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475 LTWR CRN 21316 SPRING 2005 Monday/Wednesday 2:30-3:45 Dr. Susan Fellows Office Hours: M/W: 11:30-12:45 and by appointment Office: MH 126J Phone: (858) 755-3609 (Please do not phone after 9:00 PM) email: sfellows@csusm.edu Textbooks: Zinsser, William. On Writing Well. Dillard, Annie. The Writing Life. Grealy, Lucy. Autobiography of a Face. Patchett, Ann. Truth and Beauty: A Friendship Vonnegut, Kurt. A Man Without a Country. Williams, Marjorie. The Woman and the Washington Zoo Flynn, Nick. Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. Ondaatje, Michael. Running in the Family Manlove, Josephine. A Cup of Jo. Lapham, Lewis. With the Beatles. Sedaris, David. Holidays On Ice. Objectives: The course description states that LTWR 475 is a workshop in advanced expository writing as a creative process. We will examine both the writing process and the creative process as we work with the genre termed Memoir. We will read the above memoirs and will write our own, all the while aware of both the writing and the creative processes. We will discuss the readings and will read our writings, in groups and to the class as a whole. Our writing guide with regard to craft will be the Zinsser book. Writing, any kind of writing, requires creativity, but that creativity is molded into a successful product by learning the craft of writing. Beginning with Week three, you will turn in 2-3 computer generated, double-spaced pages of writing. Look to your own lives or the lives of someone in your family or in your circle of friends as a possible topic: Topics are endless and you will discover the necessity of being a judicious editor or both your thoughts and your writing. You will turn in 10-11 entries for a total of approximately 30 pages. During the semester we will work on editing these pages down and organizing them. We will do this in depth the last week of class. You will then edit those 30 pages down to a 20-25 page product. In addition, you will turn in a 10-page critical paper in which you will address the books we have been reading and for which I will give you a prompt. Evaluation: You will be evaluated on your writing product, of course, but just as much on your active participation in class and your willingness to do the hard work that good writing requires work which includes reading (astonishing). Always. Participation means doing the reading, keeping a brief journal with your reactions to the reading, talking out loud in class, and coming to class. Attendance counts. Please have your reading done by the Monday of the week assigned. Your writing entries are due on the Wednesday of the week assigned. Please be aware that a couple of things are apt to irritate me ever so slightly. One is coming into the classroom late (thereby disturbing your fellow classmates) and the other is coming to class without the books we will be discussing. Come on time and bring books. Class work (textual analysis, participation, etc) 25% Critical Paper 25% Memoir 50% Please note: This course requires a lot of work--hard work which will use both your left and right brains. You must be in the classroom both physically and mentally. The latter will prove difficult as the semester wears on and down. Yet the process, at the same time, can be enjoyable and most rewarding. IMPORTANT: All of the written entries are due at the beginning of class on the Wednesday assigned. I will not accept them on line nor may you leave them in my box. We will divide the week into two segments: on Wednesday, we will talk about the assigned reading; on Monday, you will read from your own writing. We will discuss the Zinsser either Monday or Wednesday, so please be prepared by Monday. Again for class, please have the books read and with you and your writing completed. A couple of random thoughts: One wants to provoke the emotion without providing the emotion. (Nicholas Shakespeare) In Paradise there are no stories because there are no journeys. It s loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward along its twisted road. (Margaret Atwood, Blind Assassin) ASSIGNMENTS: READING, WRITING, AND ALL THAT Week One (1/18) Introduction Week Two (1/23-25) Dillard Xeroxes Zinsser, Ch. 14 Week Three (1/30-2/1) Grealy Zinsser, Ch. 1-2 Entry # 1 due Wednesday Week Four (2/6-8) Grealy Zinsser, Ch. 3 # 2 due Wed. Week Five (2/13-15) Patchett Zinsser, Ch 4 # 3 due Week Six (2/20-22) Patchett Zinsser, Ch. 5 #4 Week Seven (2/27-3/1) Vonnegut Zinsser, Ch. 6 #5 Week Eight (3/6-8) #6 Williams Zinsser, Ch. 7 Week Nine (3/13-15) Williams Zinsser, Ch. 8 #7 Week Ten (3/20-22) Flynn Zinsser, Ch. 9 #8 Week Eleven (4/3-5) Ondaatje Zinsser, Ch. 10 #9 (4/10-12) Ondaatje Zinsser, Ch. 11 # 10 Week Twelve Week Thirteen (4/17-19) Jones Zinsser, Chs. 12-13 # 11 (optional) Week Fourteen (4/24-26) Lapham Zinsser, Chs. 20-21 Week Fifteen (5/1-3) Sedaris FINAL EXAM: WEDNESDAY, 10 MAY 1:45-3:45 CRITICAL PAPER AND MEMOIR DUE NO LATER THAN 3:00 PM. LTWR 475 PROMPT, CRITICAL PAPER For this segment of your final product, you will analyze each of the nine (9) books we have read. There are a number of ways to go this: about 1. What could I say that would lay open the process of writing that went into producing these books? How has my reading of and talking about these books helped me to see what it is that goes on when one writes. These questions are meant to get you started thinking and I want you to come up with something that will be of use to you in your own writing. You may use one question (of the above or, better, one of your own) to tie together your discussion of all seven books. Whatever you do, be focused. 