Creative Writing

An invaluable resource to graduate students and instructors of composition, Tate, Rupiper, and Schick’s A Guide to Composition Pedagogies, points to the critical need in Creative Writing Studies for an equally in-depth discussion of pedagogy.

That’s why we seek essays for our proposed edited collection with the working title of A Guide to Creative Writing Pedagogies which explore current and future creative writing instruction through the lens of a single writing pedagogy.

We are interested in essays which engage readers by compiling existent scholarship on a particular creative writing pedagogy and discuss personal experience with the pedagogy, as well as suggesting possible future extensions of the pedagogy inside Creative Writing Studies. Essays could utilize scholarship from both Composition and Creative Writing Studies. We recognize that the field of Creative Writing Studies has a long way to go before it is as pedagogically honed as Composition Studies, and we hope that this collection will help instructors and graduate students advance creative writing in the twenty-first century. In a nutshell, essays should explore what the field of creative writing would look like when shaped and steered by a particular pedagogy, mentioning theoretical and classroom implications.

We have commitments from high-profile scholars to write chapters on the following topics: process pedagogy, rhetorical pedagogy, collaborative pedagogy, international pedagogies, critical pedagogy, WAC pedagogy, and commercial pedagogy.

We still seek chapter proposals on the following topics: expressivist pedagogy, feminist pedagogy, cultural studies and creative writing, community-service pedagogy, basic writing pedagogy, writing center pedagogy, holistic pedagogy, and technology and the teaching of creative writing. Note that we are also open to consider chapters not developed in Composition Studies and are instead ones designed entirely for creative writing.

Submit a proposal of approximately 50-150 words.

Important Deadlines:
June 15, 2011: Proposal Submission Deadline
July 15, 2011: Notification about Proposal at which time we will submit the proposal to a publisher.
One Month After Book Acceptance: Draft of Full Chapter

Inquiries and submissions should be sent to Tom C. Hunley at tom.hunley@wku.edu and Alexandria Peary at pearya@wit.edu.

A video poem (with words by me and pictures by a friend –with some net help) has been accepted by TYCA for the National Poetry month. The video will be featured one day in April.

This is a wordle I created from some of the lines. Wordle picked the colors. Very appropos, don’t you think?

I love the fact that the wordle arranged the words with several alliterations. I’m a big alliteration fan. (It’s the Old English buff in me.)

Chris Willerton: How does it help each of you three to write about your lives? We’re not doing confessionals anymore.

Sharon: When I write, I’m thinking about language. A poem is made up of language. Any writer makes himself/herself manifest on the page. It’s pretty impossible to not go to those places that represent your life…

The language I choose, as long as it includes both literal and figurative language, I know their is a place in the poem for the reader.

It is, in fact, my experience… someone suggested to me once… Leader of a writing workshop suggested that I write memoirs. I couldn’t do it. I wrote about fifty pages. There was no form. I had no idea that poetic form was essential as a beginning place for me to communicate things that may be very painful. Memoir there was no protection between me and the information.

Cheryl: Part of the reason I enjoy doing it. I have a background in journalism. Both blessed and cursed with a good memory. From years of interviewing people, I had to learn, forced to learn, rhythm of conversation. That’s really come in handy with remembering conversations.

9/11 I remember thinking I need to spend some time in reality.

This is pretty peaceful for my essays. A pretty gentle, nice one.

Not one of the conflicts in my short stories holds a candle to what I could tell you about a family reunion. It has five acts and a death.

My students have had a lot to do with my writing memoir. When they get bored, I’ll tell them a story. How was that received? Can I form the structure? Tell a joke. Figure out if it will work or not.

Lot of it is laziness.

When you write fiction, you have to take the time… When you are teaching six classes a semester and you have a five year old, it’s a whole lot easier to write the truth than take the energy to tell a lie.

Sally: Write out of necessity. Catharsis.
The things that I write that are most important are written pretty much from pretty deep experience, from laying myself out on the page.

The rest was lost to the Tarleton problematic internet connection. Here is a recreation of what I can remember.

Cheryl: One colleague who has read all my work said, “I start off laughing, and I always know I will pay for it.”

I can tell you about a family reunion, five acts and a death.

Poetry is the higher art. One of my uncles who teaches at Sam Houston has been pulling me towards poetry. “You’re in journalism… that’s the lowest form there is… Now you are writing memoir… If I can just pull you into poetry…”

Sally:
I write selfishly. It’s all about working through what I’ve experienced. Subjective. Very much what I have experienced.

My husband said, “How many dead people poems are you going to read?”

Cheryl:
All my stories are love stories. The people in them are folks that I love. When I write it is all about the people I love and how much I love them.

Sharon:
Art is nature. Nature is life.
You are taking a piece from the cycle of life and you are pasting it to a form so that you can hold it/save it.

Cheryl Clements
“A Complexity of Vision” an essay, part of a series of essays, which will evolve into a memoir.

This is a live blogging of the session. These are notes and no where near as well written as the actual essay.

wrote fiction in master’s, while teaching
When 9/11 happened, I was inspired to write an essay about the event. This essay was published in the Houston Chronicle.

Since 2001 I have written essays.

