The Course:

Welcome to Advanced Composition.  Somehow, that name isn't quite right, though:  it brings visions of longer Freshman Composition papers to mind, doesn't it?  That's not what this class is about.  So, let's think of this course as "Creative Nonfiction."

What's the difference you ask?  "Advanced Composition" as it was taught over the past century was a course where you would read "classic" writers and, basically, imitate their refined styles.  If you were lucky you might find a style of your own along the way.  Certainly, imitation has been a great tool for a lot of writers; Robert Louis Stevenson once said that he learned to write by being Sir Walter Scott for a week, Dickens for a week, etc.  However, for most of us, this'd be a tedious process, at best. 

"Creative Nonfiction" (or "literary nonfiction"), however, is the most recent name for a very old tradition.  Montaigne began it when he wrote his first "essais" -- the French word for "try" -- in the sixteenth century.  His "tries" were pieces where he attempted, creatively and concertedly, to record his own thoughts and experiences, or the thoughts and experiences of others he found interesting.  What has become "creative nonfiction" in the twentieth-first century, then, isn't so different from its beginning in sixteenth-century France.

Indeed, what we're going to be doing in this class is learning about what it really means to be a writer.  Mostly, it means that you treat writing as work, not something to happen only when inspiration strikes.  If you want to be good at something, you practice it; writing is no different.  In here, then, we're going to write a great deal.  Moreover, we're going to get more and more conscious about the craft of writing:  as theoretical object, as practiced by others, and as we do it.

Requirements:

The Portfolio

This course is going to have two major aspects, then.  On the one hand, you're going to read good creative nonfiction.  We'll talk about the essays as writing, and models.  For this purpose, we've got Nguyen and Shreve's Tell It Slant

On the other hand, you're going to write.  For this purpose, we're going to be reading Elbow's Writing With Power since it gives so many concrete ways to get started in writing, keep writing, and revise in order to make your best writing come through.  For this class you will be keeping a portfolio, consisting of everything that you write.  This means that all your rough materials (freewritings, open-ended writings, outlines, groupings, samples of your feedback, out of class writings--all of which will comprise your journal), all your rough drafts, and all your final drafts will be kept in one place--preferably a three-ring binder with divisions labeling the sorts of writing.  I want you to do this for a number of reasons.  First of all, I want you to keep track of the writing you do in here:  the amounts, the types, the ones that work for you, the ones that don't.  More than this, though, Advanced Composition will be graded on the portfolio itself rather than simply on a paper or two.  That is, I will mark you on the variety as well as the quality of the writing you do during this course.  This class is a safe environment to experiment--so experiment.  As I said, sometimes things will work and other times they won't.  That's the way writing works.  But if you don't try things, you won't know that and will simply replicate your old habits of writing without thinking about them.  And that would be bad.

The last thing in your portfolio ought to be a letter to me, evaluating what's happened to you -- in terms of your writing -- over the course of the semester.  The idea is to give me some sense of how you view the portfolio you're handing in.  This portfolio review ought to reflect how well can you talk about your writing as well as do it.  Make sure that you evaluate all of your essays as they stand. 

Writer's Notebooks

Much of the writing I listed in the paragraph above (freewriting, etc.) may sound foreign, but will become very familiar as we read Elbow and write in class.  The Writer's Notebook you keep, however, will include nearly-daily writings done outside of class, too.  That is, beside keeping your in-class writings in your Notebook space (probably a section of the portfolio) I want at least three pages a week of outside-class writing.  For the first month of the class, I want you to watch yourself writing.  Here are sorts of things to consider: 

When did you write, and where?

What worked, what didn't, and why do you think it did or didn't? 

What sorts of things distracted you? 

What sorts of things helped you write?  (My own Notebook, for instance, would probably have a lot to say about what music I had playing at the time I was writing, since I never write in silence and certainly write better with some music over others.)

How long could you keep your concentration going? 

Did classes or the readings help you? 

Can you chart the ebb and flow of your writing?   

What are your impressions about your writing?  What are your struggles and successes? 

What we're striving for here is a written record of your own efforts to grasp what writing means to you and how you go about doing it.  You don't have to answer each of these questions every time; mix things up but keep your eye trained on the particulars of the act of writing as you do it.

