7/21 In Class

Write your own obituary.

End of Week 3 Post

I know we've only begun to wade into our literacy narratives, but the nature of this accelerated summer session is that the third and final paper is close on the horizon. The third paper will ask you to flex your creative muscles and write in a genre of your choosing.
In preparation for tapping into your creative impulses and working toward a style of writing all your own, for this week's blog posting I'd like you to consider the most creative, and most rewarding, piece of art you've ever constructed. You could write about singing, dancing, writing, painting, sculpting; you may even come up with your own definition of "art" to include that time you made two eagles in a round of golf. Maybe you're an excellent chef and would like to describe a meal you put together. Maybe you like to garden and revel in the ever-changing landscape of your garden. Choose whichever creative endeavor has given you the greatest satisfaction? The choice is yours.
In describing your proudest moment of artistic production, you'll need at least a mentioning of how you define art and what art means to you. Please do so in roughly 300 words.

7/14 "The Watcher at the Gates"

In "The Watcher at the Gates," Gail Godwin describes that pernicious character inside each writer's head that prevents her from consistent and confident writing. Godwin's "Watcher" relies heavily on Freudian psychology and seems to loiter around a castle gate. Who is your watcher? What does your watcher look like? What does he say to you to protect you from failing, and in turn prevent you from writing at all? Where does he live? What does he eat? You may want to use a visual to enhance your audience's conception of your "Watcher."

7/12

"I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin and employs a vocabulary as unormanetal as a monkey wrench," says Kurt Vonnegut in "How to Write with Style."

Think about the customs of speech in your own home town and formulate a metaphor that describes those sounds, styles, shapes, and intonations. Use one or more visuals to supplement your writing.

Week 2 Character Description

In the name of research for the individuals we'll be limning (look it up) in our current and upcoming papers, please choose a character, real or fictitious, and compose a 400-word depiction of that character's appearance, action, dialogue, setting, and any other element that will allow your audience to experience that character in full vividness. Use sensory details. Describe the lighting, what they're holding, who they're with, what they're talking about, what they're wearing, what they look like. Go deep into your imagination and picture a moment (like a movie, if that helps), then render that moment into the text field of your blog. I look forward to meeting your characters!

7/7 In Class Blog Post

Step 1: Go online and find an image that corresponds to your crots paper. It could be an image of an object that appears in a scene, or an image that has meaning to your unifying theme, or another image with import to your narrative. Then upload that image onto your blog.

Step 2: Use your words to describe the image you chose. Pay close attention to the colors, textures, profiles, and describe them using sensory details and exact depictions.

Sensory Description

Think about your walk to the Williams building. What do you see? What are the colors, the shapes, the textures? What does it smell like? What are the sounds? For today's blog post, I'd like you to choose one object or area or moment of your morning commute and describe it in as much sensory detail as possible. Pay attention to the five senses, and also how the physical elements affect your mood and outlook. Please write until about 10:00 am.