English 290F - Fall, 2013

Seminar in Creative Writing of Fiction

Class Information

Instructor: Houston, Pam
Time: R 12:10-3:00
Location: 120 Voorhies

Description

This course will be an intensive and advanced fiction workshop. My goal as workshop leader is to create an environment where writers become excited about taking both stylistic and emotional risks with their work. We will focus on what I believe to be the real artistry of fiction: the translation of the emotional stakes of the story onto its physical landscape; the way we dip our ladles into the bottomless pot of metaphor soup and pull out what we need, what we can then shape into story. We will focus predominantly on structure, metaphor, image, dialogue, and voice, and will be aiming for stories in which the language is always working in at least two ways at once. We will learn to trust the way the physical world gives us the tools (and, incidentally, the courage) to tell our most problematic and potentially profound stories. We will talk about why writing is so hard, and why it should be, about ways to trick ourselves into getting and staying at the computer, about the moment where no matter how impossible it feels to begin a new story, it feels even more impossible not to. Each student will be expected to turn in three new pieces of fiction during the course of the semester, either stories or novel chapters. There will be some reading and brief weekly exercises at the beginning of the semester that will become optional as we get farther into the real work.

Grading

Based on the quality of the work itself, the attention to the manuscripts of the other writers in class, quality of discussion of the assigned texts.

Texts

Best American Short Stories, 2013
The Tenth of December, George Saunders
Bobcat, Rebecca Lee
Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, Yiyun Li