2. If the above does not appeal to you, there are a number of ways to tackle the paper. You may have a conversation with each author. Now, do be careful with this. You do not have much room to address each book so you must keep that conversation limited. Be focused. You could take a particular passage, scene, character, sentence, and excavate it. React to it. If you wish, address style, voice, tone: those elements that are a necessary part of any piece of literature. 3. Use the odd quotation from our guide and mentor, William Zinsser, as a way to organize your thoughts. You may address different elements of the books. If you want to talk about scene in one book and character in another and some stylistic device in third, you may. You do need to pay close attention to the text at hand. I do NOT want a bunch of vague generalities hanging out there. (eg: This is soooo good. This was soooo stupid.) And I do not want plot summaries. (It may astonish you to know that I have actually read these books my own self and know what happens.) You will have to pay attention to your focus here: You can address only a limited part of each book. You should quote from the text, especially if the quotation is fairly short. If you wish to refer to a longer passage, paraphrase and note the page number. Length: 10 pages. Due with your memoirs. Please remember: if you want this paper and/or your memoir back, you must give me a self-addressed, stamped manila envelope. My comments on these pages will be limited to non-existent, You have already read enough of my multi-colored remarks. So if you still want it back, use the postal service. One of those large brown envelopes, with a bunch of stamps on it. And your address. When you hand in your papers. ANOTHER PROMPT FOR YOUR CRITICAL PAPER, SHOULD YOU FIND YOURSELF IN A STATE OF UTTER PANIC (or just confused). Augustine Memory . . . is like a great field or a spacious palace, a storehouse for countless images of all kinds which are conveyed to it by the senses. In it are stored away all the thoughts by which we enlarge upon or diminish or modify in any way the perceptions at which we arrive through the senses, and it also contains anything else that has been entrusted to it for safe keeping, until such time as these things are swallowed up and buried in forgetfulness. When I use my memory, I ask it to produce whatever it is that I wish to remember. Some things it produces immediately; some are forthcoming only after a delay, as thought they were being brought out from some inner hiding place; others come spilling from the memory, thrusting themselves upon us when what we want is something quite different, as much as to say, Perhaps we are what you want to remember? These I brush aside from the picture which memory presents to me, allowing my mind to pick what it chooses, until finally that which I wish to see stands out clearly and emerges into sight from its hiding place. Confessions. E. B. White [Here] we approach style in its broader meaning: style in the sense of what is distinguished and distinguishing. . . . Who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of words, causing them to explode in the mind? Who know why certain notes in music are capable of stirring the listener deeply, though the same notes slightly rearranged are impotent? These are high mysteries. . . . There is no satisfactory explanation of style, no infallible guide to good writing, no assurance that a person who thinks clearly will be able to write clearly, no key that unlocks the door, no inflexible rule by which the . . . writer may shape his course. He will often find himself steering by starts that are disturbingly in motion. Style is an increment in writing. When we speak of Fitzgerald s style. we don t mean his command of the relative pronoun. We mean the sound his words make on paper. Every writer, by the way he uses the language, reveals something of his spirit, his habits, his capacities. This is inevitable as well as enjoyable. All writing is communication through revelation it is the Self escaping into the open. No writer long remains incognito. Elements of Style. To organize your thoughts, to give some substance to what you say, you may use one or the other (or both???) of the above quotations. Please don t try to deconstruct the entire quotation (or any part of it). But if there is an image, an idea, a phrase in one of them that sparks something in your thinking about the books we have read, use it. Let one or the other of these authors play on your thoughts and prompt your thinking about the writing process in your work with Memoir.

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