Final Portfolio
Due - Thursday, December 10, 2009
Note: If you cannot make it to class on December 10, make sure to put your final portfolio in my box in HUM 380 BEFORE the end of class that day. I will not be returning to campus to pick up late portfolios, and I will not accept portfolios by email or snail mail.
Your final portfolio should consist of a careful revision of one poem, one short story, and a one-act play or substantial scene. In addition to the final versions of these three pieces, you must include the original exercises used to develop each one, as well as any in-between drafts.
Unlike the mid-term portfolio, the final portfolio will be graded. Your revised works should be substantially different from the original exercise, and though they may not be better, they will almost certainly be more deeply explored, they will likely be longer or more concise (depending on the form and style), and they will definitely be free of spelling and grammatical errors! They will likely also have employed some of the revision techniques detailed in the Revision handout.
If you would like your final portfolio returned to you with comments, please include a stamped, self-addressed envelope along with your portfolio and I will mail it back to you. Be sure that you have affixed adequate postage!
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Week 13 Assignments
Writing Assignment
Choose One
1) Find a piece of writing that you find difficult, frustrating, or confusing, and write your own creative response, copying as many elements as you can (form, style, tone, rhythm, development, themes, etc.)
2) Compose an ars poetica in any genre (look back at "Paradoxes and Oxymorons," "Ars Poetica" and "Personism" in the course reader for a few examples)
Read for December 3
Not Knowing, Donald Barthelme
Against Epiphanies, Charles Baxter
Blog
1. This week, post a challenge you have with revision, or post a revision method that works well for you, or both!
2. Post comments on at least three other entries. Remember, this is not a place for critiquing each other’s work. Instead, identify something from the piece that strikes or interests you, ask a neutral question about the work, or suggest ways the author could deepen or expand it.
Choose One
1) Find a piece of writing that you find difficult, frustrating, or confusing, and write your own creative response, copying as many elements as you can (form, style, tone, rhythm, development, themes, etc.)
2) Compose an ars poetica in any genre (look back at "Paradoxes and Oxymorons," "Ars Poetica" and "Personism" in the course reader for a few examples)
Read for December 3
Not Knowing, Donald Barthelme
Against Epiphanies, Charles Baxter
Blog
1. This week, post a challenge you have with revision, or post a revision method that works well for you, or both!
2. Post comments on at least three other entries. Remember, this is not a place for critiquing each other’s work. Instead, identify something from the piece that strikes or interests you, ask a neutral question about the work, or suggest ways the author could deepen or expand it.
Online Literary Magazines
Two of the online literary literary magazines that I have recently begun reading are Toasted Cheese Literary Journal (tclj.toasted-cheese.com) and Carve Magazine (www.carvezine.com). Carve is devoted to fiction, whereas Toasted Cheese contains flash fiction, fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction. They are both interesting sites for finding emerging authors, and I think the writing they publish is thought-provoking. I would definitely recommend checking either one of them out.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
A Weird One
www.sicjournal.com
I'm really into a local writer named Aaron Cometbus. He started a fanzine in 1981 called "Rip it up." These are stories about the bay area, fiction, and anything entertaining. One issue talked about how to not be bored in the city, which bart route has the most heroin addicts, all of the above. John Catrona, one of the main contributors to Sic literary magazine, was one of the main contributors to Cometbus' fanzine. He continues the bizarre and funny tradition that Cometbus started and takes a step further. It's fun, interesting, and you get to learn weirs, useless facts and stories about this city that we love.
McSweeney's
This has probably been done already, but I really like this online journal. I think they have a lot of very talented, witty writers that contribute, and that they represent a younger generation of folks whose work tends to be about more relevant information. I have read a number of pieces on this site and found them to be amusing and interesting; you may as well.
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/
READ TIN HOUSE
Tin House Magazine is my favorite of the literary magazines with a simple aesthetic (yet kinda organic, not too sleek) and a variety of really good contemporary literature varying in genres. The magazine/site offers information on workshops and readings along with good resources for upcoming writers. They publish credible authors with new talent and publish with good reason. The web site is a good introduction to a literary magazine with versatility. 
www.pindeldyboz.com
This site is pretty cool in its simplicity. The submission process is easy and straightforward. Every "issue" the website releases (weekly, bi-weekly?) only 6 stories, occasionally art or some other form of creativity.