I’ll never know how much money exchanged hands when John and I married.
“after months of negotiations and the ratifying of our own Geneva Conventions”

The bride was macabre …

We announced we had decided to breed: Older Father, High Risk Mother

Marlena born = early, angry, and slate blue.
She … found the middle finger most persuasive, and pointed it at us.

If the doctor’s didn’t act fast, I would have a stroke.
turned away to stare out the window
no point in many things
a medical student stepped between me and the room window and asked me, “How are you today?”

wished that I could do hiss

forced into playing a different hand
Where fate isn’t determined by the chance consumption of a sandwich.

Good fiction, unlike reality, must make sense.

My FIL was voted most popular by a special education student.
“There’s a tick on your head, Mr. Schaeffer,” Lance said.
… Horace felt for the spot, a mole on the top of his head.
Dr: “Lance = right”

Between the three years of cancer, John would tell stories of grampa
take them to milk the cows.
My job was to keep a safe distance from the ongoing tragedy for Marlena’s sake.
When I timed it just right, I could schedule my weekly trip to my brother’s grave, so she would sleep.

Every evening John would sit by his brother’s side… Once back home he’d sit on the porch and I’d stay inside…
One night I went to John’s spot on the porch swing.

For fifteen years…
I’d sat with him on the bluff around the Brazos river.
We’d held hands as we watched our daughter yawn on an ultrasound.
Before the better, there had been one evening, I had stood beside John. He held me steady. By all appearances I had prepared myself for the worst.
But when John most needed me… I had sequestered myself with a little girl who sees only flowers.
I went to Tommy’s hospital room the next afternoon.
“I want to talk to Tommy,” my lips cool with the lie.
Moved a chair between the hospital bed and the window

In Texas, rain doesn’t come just because it is invited. It doesn’t come until humidity… has weighted down our souls.

Four hours later John called from the hospital. Their grampa Schaeffer, lantern in hand, had come for Tommy.

Tommy was now with his grandparents.
“Tommy’s dead?” Marlena asked. “Tommy crossed the lake?” Yes, I told my three year old.
Who am I to correct her image of heaven?

Fiction, in its mercy, is unlike life and unlike death. It must make sense.

My friend on the corner, if I could see him again, I’d stop to pay my respect … to the complexity of vision.

Sharon Klander

This is a live blogging of the session.

“Souvenirs”
great-grandmother
to cheat bedtime
choreographed to make hurls seem real
metaphor machines on the rope
held to one corner of the velvet divan
pushed flat for me
stuff its deep division with a quilt
3 generations later the coliseum is jammed with television

We called it a motor court
connected like Legos
half-moons of Augustine grass
a doll’s lawn
foot-wide rectangles
there’re no more guests, no register—only a sign
on the office counter: CLOSED. But people live here.
post-war developer believed home is what
you can’t leave
She takes her chair inside.

My mother called, wants to be here, wants me to share
nursing…
too weak to fill me, too thin
bottle, I slept, sated
while my mother paced with too full watery liquid
unswaddling-clothes
I relax because she doesn’t wince
she touches me
baby-gummed biscuit

This last poem, called “Sustenance,” is scheduled to be published in Inkwell magazine as a Notable Finalist.

A friend at another college across the state had her creative writing class write 6-word stories. She also asked for additional suggestions from her Facebook friends.

Then her class voted on their favorites. And the winners were:

She can’t remember who loves her. (Kenneth H)

Always remember to kiss me goodnight. (Lori R)

Dear Lord/Bad Day/Please Help. (Chuck F)

Went for drinks. Never came back. (Susan W)

Did not study. Re-taking the class. (Keith R)

Hands held. Lives meshed. 60 years. (Dr. Davis, top vote getter)

You’re sorry. I’m sorry. What now? (Amy J)

New love. New memories. Old wounds. (Hilary W)

At work. On facebook. Got fired. (Elizabeth W, #2 vote getter).

One bended knee. One response: “Yes!” (Ben Wall)

“I do” lasted them until death. (Brandon F, #3 vote getter)

Prom dress. Hotel room. Courage. Rejoicing. (Trisha W)

Family of four. Cancer. Now three. (Ann A)

College bound. Dream found. Beautiful sound. (Saundra W)

Apple skin, stuck in Adam’s teeth. (Kenneth H)

I think this would be a great creative exercise.

TYCA National Poetry Month Celebration has one of my poems up. Go and enjoy the sixteen (and counting) video and audio versions of poems.

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. ~Robert Frost

To many people poetry remains trapped and frozen in a block of impenatrable ice. We cannot understand or appreciate it. We come to it cold and we leave it frostbitten. So how do we melt a poem?

“Poetry struck me as an arbitrary and capricious method of avoiding clarity, and where my betters heard lyricism I kept hearing foolishness. If the poem said, “Go, lovely rose!” I found myself thinking, “Scram, Rose. On the double. Take a powder, rose.” ~Jean Kerr, Penny Candy

The post continues at The Common Room, a blog by a homeschooling mother.

Even though we are 1/3 of the way through April, the Two-Year College Association is still accepting poetry in either audio or video formats for their National Poetry Month Celebration. There are some great poems already up.

If you would like to submit your work, Submit Your Poem has all the information you need.

I just submitted mine tonight. I worked pretty hard on the presentation and the webstreaming isn’t as nice as the full quality, but I didn’t think I could email the full quality… I still think it looks good. I really like how it turned out.

Hopefully soon my poem will be up with the others.