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Open Creative Nonfiction
Course Material
- Syllabus for Open Creative Nonfiction
- Week 1: Thursday, September 16th (synchronous meeting)
- Week 6+: October 26th (synchronous meeting)
- Week 6: October 19th and 21st (revised)
- Week 5: October 12th and 14th (revised)
- Week 4: October 5 and October 7th (revised)
- Week 3: September 28th and September 30th (revised)
- Week 2: September 21st and September 23rd (revised)
- Theme, Terms and Class Structure
Week 6: October 19th and 21st (revised)
For Tuesday, October 19, please post the following exercise to the shared googledoc:
EXERCISE
End your piece. The challenge here is to create an ending where there might not be one, since the place will always be there. Resist the urge to tie your story into a “bow”—the ending can be complicated, abrupt, peter out—we should just know it’s intentional.
Think about this process as if you’re closing of the door with a gentle swing. You aren’t halting the story forever, just exhausting your written relationship with the place at this point in your life.
For Thursday, October 21th, prepare to lead discussion on one piece (tbd) and familiarize yourself with the following articles:
READING
Mark Doty, “Return to Sender:Memory, Betrayal, and Memoir"
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
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Doty discusses the “reinterpretation of memory”—does his definition mesh with your experience of farming your memories from different vantage points? Is it possible for stories to ever really be “done” in this model?
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Does the act of writing the past encourage you to slide from one identity to another? How smooth and facile are these transitions?
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At what points have you chosen between “honesty” and “coherence”? When have you felt yourself hedging the past?