REVISION
"The great thing about revision is that it's your opportunity to fake being brilliant." Will Shetterly
"Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with the first draft to the point where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospects of never publishing." Richard North Patterson
"I have rewritten- often several times- every word I have ever written. My pencils outlast their erasers." Vladimir Nabokov
"The difference between the right and the nearly right word is the same as that between lightning and the lightning bug." Mark Twain
“All first drafts are shit.” Ernest Hemingway
“A careful first draft is a failed first draft.” Patricia Hampl
“The secret of being tiresome is to tell everything.” Voltaire
TIPS FOR RE-VISIONING
• THINK BIG, don't tinker – don’t get caught up in the small details, save them for later. Instead, think about big picture questions – structure, character, exactitude, language.
• Read your work aloud, or read it to a group – often by just reading your work out loud, you will notice lines that are confusing, difficult to read, or that just don’t flow right. This is even more true if you’re reading to a group!
• Patrol for adverbs and adjectives – go for stronger nouns and verbs instead. If you are falling back on lots of adjectives and adverbs, chances are you could strengthen your work by looking for more powerful, interesting, and exact nouns and verbs.
• Put it away for a while – it’s difficult to look at your work objectively too soon after you write it. Try putting work away for anywhere from a week to 6 months and then looking at it with fresh eyes.
• Move scene into summary and vice versa – often a labored scene of dialogue can be summarized in one pithy sentence of summary. Similarly, a dull paragraph of summary might come alive if it were written in scene.
• Find the hot spots and write into them – don’t worry about how the material will fit into your work, just write into the electric moments and see what arises.
• Experiment with the narrator/speaker – try moving from 3rd to 1st person to give the story more immediacy and to find the voice.
• Envision a specific person as your audience and write to that person
• Re-write a poem in a traditional form, or take a formal poem and re-write it as free verse – sometimes we get trapped by the form our work takes, especially if it feels very successful at the beginning. Sometimes the constraint of a form helps us think about content, and sometimes breaking out of a form helps move the poem forward.
• Change the form – from prose to poetry, theater to fiction, etc.
• Play with line breaks – go from long and skinny to short and squat, or change the stanza breaks to create different emphasis.
• Take an interesting minor character and let that character become the main character in a new story
• Make a mess – resist the urge to polish too soon (i.e. in the first and second drafts). It is difficult to write well when you are worried about perfection. For many writers early drafts are no more than a sketch of what the final product will be.
• Think about how much you tell your reader – are you providing too much, is the piece too on-the-nose or over-determined? Do all the arrows point in the same direction? Or are you providing too little – are events rising out of the blue, or is the narration confusing and chaotic?
• Have your characters say the opposite of what they mean – this is a good exercise when you think the story might be too “on-the-nose”
• Cut away everything that explains the story or poem, leaving only action and description
• Translate a poem or story into a different language – how does the work change?
• Your revisions don’t have to make it into the final draft!
"Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with the first draft to the point where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospects of never publishing." Richard North Patterson
"I have rewritten- often several times- every word I have ever written. My pencils outlast their erasers." Vladimir Nabokov
"The difference between the right and the nearly right word is the same as that between lightning and the lightning bug." Mark Twain
“All first drafts are shit.” Ernest Hemingway
“A careful first draft is a failed first draft.” Patricia Hampl
“The secret of being tiresome is to tell everything.” Voltaire
TIPS FOR RE-VISIONING
• THINK BIG, don't tinker – don’t get caught up in the small details, save them for later. Instead, think about big picture questions – structure, character, exactitude, language.
• Read your work aloud, or read it to a group – often by just reading your work out loud, you will notice lines that are confusing, difficult to read, or that just don’t flow right. This is even more true if you’re reading to a group!
• Patrol for adverbs and adjectives – go for stronger nouns and verbs instead. If you are falling back on lots of adjectives and adverbs, chances are you could strengthen your work by looking for more powerful, interesting, and exact nouns and verbs.