The second set of entries will be written reactions to what we're reading, since we're also going to be delving into the more abstract discussions of writing in the various readings from Tell It Slant.  Here, I want you to respond to the readings however you feel appropriate, though never through simply summarizing the piece (or pieces).   Look at these readings as both a writer and a thinker-about-writing: 

What catches your eye or sparks your curiosity? 

Can you understand the author's choices in the writing?  What might you have done differently? 

What phrases, sentences, or passages here stand out to you?  Copy them right into your notebook and talk about them:  explain to yourself what makes them tick and makes them effective (or ineffective) exactly.

What structures do you notice writers utilizing in their texts?  When/how might you exploit similar structures?

What themes are emphasized in a given piece, and how?

What does an author manage to convey about her or himself, or about a topic, without exactly saying it? 

What's the nitty-gritty which makes this piece tick?

Overall, the purpose here ought to be to begin seeing what other authors are really doing and then learning from them.  The key is to take each Notebook entry as an opportunity to peel open a text and see what makes it tick.  (Again, you don't have to answer each of these each time.  They're simply guides to help you respond to your readings.)

 Finally, the Notebook will be collected several times during the course of the session.  They won't be graded.  I'll react to what I read, but not evaluatively; I just want to make sure that you're keeping up on the outside, for-yourself writing.  Feel free to edit out entries from your collection (by removing their pages from your binder/portfolio) that you don't want me to read.  I'm not trying to invade your privacy.  I'm simply trying to get a feel for what you're thinking about as this class goes on and you've got a chance to reflect on it.

 Essays

 There will be four essays in here during the semester; I will give you the first question to write (see "Open" link above) and then you're free to write anything else for the rest.  The only requirement is that they all be non-fiction and between four and eight pages in length.  Of these four essays, only two of them will be graded, and you chose the two you want me to assign a grade to.  However, you ought to note that I won't be evaluating those papers until the end of the semester.  That is, you'll hand in your papers three times:  the first time I will look at your initial draft and comment; the second time I will look at a "final" copy and comment and the third time I will see it when you turn in the portfolio.  The first two times, then, when you hand it in for comments, that's exactly what you'll get:  comments.  I will tell you how the paper affected me, what you might want to work on for revisions, etc.  But, I won't grade, or evaluate, that paper until the end of the semester when you've carried out your revisions, if you're going to carry out any. 

To help me evaluate these papers at the end, for each of the two you want graded, I want you to write me a letter explaining your purpose in writing the paper, who you wanted to write it to, what you wanted the paper to achieve.  This will help me in evaluating what you've done.  (And it is only at the end that I will pay real attention to spelling, punctuation, etc.  Such things will be taken into account in my final evaluation, however, even if not greatly.)

 Peer Revision Workshops         

Finally, a great deal of the class time in this course will be spent writing and reading each others writing.  These are all the "sharings" or "workshops" on the calendar.  They will also occur to a greater or lesser degree (and in a more or less organized way) every day of the class.  Elbow will help facilitate these group discussions immensely.  What I'd like to have happen is that any time the class moves to writing/revision we can allow both parts to function.  That is, if people need response to their writing they can meet with people like themselves needing response; on the other hand, if people want to write, they can crawl off into a corner of the class (to start with at least) and write, unencumbered.  My hope is that the one element will naturally lead to the next and then back again, once some feedback has been given.  All responses will be initially written, then shared with the group.  (More information on this process will be given out closer to the first workshop day.)

I think a good notion to concentrate on as you write for these peer groups is that your first writing is done for yourself to generate ideas or begin to flesh out and organize them; your first draft will be written for your peers; and subsequent drafts will be written for an increasingly particular audience (that is, whatever one you finally envision reading this particular piece).  Remember, "the discussion works because each of the members tacitly agrees to work with members of a group."  The purposes of these groups are to help people see both what isn't and what is in their work.

Participation

Participation is important since so much work will be going on during the class.  Thus, three absences will be allowed for the session.  Miss any more and your grade in this area will be affected.

N.B.  As part of your Final Portfolio, you're going to be required to turn in four examples of the feedback you give to your peers during the course of the semester.  It might be wise to make a photocopies of feedback sheets you think you did particularly well upon, rather than having to try to scramble for them at the end of the semester.

