If I Were Teaching a Course...

...in Creative Writing, I would give (at least) these four assignments:

1) Write a sonnet with complete meter and a traditional rhyme scheme. Try to use some sonnet conventions.
2) Write a free-verse poem, with no rhyme, which is to some degree about a physical, existing location.
3) Write a short prose piece (at least three pages) including dialogue between 4+ characters.
4) Write a short prose piece that does not contain any dialogue or adverbs, and contains no more than one adjective per paragraph (average). Use perfectly formal language: no contractions, no fragments, no comma splices or run-on sentences.

I would also offer as an optional 'challenge' the writing of a sestina or a villianelle. Haiku sequences would also be a good idea.

I was thinking about this last night. Now, why would I assign these particular tasks?

Well...
I truly think that learning to write at least half-decent poetry is a major step toward writing excellent prose. You can write good prose without being able to write poetry, and you can likely get toward excellent without it, but I can assure you that being able to write poetry hugely improves your ability in prose. Hence two poetry assignments.
However, being able to write decent free-verse poetry (which most poets these days choose to write) requires, in my opinion, a stronger sense of form poetry. Sonnets are a good place to learn form, but I think haikus might give you certain skills as well. If you only write free-verse, I think you have a harder time learning rhythm. If you have something which forces a rhythm upon you (ie. metre), you get a sense of that rhythm better. It's a similar idea to learning the rules before you break them. So in order to write good free-verse, you need to be able to write at least half-decent form poetry. Or, at least, it helps.
Oh, and if free verse gets too abstract, it sucks majorly. So that's why it's about something concrete.
OK, the dialogue piece. Why? Well, most people struggle with dialogue. This will help with that. Also, you'll eventually need to learn how to manage multi-person conversations (as Jon can attest to), and this challenge should equip you for it.
Finally, the last prose. Why the ban on modifiers? Because modifiers are cheap ways of communicating. Verbs and nouns are more powerful, so use these whenever possible. Use adverbs when only an adverb can convey what you want to say. This is a rule most modern "literary" authors use. It does improve the elegance of your prose...and if you want to break this rule, you still have to know it. So write without adverbs and with few adjectives for a while, and once your communication skills have improved, you can let the modifiers back in.
Why the formal language? Again, you want to get a grip on structure and perfect communication. Once you've mastered this, then you can venture into breaking the rules.

Now, the caveats.

This is my own career. If you look at some of the stuff I was writing free-verse in my earlier university career, it lacks the structure, the pacing, and the design that the later free-verse has. This is because I hadn't sufficiently learned how to use this. Some of my improvement came from writing more formed verse. The thing is, though, that's not all that helped. Reading my peers' free-verse and reading 'professional' free verse. Also, Wayde Compton's 49th Parallel Psalm. That uses awesome line-breaks, which are crucial to writing poetry that doesn't suck badly. If you have a copy of Lake Effect 4, I'd say you should look at the free verse in that, and I'll particularly direct you to "south-end headphone seraphim" by Adam Wray, "black dog on repeat" by Anna Maxymiw, and "without consent" by Angela Hickman. Any will do, though. Look at their line breaks and rhythms. That is how one can write good free verse. I have also written some newer free verse of which I might be more inclined to brag; the earlier stuff is mediocre, as I said.

Other people, however, learned differently. Some started with free verse and have never ventured seriously into form, unless required to for an assignment. I think Anna Maxymiw took this course. Some began with prose and worked into poetry by force...and a good thing, too, because their poetry rocks (Sean Seal, in the anthology). But I still maintain that my assignments are good, because they work different muscle groups, and regardless of the order you prefer, I don't think anyone will argue that these skills don't reinforce each other.

That is all for now.

Writing Package

This is a list of all possible 'resources' that I have posted on my blog that writing-type people might find useful. Some of them are kind of a stretch, yes.

All posts that have the label 'words.'
Different figures of speech.
How to use figures of speech (maybe).
How to use a semicolon.
Character groundwork.
Editing.
Contemplations on being published.
All posts that have the label 'publishing.'
On writing outside of my means.
How goals shape writing.
When convoluted writing is educational.

If you're more interested in the literary theory end of it, which I haven't included here, you can click on "literary theory" and "journal series" in the list of words down in the left-hand bottom corner of the page (ie. in the sidebar). For things I have written, you could try "poetic form." I currently do not have a label for my own writing. [Edit: Actually, now I do.]

Working in Fort McMurray: Episode Umpteen

G'day, Internet.