• Put it away for a while – it’s difficult to look at your work objectively too soon after you write it. Try putting work away for anywhere from a week to 6 months and then looking at it with fresh eyes.
• Move scene into summary and vice versa – often a labored scene of dialogue can be summarized in one pithy sentence of summary. Similarly, a dull paragraph of summary might come alive if it were written in scene.
• Find the hot spots and write into them – don’t worry about how the material will fit into your work, just write into the electric moments and see what arises.
• Experiment with the narrator/speaker – try moving from 3rd to 1st person to give the story more immediacy and to find the voice.
• Envision a specific person as your audience and write to that person
• Re-write a poem in a traditional form, or take a formal poem and re-write it as free verse – sometimes we get trapped by the form our work takes, especially if it feels very successful at the beginning. Sometimes the constraint of a form helps us think about content, and sometimes breaking out of a form helps move the poem forward.
• Change the form – from prose to poetry, theater to fiction, etc.
• Play with line breaks – go from long and skinny to short and squat, or change the stanza breaks to create different emphasis.
• Take an interesting minor character and let that character become the main character in a new story
• Make a mess – resist the urge to polish too soon (i.e. in the first and second drafts). It is difficult to write well when you are worried about perfection. For many writers early drafts are no more than a sketch of what the final product will be.
• Think about how much you tell your reader – are you providing too much, is the piece too on-the-nose or over-determined? Do all the arrows point in the same direction? Or are you providing too little – are events rising out of the blue, or is the narration confusing and chaotic?
• Have your characters say the opposite of what they mean – this is a good exercise when you think the story might be too “on-the-nose”
• Cut away everything that explains the story or poem, leaving only action and description
• Translate a poem or story into a different language – how does the work change?
• Your revisions don’t have to make it into the final draft!
Exquisite Corpse
http://www.corpse.org/
So, aside from the name pulling from the rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, this online literary magazine has its own pretty interesting history first starting off as a print magazine but then moving into the online domain when the internet started becoming more popular in '99. It was started by a pretty well known poet named Audrei Codrescu (not sure if I spelled his name right), but it's already managed to maintain a pretty high reputation throughout its course of existence. A lot of the writings on there there are extremely varied, when makes it the least boring site to go to when you're in need of stealing an idea or feeling like you're a little tired of reading Shakespeare's sonnets for hours for a class you hate. Check it out, and, hopefully, be amazed...in a good way.
So, aside from the name pulling from the rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, this online literary magazine has its own pretty interesting history first starting off as a print magazine but then moving into the online domain when the internet started becoming more popular in '99. It was started by a pretty well known poet named Audrei Codrescu (not sure if I spelled his name right), but it's already managed to maintain a pretty high reputation throughout its course of existence. A lot of the writings on there there are extremely varied, when makes it the least boring site to go to when you're in need of stealing an idea or feeling like you're a little tired of reading Shakespeare's sonnets for hours for a class you hate. Check it out, and, hopefully, be amazed...in a good way.
Online Magazine
An interesting online literary magazine I found is called Mused, which I found through the site BellaOnline.com. The magazine is available in HTML and PDF formats and it features poetry, plays, fiction, non-fiction, interviews, and art and photography. I liked the variety they offer. I also liked the aesthetics of the site. It is clean (uncluttered) and easy to navigate, which is a plus considering some of the other sites I visited had great material but were an eyesore.
Here's the link again (in case the hyperlink doesn't work):
http://www.bellaonline.com/review/
- K. De Melo
Here's the link again (in case the hyperlink doesn't work):
http://www.bellaonline.com/review/
- K. De Melo
La Petite Zine
http://www.lapetitezine.org/
So to be honest, I tend not to dabble with online magazines, however as I was cruzin the ol webster, I came across La Petite Zine. Just reading the "ABOUT" link caught my attention. Check it out, these guys sound tight. The site seems to publish only poetry, which is fine with me. And apparently many of the writer's published on this site are pretty established. I believe it.
So to be honest, I tend not to dabble with online magazines, however as I was cruzin the ol webster, I came across La Petite Zine. Just reading the "ABOUT" link caught my attention. Check it out, these guys sound tight. The site seems to publish only poetry, which is fine with me. And apparently many of the writer's published on this site are pretty established. I believe it.
