Governor’s School English Studies Program:
Creative Writing

Description and Aims

The Creative Writing segment of your “tour of the disciplines in English Studies” will present you with opportunities to write both mandatory assignments and independent work of your own choosing. We’ll read some excellent and challenging contemporary fiction writers and poets, take part in a variety of sometimes wacky exercises to help get you writing, and learn about how one develops a career in writing.

The program will additionally help you to identify your strengths and weaknesses in any given area. And it will also help you to locate genres and subjects of personal interest, which you might explore well beyond Governor’s School.

Remember that this experience is a “crash course”—you’ll be getting a lot of material and info coming at you very quickly! If the pace seems too fast, just relax and focus on whatever seems most interesting to you.

You’ll complete the following:

  1. Two fiction projects:
  2. Fiction Project #1: A traditional plot in the realistic mode.
  3. Fiction Project #2: Experimentation with plot, character, or mode.
  4. Three poetry projects:
  • Poetry Project #1: The Thing Itself (practicing intense, concrete, specific, vivid, and sensory detail).
  • Poetry Project #2: Genre & Mode (select either surrealism, confessionalism, or formalism).
  • Poetry Project #3: The Oral and Visual Traditions (concrete poetry and the slam revolution, including performances for YouTube.
  1. An assortment of brief exercises posted to your WordPress blog:
  • Give Away a Dollar
  • The Wonderful World of Raisins
  • Practice in Lineation
  • The Exquisite Corpse (surrealist game), etc.
  1. Two workshop sessions in which your work is discussed in a friendly & supportive setting by your instructor and peers.
  2. One or more submissions to our online magazine.

We will also do a certain amount of theorizing and philosophical reflection. That is, we will sample and test the great variety of aesthetic views in the literary arts, including the ever-difficult question of what makes good poems and stories. No one person’s view or opinion is considered perfect, definitive, or completely “correct”—including the instructor’s—and all views are welcome. We do, though, discuss the strengths and weakness of different outlooks.

Evaluation Criteria for All Work and Class Participation

The criteria below apply in particular to anyone who has chosen the grade option.

  • Open-mindedness, good will, and an active curiosity are extremely important in this program. A willingness to simply give things a good-faith try is also paramount—including kinds of writing and reading which you don’t especially like or which seem strange to you (at least initially). This means withholding judgment until you actually understand what you are judging.
  • Open, friendly participation in class is vital. A writer’s workshop just doesn’t work without your active involvement.
  • A genuine effort to learn, apply workshop feedback from your instructor and peers, and actively revise/improve your writing will all help your grade and/or your overall experience here in Governor’s School.
  • Satisfactory completion of mandatory assignments (see above) will play a large role in your grade as well. Your teacher will be working with you every step of the way, so you will always know if your work is less than satisfactory—something which in fact is quite rare. (Most students produce amazing work!)
  • For specific criteria connected to specific assignments, see the assignments themselves and/or discuss with your instructor.

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