It is currently Wednesday, but it feels more like Thursday to me. This will inevitably end in disappointment. The reason it feels like Thursday is that I worked Sunday, helping at National Aboriginal Day. It was not a difficult day as far as working goes, but it means Monday felt like Tuesday and it all dominoed from there.

I have said that cleaning boats has given me time for thinking, though productive thought isn't a guarantee. It's more wandering around sort of thinking, producing weird, repetitive, and usually forgetable 'results.'

'Result' 1: A previous discussion on Cait's blog about past and future selves disagreeing over the quality of one's work made me think of plural selves among my friends. OK, I think about plural selves fairly often in my on-going questioning about the nature of identity and of multiplicity. Anyway, I remember way back in first year that we were talking about something and Jamie (some of you readers know Jamie; others won't) said that something I had said made her feel sort of like two people in one skull, an out-going Jamie and a reserved Jamie. According to her, her selves got along fine. I think I remember Cait saying that if she became two people, her selves wouldn't get along very well. This made me think about other people's selves interacting: two Roz would probably be very awkward together, and I can imagine two Kays sitting around talking about their emotional situations very--rationally is the wrong word, as is calmly--honestly. But I have a hard time imagining more than one of myself. Sometimes I can, but not often, and not often comfortably. I am somewhat attached to my singularity, even if I question it from time to time.

'Result' 2: I've given thought to literary theory. I'm trying to develop of school of criticism that combines formalist, reader-response, and authoral approaches. I am interested in the rigour and text-centricness of formalism, but cannot conceive of useful criticism which ignores a text's effect on the reader. How can you talk about a horror novel without discussing how the scariness of it influences the 'meaning' or ideology of it? How can you talk about a comedy if you ignore the humour? Formalism doesn't seem equipped to deal with these questions. No, scratch that. Formalism isn't equipped to deal with them. And I generally do not care one wit about authoral intent, but I do think it would be a worthy project to find a way to at least allow a critic to discuss the author, since some projects would be more useful/meaningful/relevant if you could bring the author in. Lots of people do anyway. Granted, the only examples I can think of at the moment are cranks, but, hey, there are likely legit ones. My professors, actually, come to think of it, often implied authoral intent as much as some of them were formalist. So finding a way to integrate that would be nice, but I refuse to do it if it doesn't seem honest to me. Anyway, I'm working on the epistemology/metaphysics of such an approach. I'll publish if I come up with anything insightful.

'Result' 3: I've been thinking about escapism. I have traditionally sat between two different factions on this one: those who prefer escapism--and sometimes think it fits outside of the reach of literary analysis, somehow--and those who think escapism is trash and I ought to be reading something more challenging (teachers and professors). I tend to think that the best escapism isn't really escapism at all, but teaches us things from within an awesome story. Cases in point would be Harry Potter (the value of courage, friendship, equality, honour, humility, and love) and The Chronicles of Narnia (too many lessons to go into, but at least one per book). This is what I would like to write.
But anyway, I re-read a post I wrote a while back about Domino, and that brought me to thinking about escapism which represents an act of escape. Consider Narnia: in many cases, the children are escaping an uncomfortable situation in a boring and morally oppressive environment to enter their adventures in Narnia. This exactly figures the reader (if approaching the story as escapism), in which they escape from their own messy and often frustratingly boring lives into the adventures of Narnia. Or a young boy is told that he is a wizard and taken from the normal world into a magical one. Or a woman is taken from dull lonely routine into an exciting intrigue with a mysterious stranger who makes her feel sexy (I imagine this is how romances go, but have no idea, so let me know if I'm off). Or an average citizen accidentally gets involved in an international security threat/is compelled to hunt down a cunning serial killer/must face a supernatural horror. Either way, the character moves from the dull to the exciting, recreating exactly the same journey as the reader. This is something I may want to explore more.

'Result' 4: I have given a little thought to the nature of artifacts. When does an object become an artifact? When the museum owns it, or when the paperwork known as 'accessioning' is completed? How do we treat these objects at the different points in their existence? It's like a rite of passage, only not for a person. There's liminal space. It's vaguely interesting to think about while working in a museum, and has some practical application in my interaction with these objects, but likely is of little interest to you readers. Also, this sort of thinking has likely already been done by people in Museum Studies programs.

Anyway, these are a sampling of my thoughts. Other than plot lines and character sketches (which are not going up here), they are maybe the most interesting for you to read about. Re-hashing arguments against Dawkins' claims isn't exactly exciting. If you really want to read those, I might as well direct you to the original posts, linked on the sidebar. I can't even remember what else I thought about.

