Assignments: Week 3

Tuesday
1. Finish Workshop of First Writing Prompts (p. 17 in Truth of the Matter)

2. In class writing: Your many identities. (Excerpted and adapted from Write Your Heart Out)

In Creative Nonfiction, Philip Gerard suggests that one way to discover new material is to write down five or ten identities which describe you (father, son, Catholic, etc.) and then explore what each of these identities cares about, worries about, or thinks about.

My list looks something like this: mother, wife, writer, teacher, poet, daughter, sister, friend, reader, grounded flight attendant, piano player, bath lover, cook, traveler, wine lover, music lover, reluctant exerciser, native Pittsburgher, long-time waitress and temp worker, city lover, speaker of moderate Spanglish, suburb dweller, horizontal meditator/nap lover, perpetual nester.

If you want to expand the scope of your writing, try making a list of all the identities that describe you. Put the list in your writing binder. Include your past identities. These identities are still part of your experience, if only in memory (I'm not, for instance, still working as a waitress at the Trafford Polish Club on bingo nights, but that experience is still very much a part of who I am/was/will be).

Writing from the vantage point of these identities illuminates present-day experience, brings past events forward, and prompts writers to explore subjects and passions which lie just beneath the surface.

Once you’ve listed the various identities that define you, consider how you might write from the point of view of one or more of these identities. What does the father-in-you think about the college students lost in Haiti? How does the sculptor-in-you see the winter in Pittsburgh? You might consider writing a conversation between two of your alternate selves. Coax your wild, pot-smoking teenager past to write a letter to your buttoned-down good-student present. Or write a poem to the old woman or old man you will become.

Keep this exercise in your binder as motivation for future writing assignments.

3. Review Writing Assignment -- See last week's blog post for prompt and guidelines


Thursday: Lecture -- Memoir Writing vs. Autobiography and more

At Home: Work on Writing Assignment -- Due Tuesday, Feb. 3. (Note: This is an extension of the original deadline.) Follow guidelines from blog. Length: 750-800 words.

Read: In Truth of the Matter, Chapters 4 & 5