Grades

Evaluation--and figuring out how I was going to do it--was the hardest part in setting up this course.  You see, writing is about learning, a never-ending process of growth and return:  you learn something new and then return to what you already knew to modify that, then learn some more.  Grading, though, is about ranking:  fixing a place once and for all, no movement allowed once the evaluation's been done.  Grading, as you might guess, tends to work against the experimentation often necessary for learning.  If you get a good grade, you keep doing the same things over and over; if you get a bad grade, you stick to a rigid set of rules since they'll (supposedly) get you a better grade. 

In the end, though, I've got to give a grade and you've got to receive one.  So, here's how I've devised the evaluation for this course.  Your grade will break down like this:

Below you'll find the exact sheet I will be using to crudely mark your writings at session's end (a sheet initially taken, with thanks, from my colleague at the University of St. Thomas, Dr. Erika Scheurer).  Please note that this sheet may be modified at any time and whatever version is posted here online will be taken as final and definitive. Beyond these checkmarks, I will be giving a final written evaluation of your portfolio which will help explain what the checkmarks can't.  A familiarity with these criteria will no doubt help your performance in this class, though I'm dubious it will do a great deal for your writing itself. 

Final Evaluation Sheet

A.  Two Graded Pieces (50%)

These pieces will be evaluated on the following criteria:

                                                                                                 Strong           OK       Weak  

Essay's topic is complex enough to merit, and
support, detailed elaboration

Essay has a clear context, focus, and sense of purpose;
focus is maintained and purpose is achieved

Needs of readers, including pertinent information and
contrary viewpoints, are addressed in the essay

Language is used with care, conveying a prose style
consistent with the context, projected audience,
and topic.

There is evidence of substantial development and
revision in the work, including an emphasis on
cutting the extraneous and strengthening the
necessary.

Essay is generally free of errors in grammar, punctuation
and spelling

                                                                                                                               Grade:         

B.  Total Portfolio (30%)

Portfolio is complete                                                                      Yes      No

Portfolio Review

Discusses writing and thinking processes
lucidly; evaluates writer's progress over time;
charts the degree and type of engagement
in the writing process; discusses risk taking,
experimentation, and value of heuristics; generates
an overall statement of success or failure as a
writer within the course.                                ____Strong    ____OK  ____Weak

Variety

Explores various styles of writings (persuasive,
exploratory, nature, literary journalisms,
personal narrative, collage, etc.)                                                    Yes      No

Explores various approaches to writings (freewriting,
loop writing, art, drama, and other assorted heuristics)                 Yes      No

Journals

Quantity:  thirty entries                                    Over                At                 Under

Quality:  response not summary; connections
to life, experience, other readings; question raising; 
attempts to address writing in context other than
the ones provided by class; focus on writing/reading
rather than diary/autobiography.                    ____Strong    ____OK  ____Weak

                                                                                                                                 Grade:        

C.  Participation

Attendance                                                                         OK       Over three misses

Preparation and participation                                    Strong             OK           Weak

Peer group feedback (five examples),
which are both substantial and thoughtful                 Strong             OK           Weak

                                                                                                                                  Grade:       

This Evaluation Sheet is subject to review and change before Final Portfolios are evaluated.

This may all sound complicated and confusing, with lots of things happening at once.  Once we get into the pace of the course, however, I'm sure that we'll all find a rhythm to these processes and see them for what they are:  elements of the convoluted process of writing as delineated in the specific space of a class of advanced writers.

THE GOAL

The goal of all of this, of course, is to make us better writers.  Certainly this means being able to pick up a pen (or place fingers on a keyboard) and not be frightened that nothing will come.  This class will show you that something always comes and that that something can always be improved--and then improved even more.  But being a better writer also means being better able to talk about what writing is and does.  This course, then, seeks to make us all better at both halves of the writing process:  the half that creates and the half that comments on and sculpts the created.

A NOTE ON PLAGIARISM

This is really simple:  if you copy someone else's direct words or exact ideas -- intentionally or not -- without giving them credit you fail the class.  Universities and colleges are built upon the notion that ideas matter; if you plagiarize someone else's ideas, you're denying that fundamental tenet.  Thus there will be zero tolerance for plagiarism in here.  (Please see also p. 31 "Academic Dishonesty" in the college's  2005-06 catalog and Section 54 of Hacker's Bedford Handbook.)