In 1000 to 1500 words (ballpark), profile your randomly selected CW junior.
Some examples:
Actress Kristin Scott Thomas in the Washington Post Style section.
Actor Michael Ashe in Vanity Fair.
High school football player Shayne Skov in Sports Illustrated.
The trick is to find the human interest angle. Write for a non-ASFA, non-Birmingham audience.
Specific strategies:
1. Sit down and talk with your partner at least twice.
2. Converse, don't survey.
3. Try, if at all possible, to observe your partner in a setting outside of school.
4. Think nouns and verbs: what people, places, and things does your partner associate with? What does your partner spend his/her precious time doing?
5. Sketch out your partner's average day, their average week. Ask questions about things you're interested in. Ask questions about things other (i.e., non-ASFA) people might be interested in.
6. This is a human interest story. Always ask yourself: why is this human interesting? If you can't find an answer, that's your fault, not theirs.
Turn it in on Tuesday, November 25.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Making a Difference, Creative Nonfiction Style
Well, I threatened I might have you do it. Write your MAD experience. Make it good. Write for a non-ASFA, non-Birmingham audience. Try to focus on one particular aspect of the day. Be honest, authentic, and realistic. Think Wallace's "Consider the Lobster": he was assigned to an event that he wouldn't ordinarily go to on his own, and he let is imagination glom onto something. Do the same.
Aim for between 500 and 1000 words (rough ballpark) and turn it in by the end of the day tomorrow.
Aim for between 500 and 1000 words (rough ballpark) and turn it in by the end of the day tomorrow.
Monday, November 3, 2008
I Wrote a Letter to the President
Or to the guy who lost.
Write an open letter in at least three separate sittings to either Barack Obama or John McCain. Start the letter before the election but continue it afterwards. It should reflect the full flow of events over the course of the next week. Turn it in on Friday.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
A Veritable ICB Treasure Trove
A newspaper in Kansas, the Lawrence Journal-World, did an ICB retrospective three years ago. Be forewarned: spoilers abound. It's not so much plot points that get spoiled. It's more...I don't know, it's just that the fourth wall gets broken. But it's fascinating to see other perspectives on the events and to find out what happened to some of the important players. Also there are a tone of interesting pictures. Finish the book then surf around this really useful site. We'll talk about all of it when we finish the book next Tuesday (Oct 7).
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Essay #2 Options
The In Cold Blood Option: Seek out and/or research an event or experience (as Truman Capote did with the Clutter murders, David Foster Wallace did with the Maine Lobster Festival, and John D'Agata did with the tour of Hoover Dam) and then write about it. It should go without saying -- but I'll say it anyway -- that the experience you seek should not put you or others in harm's way. A good barometer: If your parents wouldn't want you doing it, then don't do it. Use the above texts as models, especially when it comes to their methods of engaging in said experience. Here are just a few non-binding suggestions for seeking out area "experiences":
Sidewalk
Activeculture.info
Jones Valley Urban Farm
ASFA Open House
But you should choose something that's interesting to you. Or -- actually -- maybe not. It can be argued in at least the latter two cases (Wallace and D'Agata) that the actual event/experience kind of bored the writer...but he still found something to write about.
At any rate, in all three cases, the writers used the event/experience as a springboard to write about larger cultural issues that they cared about. You are more than welcome -- in fact, encouraged -- to do the same.
_____
The Running in the Family Option: Use your family history as the source material for an essay. Pick an aspect of your family's history that you don't know a lot about. Dig into it. In this essay, you're writing as much about yourself -- and your discovery of your place as an individual in the context of your family -- as you are about the particular events you choose. A word of caution: don't feel like you have to write your family's entire history. Pick something specific. Perhaps you want to delve into the circumstances that led to your family coming to Alabama. Or maybe you want to write about your parents' courtship. Whatever it is, pick something that gives you a plethora of source material: pictures, interviews, places to visit, books to pore over.
_____
The Last American Man Option: Profile an interesting person who has a unique story. This may be someone you know well, or it may be a friend or relative of a friend (as was the case with Eustace Conway and Elizabeth Gilbert). The key here is in how you define "interesting" and "unique." For instance, all ASFA students would (IMHO) fit the bill simply because they attend a unique school in an interesting context. In that example, you might end up writing as much about ASFA and Birmingham and Alabama as you write about your interesting person -- as Gilbert ends up writing as much about American history and ideology and the idea of manliness as she does about Eustace Conway.
_____
As always, these are broad guidelines. If you're really excited about an idea for an essay that doesn't fit this mold, run it by me. I'm almost surely going to say yes, and I might have some suggestions and advice on how to proceed.
The other possibility is that you combine features of the different options into one essay project -- it strikes me that the above options are not at all mutually exclusive.
