ENGW 1101

Welcome to EngW 1101, Introduction to Creative Writing, Spring 2010.

If you have always wanted to try your hand at writing but have never had the occasion, this class is your opportunity.
If you want to improve your writing skills in a creative way, this class is also for you.
If you want to become a better, sharper reader by being more aware of the writing process, and of how writers manage to actually write whole books, this is the class for you.
If you have old notebooks in your bottom drawer, you will want to bring them out and look at them again in the light of what this course will have taught you, to see if you can make something of them.

The idea of this introductory course is to explore the craft of writing in its multiple forms and to improve your critical skills and your ability to read as writers with the help of nine local visiting writers who will talk about the writing of poetry and prose, and of their own process of composition in a lecture on Wednesday. Spring semester’s visitors are Lightsey Darst, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Ed Bok Lee, Julie Schumacher, Charles Baxter, Lorna Landvik, Lawrence Sutin, Cathy Wurzer, Patricia Weaver Francisco.

The smaller sections—which will meet on a different day—will include discussions of the samples of writing by the visiting writers and the critique of peer work, but the main emphasis will be on your own writing: you will be asked to write and revise regularly, and to complete three creative portfolios through a progression of exercises in poetry, prose and narrative prose. Some of the areas that will be engaging you are: finding your material, writing from memory, invention and imagination, recognizing character, how to compose and why revision. None of the instructors will assume previous writing experience