The Legendary
The Legendary
This is a great online magazine. Lots of absolutely fabulous poetry. I love it, there's new submissions regularly and a poetry contest of some kind, and they always have the winners up, and these people have some serious talent. Below is the first place winner of their newest contest.
Pantyhose
(After Bukowski's 'the shoelace')
by Ann Howells
a crying child, a
broken nail, a moldy
shower, a debt, bills
stacked on the kitchen counter, stacked
so high you see them teeter
like a skyscraper in the wind …
it’s not catastrophe
that breaks a woman’s back
dying you’re prepared for, beatings,
divorce, house fire, earthquake, childbirth …
no, it’s niggling
trivialities
not the compound fracture
but the pantyhose that run
just before the interview piddly things
that bite like blackflies
that strip away flesh and will not be
dispersed—overdue books or car inspections
or telemarketers, or keys lost
or mouse droppings found, or cramps
breasts too tender to touch
water in the basement and squirrels,
you hope, in the attic and not a damn flower
in the lawn, except dandelions
it’s always rats or gnats or fleas or bees or
spiders or crickets or
red wine spilled on the white sofa, and
you’re out of toilet paper, or
out of luck or too much luck,
all bad,
the mattress sags, chair cushion spills
it’s guts the president’s a moron and
your boss is a letch
smoke detector beeps
all night, toilet’s clogged, milk’s curdled,
$450 for a new dryer, delivery
and installation from J.C. Penney’s
bank says you’re overdrawn, again
your temperature’s up and the chips are
down and the dog gnawed the heel off your
favorite pumps, and everything
everything is too heavy—
your purse, your workload, your weight
and your heart:
it’s heavy as hell and twice as
threatening.
every time you sneeze your bladder leaks
and people demand you volunteer there’s that
and there’s spam, VDs & DVDs;
non-alcohol beer, three month droughts,
$3.00 gasoline
and green
catsup
or getting by
at a convenience store on the midnight shift
or working day care or selling
door-to-door or mucking stables or
car-jacking young executives
breaking their heads and leaving them
vegetables
at the age of 27
suddenly
a pounding in the middle of the night
and a suspicious mole
on your belly, carpal tunnel getting worse,
and it’s $60 for a brace, $14,000 for surgery,
and Korea and Afghanistan and right here at home, and
tight jeans and baggy jeans and
no jeans allowed and make-up
and bare face, and plenty of plastic but no glass,
except the one you hate to peer into and perhaps
a shard to cut your
wrists.
and with every pair of ruined panty hose
out of hundreds, thousands, millions of pairs
one girl, one woman,
one person’s
back is broken.
This is a great online magazine. Lots of absolutely fabulous poetry. I love it, there's new submissions regularly and a poetry contest of some kind, and they always have the winners up, and these people have some serious talent. Below is the first place winner of their newest contest.
Pantyhose
(After Bukowski's 'the shoelace')
by Ann Howells
a crying child, a
broken nail, a moldy
shower, a debt, bills
stacked on the kitchen counter, stacked
so high you see them teeter
like a skyscraper in the wind …
it’s not catastrophe
that breaks a woman’s back
dying you’re prepared for, beatings,
divorce, house fire, earthquake, childbirth …
no, it’s niggling
trivialities
not the compound fracture
but the pantyhose that run
just before the interview piddly things
that bite like blackflies
that strip away flesh and will not be
dispersed—overdue books or car inspections
or telemarketers, or keys lost
or mouse droppings found, or cramps
breasts too tender to touch
water in the basement and squirrels,
you hope, in the attic and not a damn flower
in the lawn, except dandelions
it’s always rats or gnats or fleas or bees or
spiders or crickets or
red wine spilled on the white sofa, and
you’re out of toilet paper, or
out of luck or too much luck,
all bad,
the mattress sags, chair cushion spills
it’s guts the president’s a moron and
your boss is a letch
smoke detector beeps
all night, toilet’s clogged, milk’s curdled,
$450 for a new dryer, delivery
and installation from J.C. Penney’s
bank says you’re overdrawn, again
your temperature’s up and the chips are
down and the dog gnawed the heel off your
favorite pumps, and everything
everything is too heavy—
your purse, your workload, your weight
and your heart:
it’s heavy as hell and twice as
threatening.