Aim for between 2000 - 3000 words. Probably not less, perhaps a little more.
Keep all three toolbelts in mind.
Please note your conference draft due date under "Second Quarter Conference Draft Due Dates" in the right hand column. Oct 17 is the first due date...not too far away.
*
Sidewalk
Activeculture.info
Jones Valley Urban Farm
ASFA Open House
But you should choose something that's interesting to you. Or -- actually -- maybe not. It can be argued in at least the latter two cases (Wallace and D'Agata) that the actual event/experience kind of bored the writer...but he still found something to write about.
At any rate, in all three cases, the writers used the event/experience as a springboard to write about larger cultural issues that they cared about. You are more than welcome -- in fact, encouraged -- to do the same.
_____
The Running in the Family Option: Use your family history as the source material for an essay. Pick an aspect of your family's history that you don't know a lot about. Dig into it. In this essay, you're writing as much about yourself -- and your discovery of your place as an individual in the context of your family -- as you are about the particular events you choose. A word of caution: don't feel like you have to write your family's entire history. Pick something specific. Perhaps you want to delve into the circumstances that led to your family coming to Alabama. Or maybe you want to write about your parents' courtship. Whatever it is, pick something that gives you a plethora of source material: pictures, interviews, places to visit, books to pore over.
_____
The Last American Man Option: Profile an interesting person who has a unique story. This may be someone you know well, or it may be a friend or relative of a friend (as was the case with Eustace Conway and Elizabeth Gilbert). The key here is in how you define "interesting" and "unique." For instance, all ASFA students would (IMHO) fit the bill simply because they attend a unique school in an interesting context. In that example, you might end up writing as much about ASFA and Birmingham and Alabama as you write about your interesting person -- as Gilbert ends up writing as much about American history and ideology and the idea of manliness as she does about Eustace Conway.
_____
As always, these are broad guidelines. If you're really excited about an idea for an essay that doesn't fit this mold, run it by me. I'm almost surely going to say yes, and I might have some suggestions and advice on how to proceed.
The other possibility is that you combine features of the different options into one essay project -- it strikes me that the above options are not at all mutually exclusive.
Aim for between 2000 - 3000 words. Probably not less, perhaps a little more.
Keep all three toolbelts in mind.
Please note your conference draft due date under "Second Quarter Conference Draft Due Dates" in the right hand column. Oct 17 is the first due date...not too far away.
*
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
FYI: This Is a Cornell Box
Brenda Miller makes the connection between lyric essays and Cornell boxes, so here's an example of one. And here's his biography, with links to some other examples of his work, on the Guggenheim Museum site. Remember: "It's art, so stop calling it nonfiction."Or is it (and should we really)?
*
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
DFW: Commencement High Notes
Okay, I've re-read the DFW Kenyon commencement, and now I really think you all need to read it. Not only does it speak to the art of being human, it is the road map to being a writer. In an effort to entice you to read the thing in its entirety, here are just a few highlights:
___
On Being Just a Little Less Arrogant:
"The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too."
___
On Not Being Totally Hosed:
"As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed."
___
There Are Other Options:
"If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down."
___
On Real Freedom:
"This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't.…The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day….That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."
___
On Staying Conscious and Alive in the Adult World Day In and Day Out:
"It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.
I wish you way more than luck."
___
That last part goes double for being a writer because trying to stay "conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out" is exactly what it means to be a writer.
If you're at all interested in Wallace, check out this article he wrote for the NY Times. It's germane to nonfiction because it's, well, nonfiction. It's about Roger Federer, but that's not the point. The point is, Wallace is using all the toolbelts and applying them to something for which he has a visceral, intense love: tennis. And, of course, he's doing so in a love-it-or-hate-it Voice that is uniquely his own.
So, yeah. I think there's a lot to learn from David Foster Wallace, both exemplary and cautionary.
*
___
On Being Just a Little Less Arrogant:
"The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too."
___
On Not Being Totally Hosed:
"As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed."
___
There Are Other Options:
"If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down."
___
On Real Freedom:
"This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't.…The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day….That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."
___
On Staying Conscious and Alive in the Adult World Day In and Day Out:
"It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.
I wish you way more than luck."
___
That last part goes double for being a writer because trying to stay "conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out" is exactly what it means to be a writer.
If you're at all interested in Wallace, check out this article he wrote for the NY Times. It's germane to nonfiction because it's, well, nonfiction. It's about Roger Federer, but that's not the point. The point is, Wallace is using all the toolbelts and applying them to something for which he has a visceral, intense love: tennis. And, of course, he's doing so in a love-it-or-hate-it Voice that is uniquely his own.
So, yeah. I think there's a lot to learn from David Foster Wallace, both exemplary and cautionary.
*
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