Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance. Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence. Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.
–Yoko Ono
Welcome to The Art Institute, and to your first writing class here at the school. This class is designed for practice and instruction in writing short essay compositions. In it, you will discover some of the ways in which writing can help you to develop your creative capacities and understand better your knowledge and experience of the world. Writing is a process that will reveal to you what you know, and what you don't. The simple act of putting words on paper (and screen!) will quicken the spring of remembered people, places, events, and ideas that you carry inside. What is more, writing will reinforce your sense of what you can contribute to the lives of others, for all of us are seeking greater knowledge and understanding of the very large and often complicated world we live in, and all of us are in need of the perspective and experience contact with others can give us. Each of us brings something fresh and unique and lovable to the world. In giving expression to our thoughts, memories, dreams, desires–and in sharing them with others–we discover the many ways we have been shaped by life, and the connections we have with others.
Getting started is easier than you might think. First, take the pressure off yourself. Forget rules, forget rules, forget rules. Correct spelling? Comma? Semi-colon? Forget them for now. Restrictions can make anyone freeze up, and much of what anyone writes will be revised or trashed at some point. Suspend your inner critic. Write for the sheer pleasure of it, the sense of discovery and surprise at how the mind works, and what you've got hidden inside. You will feel a renewed interest in the mystery of being alive in a world continually revealing itself.
The following prompts and exercises are designed to help you get started. There is no purpose to them beyond getting words to flow from you, and having a little fun. You may well find something in what you write, something for keeps, something to shape and present to the class or others. But that part of the process, which involves making decisions, making decisions about what to keep, what to toss, and how to order, shape and polish the stones, if rough, all that comes later. The start of anything is often messy. So be it.
Exercise 1: Write for five-ten minutes on anything that comes to mind, no matter what it be. Pretend, if you must, you've been let loose in a grocery store and the more items you can pull down into your cart, the fewer you'll have to pay for later. Don't pause for long. Let one thought lead into the next with as little interference from the analytic mind as possible. Don't censor yourself. Let yourself go.
Exercise 1: Write for five-ten minutes on anything that comes to mind, no matter what it be. Pretend, if you must, you've been let loose in a grocery store and the more items you can pull down into your cart, the fewer you'll have to pay for later. Don't pause for long. Let one thought lead into the next with as little interference from the analytic mind as possible. Don't censor yourself. Let yourself go.
Ex. 2: Write for five minutes a mini sketch of yourself, right here, right now. Record the five senses–what you see around you (objects, colors, lights, people), what you imagine you look like, what you are feeling (nervous, relaxed, tired, hungry, etc.) what you hear (even to the voices in your head), what you smell.
Ex. 3: Word Prompts: respond to one or several of the following words for two or three minutes at a stretch.
love/desire
red
fire
the sun
grass
the sea
music
animal friends
holidays
work and money
Ex. 4: Respond to any one of the following quotations, each of which pays tribute to the seasons.
In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
–Albert Camus (1913-1960)
This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath, may prove a beauteous flower when next we meet. – William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
Listen! the wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings, now for October eves!
– Humbert Wolfe
We have had our summer evenings, now for October eves!
– Humbert Wolfe
Homework
Writing Assignment 1: Select one writing prompt from the following options:
Option 1: Sort through the material you wrote today in class. Select the best or most interesting parts of it, whether an interesting idea or sentence, a dramatic or fresh image. Develop this material more formally in a paragraph to illustrate something you learned in today's writing work, a discovery about the writing process, about yourself, or whatever you may have hit upon. Refine the material as needed with the time you have outside of class.
Option 1: Sort through the material you wrote today in class. Select the best or most interesting parts of it, whether an interesting idea or sentence, a dramatic or fresh image. Develop this material more formally in a paragraph to illustrate something you learned in today's writing work, a discovery about the writing process, about yourself, or whatever you may have hit upon. Refine the material as needed with the time you have outside of class.
Option2: Write on a topic that did not come up in today's class work, but which you would like to address because it is on your mind. You may use one of the topics from the handout reproducing reader submissions in the magazine The Sun.
Option 3: Respond to any one of the essay(s) given as a reading assignment, as if you were sharing its storyline and your thoughts and feelings and experiences in association with it. Be sure to provide a little context or background, i.e. explain that you read a short essay describing . . . . and then proceed with your response.
Please Note: This essay practice should be about 200-250 words in length, and typed in 10 or 11 point font (Times or Courier), and spaced 2.0. Compose it in a single paragraph unified by a single main idea, fleshed out with supporting details and comments. Bring the piece to class next meeting, on a flash drive, so that you may revise it if need be.