every time you sneeze your bladder leaks
and people demand you volunteer there’s that
and there’s spam, VDs & DVDs;
non-alcohol beer, three month droughts,
$3.00 gasoline
and green
catsup
or getting by
at a convenience store on the midnight shift
or working day care or selling
door-to-door or mucking stables or
car-jacking young executives
breaking their heads and leaving them
vegetables
at the age of 27
suddenly
a pounding in the middle of the night
and a suspicious mole
on your belly, carpal tunnel getting worse,
and it’s $60 for a brace, $14,000 for surgery,
and Korea and Afghanistan and right here at home, and
tight jeans and baggy jeans and
no jeans allowed and make-up
and bare face, and plenty of plastic but no glass,
except the one you hate to peer into and perhaps
a shard to cut your
wrists.
and with every pair of ruined panty hose
out of hundreds, thousands, millions of pairs
one girl, one woman,
one person’s
back is broken.
Paradoxes and Oxymorons (Essential Intimacy)
There is some serious business going on in this very short 4-4 line stanza poem. When I "discover" a poem like this, it reminds me of why I'm writing, so I can reach a level of concision in my own poetry that can contend with this simply complex voice of Ashberrys. The self awareness that Ashberry displays in this little piece is not uncommon to modern literature, but through a very important mixture of ambiguity and straightforwardness, Ashberry accomplishes a dialogue with the reader where the reader becomes the poem that Ashberry is writing through the act of reading it. I read this poem three times before I read it out loud and I was already slowly becoming aware of what Ashberry is saying, but when I finally read it out loud (twice) I became aware that someone else was in the room, John Ashberry, lying on the bed next to me, reading this poem out loud.
Narrative Magazine
Link: http://www.narrativemagazine.com/
It was founded in 2003, and was one of the first online literary magazines to give a voice to the online generation of writers, as well as one of the first to have the same quality of writing as some of the more traditional Literary magazines. The website has also worked very hard over the years to ensure that good writing has a place in modern society online. The website features a variety of literary genres, including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, as well as cartoons. Check it out.
Shampoo! :)
http://www.shampoopoetry.com/
So unfortunately I am not an avid reader of the webs many literary magazines. However, while I was browzing around I stumbled along this website. It is not an actualy literary mag but it features different poetry and it is called SHAMPOO! I absolutely love the title. They have been around since about 2000, and it seems there is no specificity as to when each issue is released. It appears to come out every 2-3 months. They are currently on their 36th issue. They also have a page of information about poetry events and readings through out San Francisco, which I found very useful. So try on some Shampoo...as they say "It will makke you TINGLE!"
So unfortunately I am not an avid reader of the webs many literary magazines. However, while I was browzing around I stumbled along this website. It is not an actualy literary mag but it features different poetry and it is called SHAMPOO! I absolutely love the title. They have been around since about 2000, and it seems there is no specificity as to when each issue is released. It appears to come out every 2-3 months. They are currently on their 36th issue. They also have a page of information about poetry events and readings through out San Francisco, which I found very useful. So try on some Shampoo...as they say "It will makke you TINGLE!"
link
http://www.fictionaut.com/
According to Carolyn Kellogg Fictionaut brings the possibilities of the social web to literary writing. Part self-selecting magazine, part community network, Fictionaut is a way for readers to discover new voices and for writers to share their art, gain recognition, and connect with their audience and each other.
According to Carolyn Kellogg Fictionaut brings the possibilities of the social web to literary writing. Part self-selecting magazine, part community network, Fictionaut is a way for readers to discover new voices and for writers to share their art, gain recognition, and connect with their audience and each other.
The site has a sophisticated, clean design, one which seems to assume that its members will plunge in and begin reading with little hand-holding.
I do not belong to the site due to it being in Beta and invite only. Anyone have any experience with it? Sounds like it could be really neat-o.
Literature in Bulk Quantities...
