Carleton University Department of English Summer ENGL2903A: Fiction Workshop. Schedule: Tuesdays 6:05 pm - 8:55 pm May 10 Aug.

Transcription

1 Carleton University Department of English Summer 2011 ENGL2903A: Fiction Workshop Schedule: Tuesdays 6:05 pm - 8:55 pm May 10 Aug. 9 Location: Please confirm on Carleton Central Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor Instructor: Richard Taylor taylorswave@gmail.com APPLYING FOR THE COURSE: Portfolio Guidelines: If you have any worries or concerns about submitting a portfolio please don t hesitate to me at taylorswave@sympatico.ca and check out my website You must submit a portfolio with a brief biographical sketch and statement on why you want to take the workshop. Please include 10 double-spaced pages of prose that might include any of the following: stories, postcard fiction, parts of novels, or literary nonfiction like blogs, magazine pieces, personal essays, memoir or travel writing. Your portfolio should be dropped off, or mailed by May 2, 2011 to: Richard Taylor, Carleton University, English Dept., 1812 Dunton Tower, Ottawa, Ontario, K1S 5B6. Because of the large number of enthusiastic applicants, it's advisable to apply early. Those accepted will be contacted, so please include an Ottawa phone number and address. I am looking for enthusiastic, committed people in the thrall of books and writing who are interested in developing and honing what talent already exists. Everyone will write and submit work to the group for evaluation by all participants. I will be giving specific advice on techniques and approaches relevant to your skills, interests and projects, information about marketing, if relevant, and offering suggestions about the next step for you as a writer. All kinds of original, imaginative writing are welcome, and freedom of expression for all points of view is zealously maintained. At the beginning many kinds of writing exercises

2 and prompts will be given. Regular attendance, a positive attitude and openness to the learning process on the part of every student is required. Do not apply unless you are willing to come to every class and to deal with forthright analysis of your work in a select but public forum. You will have to read, and give editorial comments on other writers manuscripts. Richard Taylor has been at Carleton since 1995 when he was Carleton Writer-in- Residence. Also he has taught writing in Hong Kong, Australia, Tuscany and 100 workshops in Ottawa, and an annual summer writers retreat Write by the Lake in Valdes-Monts Quebec near a waterfall at his beautiful lake house Monet Bay. He has published a novel, Cartoon Woods, a collection of short stories, Tender Only to One, an Australian travel memoir, House Inside the Waves: Domesticity, Art and the Surfing Life, and many feature magazine articles. While surfing and swimming around the world, he is working on an unusual book about swimming with writers, Water and Desire. COURSE DESCRIPTION: The Fiction Workshop offers instruction in creative writing with an emphasis on short stories, post card fiction and novels, although narrative non fiction travel pieces, personal essays, humour, memoir, blogs and literary journalism and poetry will also be discussed. Each participant must be prepared to submit committed work and to further the group s on-going dialogue on the pieces submitted. The early workshops will consist of a series of writing exercises. Participants are expected to use these prompts for warm up purposes and to hone their skills and to explore new territory. I will set the assignment schedule. Every week several writers will submit a manuscript to be work shopped and critiqued for the next class. These manuscripts can be from your portfolio and or new work generated from the workshop. There will be a short post card fiction assignment. Also we will have a group mini novel assignment. (In groups of four writers each group member will write a short chapter of a 4 chapter mini novel.) Each writer will have to hand in three pieces of writing during the course plus their group mini novel chapter. Lengths may vary, but I suggest 2 to 5 pages as a reasonable length for any assignment. I will ask some participants to submit specific pieces from their portfolios. All other pieces must be new work generated from the workshop, or in some cases, works-in-progress. It is the responsibility of the student to reproduce sufficient copies of their piece and to hand them out THE WEEK PRECEDING the workshop. PLEASE DO NOT ASK ME TO YOU ANY MATERIAL. If you are scheduled to submit or present a manuscript and cannot, please give me several days notice. EACH MANUSCRIPT MUST BE TYPED, DOUBLE SPACED, DOUBLE SIDED IN ORDINARY TYPEFACE, AND MUST BE EASILY READABLE. HANDWRITTEN MATERIAL IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. PLEASE DON'T SAVE MONEY BY SINGLE SPACING BECAUSE WE NEED SPACE TO WRITE OUR EDITORIAL COMMENTS. 2