I did, however, see some interesting things. For instance, assorted homeless people, who were predominantly Native, were dancing behind Rona. Later, they got in a bit of a shoving match and started swearing at each other. I could hear it from inside the engine room of the CCGS Miskanaw. Oh, I'm done the engine room now and have gone through some cabins. I'll be done with the Miskanaw tomorrow, at least for the time being. Also, according to the care taker, the dog Max hates Native people. I don't know what to make of this claim.

That is truly all for now.

Personal Resolution Not To Be A Blog Slave: Status = FAILED

I worked at Heritage Park today, helping set up for National Aborignal Day.

Yes, the government has set aside one day for the recognition of Aboriginal people. Before you get all antsy, I'll point out that the Earth gets an hour, and that's not even official. So a day isn't bad. Relatively speaking. Well, yeah, it's pretty bad, but that's beside the point. The point just so happens to be that I worked at Heritage Park today.

Considerations:

1) Cleaning the interiors of ships is not very hard work. Tedious, dusty, cramped, hot, finickety work, yes, but is not physically trying. At the end of the day I am sweating and dirty and my legs are tired, but I am not cardiovascularly exhausted. Preparing for NAD when you haven't been doing that sort of work for two months is. I was in much better shape by this time last summer than I am today. My perseverence is as good as it ever was (which is really the best thing I had going for me: I'd work past my "exhausted" point far longer than most of my coworkers, even if my exhausted point was sometimes sooner). My stamina isn't.

2) The fact that a girl is cute and cheerful and employed at the other site does not mean she is single. Rats. I'm not sure what I was expecting in Fort McMurray.

3) Working away at ships is good for contemplating literary theory, the philosophy of interpersonal relationships, and theology. Working away at events with loads of people is good for actually developing interpersonal relationships.

4) Drinking water when you're very thirsty can make you even thirstier for the rest of the day.

5) I haven't mowed lawns in four years. I haven't really had a lawn to mow, or at least not for more than two weeks at a time. Today was the first in that time. It's not that bad.

6) I am a slave to the computer screen. Or maybe I'm just a bit bored.

7) It's funny. I'm in a lieu period right now. My relationships are in stasus. I'm not developing new ones very much right now. I like my coworkers well enough, but I'm not making the step from 'coworker' to 'friend.' I have made that step once or so in the past, but it isn't really happening right now. And I'm sitting here re-evaluating all of my past friendships and maybe somewhat more than friendships, but I'm not discovering anything new or coming to terms with things I already new. I'm just...re-living it all interally. My isolation isn't really allowing me to develop; perhaps I am allowing my isolation to prevent me from developing. I'm cryogenically frozen, but stuff's still going on anyway. Not much of note, but stuff. Hence blogging all the time, except, unlike Kay or Cait or, I see recently, Roz, it's not really me processing anything. It's just me doing what I always do on my blog, which is keep everything at an even longer arm's length than with people and with myself. My only new discovery is this one: my laid-back approach to relationships is just an excuse to not feel anything, and that goes badly when I can't help feeling something anyway, as I have forgotten how to deal with it. As a result, I am not particularly upset that I am not growing in relationships, even though I suspect cerbrally that it's a bad thing. That is my one new idea, and it counts for absolutely nothing, because over here in stasus, knowing that I am not growing doesn't help an iota. Knowing how to grow might, but I haven't got that figured out yet, and I am feeling too lethargic to figure it out.

8) I need to blog less. It takes up time I could be writing or reading or doing something productive. But I think I enjoy it too much to give it up. And somebody will squawk if I let it slide.

9) A good old-fashioned-looking tipi is really cool. So are older native folks (often elders). And old people in general. I like being around them. Little kids are great too. A little kid came up to me today and we talked about what I was doing, and then about the bumblebee in the flowers. And earlier today an Metis elder helped us erect the tent for the event on Sunday, and we talked about the time he worked on the river boat at the Park and the D250 at my work site.

Movie Adaptations

I have had an idea.

What if, instead of selling movie rights in perpetuity, we only sell rights to movie companies for three year terms--or, maybe, for fourteen months after first showing. By which I mean, if 20th Century Fox buys the movie rights to the Earthsea trilogy, they have the exclusive right to make that movie...until fourteen months after The Wizard of Earthsea hits theatres. At that point, the LeGuin estate can sell the movie rights again to another company if they want. Obviously, companies would buy the rights for far less (unless everyone played hardball). However, if the movies suck, you can get someone else to try making a better one.

An Interesting Trend in Japan

Take a look at this link.