REQUIREMENT: 7:30, Thursday night in MLK room in Ellison

Matt Bell (http://www.mdbell.com), Steve Himmer (http://www.stevehimmer.com) and Robert Kloss (http://rkbirdsofprey.bogspot.com) will read.


All Thursday conferences will meet in Meier Hall room 104 (Professor  Mulman's office)

Writing Prompt #6 Write a Persona Poem

Look at what's posted on WebCT and check our anthology for inspiration. Who would you want to pretend to be?

Those of you who are very interested in fiction

might want to read Alice LaPlante's Method and Madness: The Making of a Story and John Gardner's The Art of Fiction or On Becoming a Novelist. As with all writing, if you find something you love, take it apart, study its structure, see what makes it tick, imitate it.

Writing Prompt #5

Take a common object and study it, writing down everything that you notice, then connect the object to a memory, an association, an idea. Make that object vivid and present for the reader.

Now, let’s get wacky!

List ordinary objects around you. You can do this anywhere.

Next choose two of these objects.

The first object is in love with the second object. Maybe the shirt is longing to be reunited with the dresser. Or the tv is flipping wildly for the entertainment of flowers in a vase.

Let your imagination create their world.

Reading Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer this weekend

and I highly recommend it for those of you who are serious writers. She maintains that you must be a close reader and turn passages inside out in order to understand how they are composed (she likens it to a mechanic fixing an engine!). There are some exquisite prose examples in the third chapter (Sentences). A good writer is a good reader!

Be sure to set up your blog at blogspot.com

All you need is a Google account. Type in the latest piece of writing that you would like to share. Any random, inspired  thoughts would be welcomed too.  A few of you are insomniacs. Maybe you could meet here in the middle of the night!

Unit One Reminder

Our last day of Unit One, On Creativity will be over Thursday, Feb. 10th with the group presentation of your Twyla Tharp main idea. Your Unit One portfolio (4 prompts and your creative autobiography) is due Tuesday, Feb. 15th.