Creative Writing idea (or could be placed in another class… maybe):

PowerPoint Collage Poem
- Find 25+ random words online using Flickr & Google, etc.
- Use Pixlr to crop them.
- Save ‘em to a USB.
- Place them into PPT, creating a sort of surreal poem.
- Use freeplaymusic.com to find a free instrumental song for the background.
- Insert that into the PPT.
- Present to the class.

Creative Writing Poetry Mini-Assignment, due Today —> My own example.

Poem of exactly 100 word w/o use of articles (a, an, the) :

 

she knocked on my door.

powder like makeup,

fresh like bread.

snow came to remind me

of my birthday.

 

thirty-three whispers,

thirty-three seconds,

thirty-three years.

 

when others are complaining

i am supposed to be celebrating.

once it was 45 degrees.

once it was 12 inches of fluff.

 

he knocked on my door.

face like rice,

quickly as mice.

time came to remind me

I was getting old.

 

thirty-three grey hairs,

thirty-three freckles,

thirty-three years.

 

when others have gasped

i have understood my space.

once i was obviously young.

once i was purposefully foolish.

 

they knocked on my door.

wise friends.

FJ: (b) coffee + oatmeal. (s) almonds/dark choco/cranberries/raisins mixture – 220cal + water. (l) leftover pork chop + brown rice + water. (d) another leftover pork chop + brown rice + water. (s) decaf coffee with the ladies + 1/2 piece of chocolate/carmel cake. I stopped myself from finishing it off; oddly, I could feel my stomach reacting to the sugar and since I ate it slowly, I was able to stop before I got a stomach ache. Yay me.

FJ: (b) Nothing until about 10am, weirdly enough (stomachache from not sleeping well, yet I had no school dreams). Then, half of a Fuze Defensify (60ish cal) and half of a big Snickers Almond which will be about 200ish calories. I’m not finished with it yet, though, so it may become part of my snack, actually. I’ll eat at home probably, leftover Chinese (@1:30pm, 2 cups worth of General Tso’s ckn and some lo mein and a bit o rice, 1 eggroll… too spicy, couldn’t eat it all), for lunch… after running errands and before my 4pm meeting. {edit: drank more of Fuze at 4pm meeting; didn’t finish it. Had 3 beers w/parental unit out tonight – ate 2 fried pickles & half of meal. Other half = lunch tomorrow? Philly Steak sammie w/mushrooms&peppers&mayo&lettuce… American fries.}

Creative Writing is 15min away from being “first-day-complete.” A quiet crew (I’m missing two, down to 7/9)… working on their creative cards. I found cardstock… in pieces of 5×7? So, they are using old magazines and catalogs and posters and markers to create a card that says their name, has a few things they love on it, and then on the backside has to be a quote or poem that speaks to me about who they are. Like a word collage with a purpose.

Assignments for Thursday, for them, come in two parts. One part, online, a) attempt eCompanion and b) create a blog. Part Two, read read read = Annie Dillard, Chpt.2 in Writing True, 6-11 & 25-34 in The Complete Idiot’s Guide.

I will have had more meetings than classes today. I like it the other way around most of the time.

^^ So, the guy who took the pictures above did it as his own project. “After two years of photography, i wanted to build a project to challenge my creativity and discover some new horizons. This is how this project was born. My goal is to take 60 shots, on predefined themes or choosen quotes.” I’m definitely thinking that a smaller version could work in the Alternative Style portion of my Creative Writing class. Yay.

^^ Said by Thoreau. So very cool. I love him.

Hmph. Caught up on grading (for now), so… what to accomplish before the campus holiday party around 3pm? I don’t know where to start. Seriously.

I guess the big one would be getting Creative Writing settled. Looks like I’ll be teaching that as an overload since my English 120 Online will be splitting into two classes. With that said, I’ll have four English 120 sections… two on-campus and two online. Whoa. Add to all that a second 8-weeks English 105! Not a ton of preps at least! And I think I have nothing on Fridays (the on-campus 120s are MWTh) until that second 8-weeks. I may end up running/training for the Marathon on that day. Do my longest runs… boy, is this a stream-of-consciousness blog paragraph or what? Sheesh almighty.

So, yea. Speaking of the Fargo Marathon… I have until December 30th (I think) to sign up at a reduced price. It gets more expensive after that. Hmmm… as my dad says, “We’ll see.” And with the possibility of doing a Biggest Loser Challenge on campus, that’ll add to my motivation to run run run, right? One can hope.

Ready or not, here it comes. The Marathon Relay, that is. Yeppers. I’m ready, I’m freaked out, I know we’ll (I’ll) do fine, and in about 48hours, I hope to be starting (or already have started?) my route through north Fargo. Sure, I’d like to do my leg in about 75min (ran the 10K at Homecoming in that amount of time, and 10Ks are .5 shorter than my leg Saturday), heck, I’d like to do it in an hour, but really, I hope to enjoy myself. I know that feeling of enjoyment won’t hit until about mile 4, but I’m okay with that.