3 Every week I will discuss various aspects about writing, editing and publishing markets. Your fellow workshoppers and I will provide oral and written editorial comments on your work. NOTE: THERE IS NO TEXT REQUIRED. But you will be required to read examples of published material, and read and edit the work of fellow writers. You will be required to bring enough photocopies of your work for each student. EVALUATION: There will be no mark for individual pieces. Each person should submit several pieces of writing to be workshopped from among the many fun writing prompts and assignments I give out in class. Because this is a creative writing workshop, there will be opportunities for spontaneity and improvisation, but you must be willing to read, write, edit and fully participate. Your final course grade will be based on the following factors: 1) (30%) Quality and originality of the writing. 2) (30%) Effort put into the process of writing exercises, post card fiction assignment and mini novel chapter. 3) (20%) Quality of your oral and written editorial comments about other's work and your discussion contribution. The energy, depth and enthusiasm with which you contribute to the collective process. 4) (20%) ATTENDANCE! PLEASE TAKE NOTE: You must be willing to come to every class, and to deal with forthright analysis of your work in a select but public forum. Your text at first will have to speak for you; the discussion, in one form or another will go around the table of workshoppers; you will listen; I will listen; then perhaps sum up and sometimes interject, or occasionally take the discussion in a new direction. Sometimes I may have to play referee. Later, you will have a chance to enter the discussion. The sessions will be lively, resembling at various times an encounter group session or a debating society meeting. There will also be quiet moments of communication, and probably as much person to person with the instructor and others in the group as you would wish. The Fiction Workshop will not be directed toward any particular genre or style. We should be trying to understand something of the complexity and mystery of storytelling and writing, wherever it occurs. Plagiarism: See the statement on Instructional Offences in the Carleton University Undergraduate Calendar. Students with special needs/disabilities, or students who require academic accommodations are invited to contact the Paul Menton Centre,

4 FICTION WORKSHOP OUTLINE, SUMMER 2011 (Subject to Improvisational changes) All good writing is swimming underwater and holding your breath. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Week 1: Introduction with Australian Byron Bay Maddog Surfboard Fill out Writing Workshop Questionnaire ONLY TROUBLE IS INTERESTING UNFOLDING AND WITHHOLDING Absolut Vodka Story Contest Winner: While We Lay Naked Using the Five Senses Immediate Reality Memory Imagination Writing Exercises and Writing Prompts Week 2: (Short Stories, Postcard Fiction, Flash Fiction.) Trouble and Desire Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolf Prompts from the pocket muse SHITTY FIRST DRAFTS by Ann Lamott Miss Teen America by Andrew Forbes Things to consider when critiquing a piece of writing (Assign manuscript schedule. We will generally deal with 4 to 6 per evening) Week 3: Thinking inside and outside of the box The Second Story: How a promising single episode might find its fullest use in our fiction Under What Circumstances Would Someone... Instructions on How To... Week 4: (Stories, Novels and other Narratives.) Plot: and then and then the mysteries began... In the beginning Happy Endings by Margaret Atwood. Show, Don t Tell Tone and Style Revision is the Essence of the Writing Process Opening up Your Story Week 5: (Poetry) How to Be Happy Is About by Allen Ginsberg Letters & Other Worlds by Michael Ondaatje 4

5 Radiant Desire (Shelley, Keats, Byron & Co.) Evolution by Sherman Alexie Cold Portraits Jesus and Elvis, In Bermuda by Michelle Desbarats Workshop Manuscripts Week 6: (Memoir: Narrative Non Fiction.) Reader s Response: Ideas for Revising MY FRIEND JAMIE: A Personal History of Friendship, Rock & Roll, the 60 s Generation, and a Lawn Mower by Richard Taylor. Everyone Has A Story To Tell Workshop Manuscripts Week 7: (Travel Writing: Narrative Non Fiction) WHEN THE BEST MINDS WANDER The Road to There The Road to Laos On The Road, and Jack Kerouac s long, sad, incredible journey home Week 8: EACH TERM WE HAVE A VISITING WRITER Novelist/filmmaker/TV Anchor Kim Brunhuber and his novel, Kameleon Man Award winning memoir and short story writer Isabel Huggan Ted Bishop, Governor General s award travel memoir finalist, RidingWith Rilke: Reflections on Motorcycles and Books Students reading excerpts from literary magazine The Feathertale Review Readings by poet Michelle Desbarats and other published student writers Filmmaker Korbett Mathews film-in-progress, The Man Who Crossed The Sahara, which is about my friend, murdered Ottawa filmmaker Frank Cole Novelist, poet, Mark Frutkin Trillium award winner for Fabrizio s Return David Hamilton. (Social Communication Networks) 2010 Feathertale Magazine Editor, writer, reporter Brett Popplewell Week 9: (Humour) David Sedaris and other funny writers RIFF OFF VS RIP OFF Redrafting and Editing In Praise of the Humble Comma by Pico Iyer Week 10: Map That Route vs. Winging it. Frank Cole - Death of a Filmmaker, and Saltwater Road to the Sahara. Life Without Death: The Cinema of Frank Cole STRESS, WORRY, ANGST, THE VOID 5

6 Week 11: Some of these stories, or incidents are drawn from real life STAYING FIT FOR WORDS Expose Your Manuscript, to Improve it Week 12: HOW TO BECOME A WRITER: READ WRITE PUSH Finding the right Voice, Tone, Mood, Mysterious Tension Week 13: FINAL CLASS CELEBRATION PARTY, POT LUCK AT SOMEONE'S HOUSE Workshop final last minute manuscripts How to continue reading and writing Live, write and read as though each Precious day were your very last Follow your obsessions Try to have fun Take chances Take care Aloha! 6