Tag: creative writing

Read Peter Elbow, Professor Who Transformed Freshman Comp, Dies at 89 by Michael S. RosenwaldMichael S. Rosenwald (New York Times)
His struggles with writer’s block led him to create a process that favored an expressive, personal approach over rigid academic conventions that often stifled students.
For those interested in writing methods, Peter Elbow’s work can be seen as an interesting shift in pedagogy from the 1970s. Interestingly it relies on pieces of practices pre-dating him which inform commonplace book and related zettelkasten methods. 

For my own files, from the obituary, it looks like he was using an IBM Selectric I in some of his early work.

Replied to a post by Naida Saavedra @naidasaavedra@hcommons.socialNaida Saavedra @[email protected] (hcommons.social)
Next semester I'll teach a #CreativeWriting class (fiction, in English) for the first time ever! I'm very excited! I'll focus on short stories and flash fiction. Any ideas you may have, texts you usually include, please send them my way! #LatinaProfessor #AcademicMastodon #WritingCommunity
@naidasaavedra, some ideas for perusal:

McPhee’s Draft No. 4 suggests a useful and fun writing exercise, but it’s missing the hidden contextual advice of using older dictionaries like Webster’s 1913 dictionary. 

Encouraging creative writers to keep and maintain a commonplace book is always a fruitful exercise. Most of the “greats” had one (or something close to it), but contemporary examples like Eminem’s may be more relevant/motivating. Blogger and creative writer Austin Kleon has a digital version as an example.  Colleen Kennedy has an excellent and creative class assignment relating to this as well.

Musician and producer Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt created a set of 100+ “creativity cards” which they entitled Oblique Strategies that can be useful to introduce to students and have them use over a semester. All the editions’ cards can be found via links here: http://www.rtqe.net/ObliqueStrategies/Edition1-3.html, but there are also websites, apps, and even printable cards. 

And finally, speaking of cards, it can be fun to do experimental creative writing using index cards, a practice used by Vladimir Nabokov, Jean Paul, Arno Schmidt, Michael Ende, and many others. Open Culture has a short piece on Nabokov’s process.

Should you care to mine it for other possible ideas, I’ve got a digital commonplace of my own. Here are some possible places to start:

References

McPhee, John. “Draft No. 4: Replacing the Words in Boxes.” The New Yorker, April 29, 2013. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/04/29/draft-no-4. 
 
Somers, James. “You’re Probably Using the Wrong Dictionary.” Blog. The Jsomers.Net Blog, May 18, 2014. https://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary.
 
Kennedy, Colleen E. “Creating a Commonplace Book (CPB).” Accessed August 31, 2021. https://www.academia.edu/35101285/Creating_a_Commonplace_Book_CPB_.
 
Eno, Brian, and Peter Schmidt. Oblique Strategies: Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas. 5th ed. 1975. Reprint, self-published, 2001. https://www.enoshop.co.uk/shop/oblique-strategies.