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Monthly Archives: November 2010
Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction
Back to the Survey Monkey survey I gave my students on November 16. This is a fairly long post, but that’s because it’s about one of the most important decisions my students had to make. Question 3: How would you … Continue reading
Posted in Teaching
Tagged Jack Kerouac, pantser, plotter, storyboard, Syd Field, Tim Hallinan, William Faulkner
1 Comment
MFA vs. NYC = Team Short Story vs. Team Novel
In his book, The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing, Mark McGurl says that it’s time we paid attention to the “increasingly intimate relation between literary production and the practices of higher education.” So. This is … Continue reading
Posted in CW Programs, Teaching
Tagged AWP, Chad Harbach, creative writing programs, MFA vs. NYC, n+1, novel, short story, Slate, workshop
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Changing Habits During NaNo
Survey Question 2: Did you start writing on Nov. 1 or before? 9 students started on Nov. 1 4 students started before Nov. 1 (sometime around Oct. 1) Are you happy with that decision? All the students who started on … Continue reading
The Gamification of Novel Writing
Are Word Counts like “Points”? For twenty years, my writing practice had no structure. I wrote when inspired and I would keep writing until I wasn’t inspired. If I didn’t have a big block of time, I wouldn’t write. I … Continue reading
Posted in Teaching
Tagged AWP, Buster Benson, external rewards, gamification, Generation Y, Inman Majors, Jesse Schell, NaNoWriMo, video games
4 Comments
Survey Says!
On Day 15 of NaNo, I created a Survey Monkey survey so that I could check in with my students. This was so incredibly easy to create and implement, I know I will keep using this tool. This is what … Continue reading
Posted in Teaching
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Writing Together
On Monday, I opened the door to my classroom and my Advanced Fiction students filed inside. I opened up some cookies, scattered some leftover Halloween candy on the desk. I showed them that we’d received another postcard from the students … Continue reading
Publicity as a Motivator
The Ball State Daily News ran a story today about National Novel Writing Month. Seriously. Front page. Above the fold. The neighboring headline read “Sex Study places BSU 31st.” And right above, there was a huge picture of Conan O’Brien. … Continue reading
The Virtual Teacher’s Lounge
Over the weekend, I responded to a Facebook status update. “KYLE MINOR notices that MFA programs are producing more good short story writers than good novelists. Many of my friends from many different programs have had difficulty, post-graduation moving from … Continue reading
Posted in Teaching
Tagged Kyle Minor, Michael Nye, novel, pedagogy, short story, The Missouri Review, workshop
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Five (or Six)
Charles Demuth, Figure 5 in Gold A few days ago, Sonya Chung posted this great essay on The Millions about being a teacher of creative writing and about the uncertainty that’s inherent to the writing life. She mentions a recent … Continue reading
"Workshop" to "Writing Group"
I love what Peter Turchi has to say about workshop here. This and Madison Smartt Bell’s introduction to Narrative Design have really informed my thinking about how I teach workshops. When I’m teaching a workshop in which students are sharing … Continue reading
Posted in Teaching
Tagged Big Thing, Blackboard, Madison Smartt Bell, Peter Turchi, process blog, workshop, writing group
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