in discussions of material to be published, editing the text of the magazine, and constituting the on-campus sales force. It is hoped that by the end of the semester the students of the class will have gained a new understanding--as people applying for jobs in the field of publishing, as writers submitting their work to magazine editors, and as appreciative (and informed) readers of the literary magazine.

860.02 Teaching Creative Writing
Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing or consent of instructor. This course introduces advanced graduate students to the art and practice of teaching creative writing. Creative Writing 301 will serve as our prototype. We’ll be reading essays and interviews discussing aspects of creative writing pedagogy, and performing a variety of rigorous teaching activities. We’ll discuss giving useful feedback for student writers designing effective writing assignments; use of texts and craft models; strategies for leading discussions of literary works and student works-in-progress. Students will also prepare and execute mini-lectures on a range of craft and process topics, and develop a detailed syllabus for an introductory creative writing course.

880.02 Art of Short Fiction *
Prerequisite: Classified Creative Writing graduate status in the M.F.A. program or consent of instructor. "Every work of literature has both a situation and a story. The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience (or the question) that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say."¬ - Vivian Gornick This is a process reading course for M.F.A. students to investigate the art of the short story and the short-short story. We will closely read some of the masters and innovators of the form from Anton Chekhov to Grace Paley to Alice Munro to Lydia Davis to John Edgar Wideman¬in each case striving to explore the questions: "What experience is being offered?" and "How did s/he do it?" We will closely read for how the texts are orchestrated with the intent of feeding ourselves narrative strategies and methods (possibilities) and inspiring our own individual voices and material. What launches a story into being? How do we experience the consciousness of the text via dramatic structure and movement or a "from what to what" in the world of characters? How do we experience with language and the elements of fictive craft what one student has called "the cosmology of character" in a story ¬the essence or soul of a human being? Be prepared for close text analyses and writing assignments to generate work.



I haven't figured out how many classes one takes each semester, and I don't know how many options one has each term, but I expect that is one of the things they will tell me. Now if it would just be morning in California so they would open up the intent to register page on the website...