With that said (or written… whatever), I’m going to do some basic things at the office and then call it a day. I should’ve just taken most of this week “off” from coming to the office (to refresh the brain cells, etc.), but I am a little OCDish when it comes to checking email and blogging and Facebook-ing.

*So, when I developed the Creative Writing course, I put together (using the lovely Publisher program by Microsoft) a catalog of possible projects & their instructions. A little colorful booklet that was separate from the syllabus. Well, I liked that layout so much, I’ve decided to implement the same design strategy with my other classes. Yeppers.

coffee belly.
snow day.
striped vest.
unpainted nails.
a ponytail.
deep sigh.
paragraph break.

“Yeppers.” “Michael, what did I tell you about saying ‘yeppers’?”
I did a lot this year. Just started to fill out the categories Wade emailed in order for him to write up our performance apprasials. I believe last year he wrote that he fears I’ll burn myself out. Yeppers. I hadn’t realized I presented and attended so many things this year. And then there’s all the reading I accomplished too (although, very little recreationally unless I count the Creative Writing class). It only continues next year. There’s a new presentation to put together for both the Arts & Humanities Summit (Oct 9-10, Bismarck) and GPACW in November (required blog entries versus required student essay writing – which is more complex?) and the Midwest Institute presentation in the spring (regarding the Global Blog project “success”). I really hope I am able to just read this summer. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs… Rushdie’s novels that have been gathering dust for some time now… Fargo Rock City… there are so many. And there’s the list I had last summer too. Sheesh. Plus, Tate’s getting married. And we’re hiring a newbie. And I’ll be teaching an online course too.

The RRGSC was another good one. It keeps growing; shows me how one little idea can blossom (“Hey, we should have our OWN conference someday.”). I recall talking too much about my own research, but there were a few ideas that popped in. Like using a small graphic novel and Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs in class as replacements for Rule of the Bone (perhaps I’ll implement that by the spring?). I’d even like to rid my English 110 classes of a textbook. Blasphemous, I know. I’d like to just have The New Well-Tempered Sentence (as the grammar book) and then the graphic novel and Klosterman novel. Everything else = online. And I am starting to think of having 7 projects/papers in 110. Some small (500 words), some larger (1000 words or big presentations like the PPT MusicVideo). I’d like to rethink English 120 as well. I could assign a CONTROVERSIAL PPT MUSICVIDEO, could I not? That’d be cool, but students who don’t take my 110 may be lost with that project. It could simply be an option, I suppose.

So much thinking to do. And so much more to say about the conference. Will throw my notes up on here after I grade a few more online papers.

I’m introducing creative nonfiction today to a skinny-ed Creative Writing class (4 of ‘em are in the play this week), and as I’m re-reading the chapters I read long ago when I created the course, I am reminded of why I was fascinated by creative nonfiction more than fiction.

“[...] you must locate and shape what is interesting in the messiness of real life” (4). “The aim is to make the readers experience that world, using the ‘I’ as a guide.” “[...] Robert Frost reminds us, ‘No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.’”

More later. Gotta run to class.

So, I’m hitting a semi-writer’s block (well, sort of), as I told Ashley in a response to her frantic email this morning. My ‘block’ is that I know I who/what I want to write about. My characters. Yet, how do I start? I have too many starts in mind… but I do have a main idea of what I want to accomplish. I will write from the p.o.v. of the character who encompasses a few women I’ve known in the past… then, the antagonist will be a woman who encompasses me to a point. They will have their conflicts, separate motives, and some resolution after some climax. Do they fight over a guy? Na. Do they go their separate ways, both thinking they were ‘right’? Probably. No one wins, which is typical in life, right? Right.

I’m hoping to be able to really describe these two characters well. And the oddball situations (like talking to toliets to get them to flush, massive pigeons hitting cars after making eye contact with humans, preteens harassing adults… things I’ve witnessed.). Making them seem REAL and BELIEVABLE will be tough. And I’ve noticed that going from writing poetry to writing fiction was a weird transition; I’m trying to write fiction in a poetic manner. Whoopsie.

Write write write. Revise revise revise.

{p.s. Happy Valentine’s Day!}

A possible problem: Do I want both characters to be lovable? Do I want the readers to like both of them? Perhaps I should just focus on the protagonist? Make the readers want to see karma ‘get her back’ for her motives? I’m unsure. I may have to just write and see where these two lead me…

if my face was an egg carton,
i’d pluck my eyeballs out and wash ‘em
they are miniature deserts
on a peach plane.
if my body was a rubberband,
i’d allow it to come
boing-ing back to its resting state
the bruised left knee cap, the emotionally-drained thighs.
if my mind was yawn,
i’d let the oxygen in, and push the questions out
like a bouncer at the pub.