Here’s what I sent out through email, but posted here for easy access:

For Wednesday, I plan on doing a little generative work along with talking about titles. I’ve done a bit of homebrewing on the workshop based on what I find useful towards the end of my writing process.

For the workshop, I ask everyone to bring the first sentence of your piece. If you’re having trouble with it, feel free to bring in the last sentence of your piece, or a sentence you’re having trouble with.

The exercise I have in mind works best if handwritten, so if you’re able to please bring a notebook/some paper and any sort of writing utensil!

On April 30, Catherine, Christine, and Fin will send us all drafts; on May 7, Aly, Julie, Kaz, and Lucy will do the same. Each student will have 30 minutes of class time to workshop their submission.

When you send us your draft, tell us a little about your draft:

• How close to a complete draft is it?
• How close to a complete essay is it?
• What are gaps or questions you want help with?
• Do you want line edits? Or is it too early for that?

Also, tell us what kind of workshop would be helpful to you:

• A general workshop, where we read and offer whatever feedback comes to mind
• A targeted workshop, where we focus on particular elements of craft–say, character, structure, narration, opening and closing paragraphs, setting and scene, or whatever else you might want to specify. Of course, you might also request a combination of targeted tasks.

An even more targeted workshop, zooming in on particular elements or mechanics:

• For example, highlight all verbs and pronouns; or adjectives and adjectives. See what that yields.
• Highlight showing and telling (or action and exposition) in different colors. See what that yields.
• Highlight dialogue and internal dialogue (or maybe indirect speech or free indirect speech)
• Highlight language that reveals setting
• Highlight language that reveals character traits and relationships

The writer should let us know how to focus the workshop. Any combination of the above is fair game, as are other ideas writers come up with. Just be sure what you request makes sense for a thirty-minute session.

Readers should bring in notes and feedback for the writers. The form of these will vary depending on the type of workshop each writer has requested.

Revisions are due, to me, via email, by Wednesday, May 18 (meaning, really, before the morning of May 19.

Ali’s essay contains twenty-two paragraphs. Let’s figure out where those paragraphs take us by mapping the their topics and transitions. How does the essay move? How might we describe its structure after we do our mapping? Will we find structural units other than the paragraph? Can the essay’s structure be described in terms of sections? Might we describe the structure in relation to Ali’s sources? Or particular themes?

1.

Topics: Syllogistic connection between the body and universe; poetry <–> science; the nature of reality; ways of thinking–cognition and displines; poets trump scientists

Transition: Lands on poetry, set-up for literary ways of knowing

2.

Topic: spaces, bridges, side door into poetry and science; the subjectivity questions, what we can see or not see; the concrete vs. what’s beyond our knowing

Transition: disorienting; aporia; expansion on 1

3.

Topic: Revell’s poem; formal disorientation; occupying space

Transition: “As”; narrowing; leap, like Hanuman

4.

Topic: connectedness; fretwork; patterns; 3 theories of connectivity/relationship

Transition: Pause; ekphrastic; an imperative; get ready; call to action

5.

Topic: Kismet

Transition: IN: locates, getting specific, elaborating; from the minute to the expansive

6.

Topic: what a poem does

Transition: universe + space links; poem as thread; contracture–“to me” then expands to universe

7.

Topic:

Transition:

8.

Topic: failure; queer failure, failure and utopianism

Transition: failure connects to “success and failure” but in non-causal, not easy to notice

9.

Topic: Icarus’s fall; transgression; consequence; what is worth it?

Transition: “That was to me”–expands and becomes specific; it elaborates

10.

Topic: Being part of a system; the stakes of participating; letting go of greed vs. abundance

Transition: Expulsion

11.

Topic: relations between bodies; cause <–> effect; individual affecting the system; small actions have real effects

Transition: Question; taking stock, bringing together; ends on Revell

12.

Topic: Memory: childhood fascination astronomy

Transition: Changing forms; “I feel”; forms equal embodiment and writing; metamorphosis

13.

Topic: High school; gives up on astronomy; limits; access to ways of knowng

Transition: “Later”

14.

Topic: poetry and science–what’s shared

Transition: hindsight; recalls opening

15.

Topic: scale; time and space connected and mutable

Transition: “At the smallest”; contracture; pinpoint, location

16.

Topic: space-time continuum; black holes

Transition: Question + answer

17.

Topic: event horizon is fiction

Transition: But; now insists; refutation, contrasst

18.

Topic: apparent horizon; there may be no black holes; what’s inside collapsing stars?

Transition: Question? If not that, then what? From an answer to what’s uknown

19.

Topic: Why does this matter TO ME?

Transition: Questions; personalization

20.

Topic: Halberstam, low theory, illustration of another net; tiny subversions of heteromormative culture

Transition: Leap

21.