As you structure your compositions, think about the following: The central idea of a paragraph is called the topic idea. It is an idea stated or implied. When stated it is often found at the very beginning and thus gives readers a clear sense of what the paragraph is about and its direction of development. All the material that is in the paragraph supports the topic idea by way of elaboration in the form of detail, example, and/or story incident. An essay composed of multiple paragraphs is built around a central idea referred to as the thesis idea; this idea, too, is directly stated or implied at the outset. It is emphasized, reiterated in some way, at the conclusion as well to create the impression of having been brought full circle in the writer's (and reader's) journey. There is a beginning, middle, and end, all sufficiently connected and fleshed out. The thesis idea is always an opinion the essay writer has come to through experience and reason. The essay is thus a vehicle for expressing the writer's opinions and beliefs, and the thoughts, feelings, and experiences that inform them.
Remember your audience, however you imagine that group of readers and listeners, and make your work as clear and complete and generous and interesting in content as you can. Readers want to connect with the writer–that is, with you. So give them a good idea of who you are, where you are coming from, and why the topic is of interest and importance. For example, an audience of your peers, students, might want to know what other students think of just such a thing or two. If you are writing about food, to food lovers or chefs-in-the-making or restaurant owners, for example, establish a common ground of interest in advancing your point. Appeal to readers' love of a good meal, particulars of preparation or presentation, or the owner's pride in the quality of experience a restaurant can provide.
In Addition: By Next Class:
Read the essay by Brenda Peterson titled "Bread Upon the Waters," and be prepared to answer questions about its content or to summarize its main idea and key supporting events and details.
Also, review English Syntax/Readability: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/media/pdf/20080306044359_727.pdf
Review the definitions and illustrations of independent and dependent clauses on the following page at the Online Writing Lab: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/598/01/
Review also the Parts of Speech in English: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/730/01
Finally, copy out the following sentences. Draw one line under the sentence subject and two lines under the main verb.
1. A large sunny window brightens the whole room.
2. Certain people know early in life just what they want from life. Most do not.
3. There should be more holidays.
4. I gave myself a present this Christmas–a trip to Guatemala.
5. Swimming in the clear, cool, blue waters of Lake Atitlan invigorated me.
6. Lake Atitlan is a caldera: a very large crater lake that filled after the extinction of a large volcano.
7. Volcanoes tower over the southern shore of the lake and provide a beautiful backdrop to the lake itself.
8. One day I will visit there again.
9. Do you dream of traveling?
10. Write about your dreams.
11. The crocuses and the larch turning green every year a week before the others and the pastures red with uneaten sheep's placentas and the long summer days and the new mown hay and the wood pigeon in the morning and the cuckoo in the afternoon and the corncrake in the evening and the wasps in the jam and the smell of gorse and the look of the gorse and the apples falling and the children walking in the dead leaves and the larch turning brown a week before the others
Review the definitions and illustrations of independent and dependent clauses on the following page at the Online Writing Lab: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/598/01/
Review also the Parts of Speech in English: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/730/01
Finally, copy out the following sentences. Draw one line under the sentence subject and two lines under the main verb.
1. A large sunny window brightens the whole room.
2. Certain people know early in life just what they want from life. Most do not.
3. There should be more holidays.
4. I gave myself a present this Christmas–a trip to Guatemala.
5. Swimming in the clear, cool, blue waters of Lake Atitlan invigorated me.
6. Lake Atitlan is a caldera: a very large crater lake that filled after the extinction of a large volcano.
7. Volcanoes tower over the southern shore of the lake and provide a beautiful backdrop to the lake itself.
8. One day I will visit there again.
9. Do you dream of traveling?
10. Write about your dreams.
11. The crocuses and the larch turning green every year a week before the others and the pastures red with uneaten sheep's placentas and the long summer days and the new mown hay and the wood pigeon in the morning and the cuckoo in the afternoon and the corncrake in the evening and the wasps in the jam and the smell of gorse and the look of the gorse and the apples falling and the children walking in the dead leaves and the larch turning brown a week before the others
and the chestnuts falling and the howling winds and the sea breaking over the pier and the first fires and the hooves on the road and the consumptive postman whistling "The Roses are Blooming in Picardy" and the standard oil-lamp and of course the snow and to be sure the sleet and bless your heart the slush and every fourth year the February debacle and the endless April showers and the crocuses and then the whole bloody business starting all over again.
–Samuel Beckett, Watt
–Samuel Beckett, Watt
No comments:
Post a Comment