...like corn, or as the indigenous Mesoamerican Taino people called it: maize
Although it's not technically a literary journal, Esquire magazine has an online fiction section with some great stuff. They host an annual short story contest that I wrote something for, but couldn't finish it by the deadline. But, anyhoo, check it out here: http://www.esquire.com/fiction/
I used to like to read the print edition of the threepenny review, but always felt a little slighted by the price being roughly six dollars and ninety seven cents more than the title indicates. Luckily, there is an (abridged) online version available for looking at: http://www.threepennyreview.com/index.html
Oh, and another one is Eclectica. The site is actually a bit sparse looking; kinda reminds me of the old days of really bad looking geocities and angelfire types of webpages, which I think are due to be ironically cool pretty soon (give it another year or two). But the magazine takes submissions year-round and they are pretty frequent with putting out new issues (a lot of these lit journals only put out an issue like two times a year) and some of the work is quite good, and also I think it's probably useful to see the type of work that people are reading/writing currently, considering most of the authors we read in school are pretty much all dead. http://www.eclectica.org/
Although it's not technically a literary journal, Esquire magazine has an online fiction section with some great stuff. They host an annual short story contest that I wrote something for, but couldn't finish it by the deadline. But, anyhoo, check it out here: http://www.esquire.com/fiction/
I used to like to read the print edition of the threepenny review, but always felt a little slighted by the price being roughly six dollars and ninety seven cents more than the title indicates. Luckily, there is an (abridged) online version available for looking at: http://www.threepennyreview.com/index.html
Oh, and another one is Eclectica. The site is actually a bit sparse looking; kinda reminds me of the old days of really bad looking geocities and angelfire types of webpages, which I think are due to be ironically cool pretty soon (give it another year or two). But the magazine takes submissions year-round and they are pretty frequent with putting out new issues (a lot of these lit journals only put out an issue like two times a year) and some of the work is quite good, and also I think it's probably useful to see the type of work that people are reading/writing currently, considering most of the authors we read in school are pretty much all dead. http://www.eclectica.org/
Lung Poetry Journal
One day while perusing the "Writing Gigs" section of Craigslist I came across Lung Poetry Journal asking for submissions. I checked out the link and was instantly mesmerized by the site's exquisite layout. After clicking on a couple of the pages I learned that Lung Journal was an online journal devoted to modern poetry. I was instantly hooked. The coolest part is when you click on the link to read the actual issue. It opens up to a page that looks like pictures of an actual journal (which makes it really easy to read). Instead of scrolling up and down to read stuff you can see the work as it would be laid out in an actual magazine. Pretty cool.
The other cool thing is the fact that anyone can submit work and it's free to submit. You can email the editor your poem(s) and he reads them all himself (I think the magazine is run by a one-two person staff). So if you like contemporary poetry and pretty websites you should definitely check this one out.
www.lungpoetry.com
The other cool thing is the fact that anyone can submit work and it's free to submit. You can email the editor your poem(s) and he reads them all himself (I think the magazine is run by a one-two person staff). So if you like contemporary poetry and pretty websites you should definitely check this one out.
www.lungpoetry.com
Cool sites
I found this site: www.blackbird.vcu.edu. You can choose from four tabs located on the top: poetry, fiction, non-fiction, gallery, features & browse. You can listen in on the poetry too. There’s this other site www.fishousepoems.org that my CW 301 teacher uses, that I like. The fish house site only has poems, but the blackbird site has all the other stuff I mentioned above. I like the logos and themes of both sites. Both are easy to navigate w/ neutral colors that don’t frighten the senses.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Literary Whatnow?
Honestly, if I were to post a link to a literary magazine, it would just be the most obscure looking result of whatever Google returned on my search. There's such a logjam on my must-read list right now, I don't feel the need to actively seek out more text...
I do have a list of webcomics I catch up on every other day, though. Maybe I'll check out some of the links people post and see if I could arrange something like that with online magazines.
To round this post out with some kind of link, I'll just advertise my favorite webcomic:
XKCD.com
Devoted to "Romance, Sarcasm, Math and Language"
Check it out.
To round this post out with some kind of link, I'll just advertise my favorite webcomic:
XKCD.com
Devoted to "Romance, Sarcasm, Math and Language"
Check it out.
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