Topic: ; our = queer people, artists and poets and creators; scientists

Transition: “Our own”

22.

Topic: Loop; theories of Lucretius and tales of Ovid; metamorphosis

Transition: We connected, time;

23.

Topic: More questions; future possibility

Transition: Revell (voice of poetry); Or possibility; loop; links to beginning

(Copying here what I sent via email earlier today, for your easy reference!)

Hi, everyone!

Toni Morrison’s “The Site of Memory” made me think of an essay by Siri Hustvedt, “Three Emotional Stories”–where she argues that “memory and the imagination partake of the same mental processes.” She offers quite a bit neurological research to support the claim.  If it’s true, what becomes of facts? One point Morrison makes is that facts are “publicly verifiable.” It seems to me that the creative nonfiction writer deals in the facts Morrison describes, along with other, more personal facts–the fact that I feel this or remember that or did something. Hustvedt suggests that “writing fiction is like remembering what never happened.” If memory and imagination overlap to the degree Hustvedt suggests, what might this mean for nonfiction writing?

The full essay is on our “More Readings” page. In the meantime, I’ll paste the abstract here. Also, I encourage you to send me readings to post–anything you think would interest the group.

Hustvedt’s “Three Emotional Stories” (abstract)

Hi all,

In preparation for this Wednesday’s workshop, please remember to do the following:

1. Select one idea or story you’re considering writing for your final piece. If you’re torn between several ideas, try leaning into the intuition we’ve been talking about this semester. Which one seems like more fun? Or has a little more spark (or Woolf’s “shock”). Go with that.
2. Draw a map of the story or narrative. Ideally, this is done by hand, but if digital is your preferred media that’s okay too. Be playful and creative here, there is no wrong (or “right”) answer. Maybe the map is topographical. Maybe it’s a treasure map. Maybe you’re like “I have only a vague idea of what I’m writing about” so the map is just one word leading to another, or a really chaotic etch-a-sketch. This is unbelievably low stakes, so use this as an opportunity to lean into your creative instincts.
3. Bring your maps to class on Wednesday, we’ll use them for the exercise.

Can’t wait to see em’. -Aly

1)
The truth is that your body is never the same again after having children. But when does anyone’s body remain the same from one day to the next? Cells multiply and die constantly, no matter the way your body is used on this earth. According to researchers at Stanford, a body is almost entirely brand new, cell-wise, every 7-10 years. Things like pregnancy and giving birth just demonstrate much more visible and rapid change.

2)
What was different? For the first few days after giving birth, she felt like she was walking through water. Her legs were unattached from her body as she willed them to step one after the other, leading her to the bathroom while the urine leaked from her jelly middle and into pools on the floor around her feet.
What was different a year later? Those same legs were doing roundhouse kicks against a boxing bag, her arms with a quick right jab-left hook, her abdominal muscles tight and visible under her skin as the liner in her underwear caught what was now only occasional leaks.

Unclean :

Ms. Fley, can you help me put the earring back in?  “I… uh.m. mmmm… I don’t know.  Just, I don’t know… my nails are too long.” How do I say weirded out, without saying weirded out? Oh, just tell her it’s unsanitary. “Any bed she lies on while her discharge continues will be unclean, as is her bed during her monthly period, and anything she sits on will be unclean, as during her period.”

There is a stench coming from your head and shoes. “STOP”, turn around then come back in. YOU know better than to walk in here with shoes on… said every Asian mom I’ve known. “Infectious bacteria can attach to your shoes when you’ve been walking outdoors, in public restrooms, and other places with high concentrations of pathogens. Pathogens are organisms that cause disease”. In between messy and neat I see the sprawled out outside-clothes in my friend’s room, the wrinkled spots in my lover’s room, the mice. Mice apparently cause diseases too. What is good? What is clean? You shall not eat any of their flesh, and you shall not touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you. I moved here and began eating unclean meat. I have made my seats unclean through being messy. In July, my new favorite bakery racked up 66 points for sanitary violations that included fly infestations, personal inadequate cleanliness and contaminated surfaces. There were signs from the owners saying they had closed due to plumbing issues. What is good? What is clean? But the voice spoke again: “Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.”

My mother was too busy working and my father had been out of my picture for a decade. My brother spent his time studying or playing basketball with his friends while I stayed in our tiny little apartment, wrote silly little poems, and daydreamed.

So when my classmates asked if I wanted to ride around the park together, I lied and said I was hanging out with my family.

I didn’t want to tell them I never learned how to ride a bike.

In theory I know how to do it: Grab the handlebars. Swing right leg over the seat. Sit down. Push down with right foot against the pedal to start moving forward. Plant your left foot against the left pedal and follow the movement. Keep your balance.

That’s it, right?