WEEK 1 - Organisation of WOE, free writing, writing
    about yourself, computer skills

We shall be discussing the Subject and organisation of Writing on the Edge for this semester. WOE has been taught in a variety of ways in the past (the last time was 1997) according to tutors' and students' interests and needs. Thus the class content is negotiable to some extent. Apart from the focus upon creative NON-fiction, any genre of writing is potentially a topic of study. Students may be interested in writing pieces about travel, people, hip journalism, reviews, taboo subjects, online writing, or interactive and collaborative writing.

We shall be writing something every week, workshopping our work in class, and publishing our drafts on an electronic bulletin board system.

Exercise 1. Write half a page on two of the following concepts:

Anger
Ocean
Father
Computer
Joke
Freedom
Love
Food

Save your work on to your own personal Bulletin Board accessed through the WOE website. WRITE DOWN YOUR PASSWORD!!!

How do you go from word to story?

Narrativity: narrator, persepective, Point of View, time (tense, chronology), setting, characters, plot, theme, organisations of events or images (plot, emotional arcs), mood, tone, and diction.

Feedback:
Summarise: Intention; Purpose; Driving force.

Point out in each: Stylistic successes -- best sentence; Image/s that work; Outstanding phrases.

Exercise 2. Exploring the online Web resources

The Web Resources on the WOE home page are both useful and daunting because there are so many. Basically I have not had time to annotate the usefulness of these resources since I have been collecting them not summarising. I would like you to take 3 of the links, and write short one paragraph reviews of these sites so that we may better understand exactly what is available to us.

If you can place these reviews on the WOE Class Bulletin Board I can then combine them all so that the list of resources makes some sense.

Exercise 3. - Writing about yourself & autobiographical exercises (start this week, for next week) - from Paula Schiller (1997)

Writing yourself into the picture:

No matter how young you are, you are part of history. I’m definitely a child of the seventies, an old hippie, left wing war protester, and of course -- baby boomer, destined to dominate the economy for another 30 years. Strangely, I never intended to become an academic. But that's enough about me. Where does that put you?

Writing down our experiences is a way of opening up the human dimension of history and link the private self with wider social issues. This is especially important to marginalised groups such as women, working class, poor, immigrants, racial minorities, the very aged or the very young. Through autobiographical writing they proclaim their own individuality in the midst of a society which limits or misunderstands their potential or celebrate vitality of undervalued culture.

Alternative One - Journal entry:

In what ways are you limited or misunderstood? What about your background would you celebrate? Where do you identify? With age group? Cultural group? Social class? Locality? Do you feel that there an opposing group of sector

You’re possibly in the gen-X, but maybe even younger -- of a decade that doesn’t have a label. Identify with a decade label (roaring twenties, swinging sixties, the me-generation ) or make one up and explain. Or identify with a sub-culture -- Goth, nethead? I used to try to be a beatnik when I was fifteen.

Some groups or individuals bypass mainstream establishment altogether by producing their own publications which include personal stores. Or look at the current 'zines. Last semester a Reasoned Writing student produced his portfolio as a zine -- long on creativity and humour, but woefully short on grammar and readability. Because of the nature of the course, I had to mark down because the grammar and punctuation were so atrocious, but is that fair for a personal work? The errors expressed the personality and the attitude of the writer. When you’re aiming to express yourself to a reader -- what’s the trade-off between showing rebellion, individuality, and attitude and being readable and credible enough to be considered at all seriously? Discuss?.

Memories turn into stories in our heads. Key into a memory and soon enough, you’ll invent an anecdote, vignette, or story to go with it -- you’ll likely put it in a context when explaining it to someone else. Examine the "starter list" pieces for how you and others turned single words into stories.

It is often hard to separate memory from imagination. Many autobiographies contain dialogues or events that did not happen exactly as represented but are still "authentic" or true to the writer’s experience. Autobiographical fiction, based on life events or people you know, does not strive for the same historical accuracy.

Is there is a real you waiting to be discovered. The self is a series of performances, rather than a fixed identity; autobiography turns into another type of fiction. Are there distinctions?

Alternative Two - Respond to this quotation

"In practice, however, autobiography and fiction do require different approaches to what may well be the same basic material. Mary McCarthy’s Memories of a Catholic Girlhood constantly questions the reliability of her own memory, as well as drawing attention to fictive devices, such as the running together of separate incidents. But her admissions only serve to underline here commitment to some kind of historical accuracy. The autobiographer is undertaking a search for some kind of verifiable truth however provisional. She can tease her audience or offer conflicting realities, but she mist at least be aware of this particular relationship with the reader. Weak writing is often flawed by a confusion between autobiographical and fictional form" (79).

Alternative Three - Groupwork

Workshop technique: To help you find our own distinctive voice through working the transition between speech and written language and recalling private sense impressions.

Recapture childhood perceptions through use of sense impressions.

A. Remember when you were roughly six or seven years old -- not a baby but old enough to remember. You’re still mystified by the world and in awe of adults, but you do have ideas of your own. You’re at the border between babyhood and childhood. {{{read moo cow}}}}

Go through five senses -- sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste. Jot/type one particular sense impression in each category that brings that time back to you. Pleasant or not. Just a few words. Go quickly, leave one out if you have to. Some people relate to one or two senses more strongly than others. Note your own processes.

B. In groups of 4 or 5 (face to face) -- share the sense impressions on your lists. Describe the details and the associations they bring with them. Enjoy the variety of personal experience. Relax, talk it through but be dimly aware of how you contextualise and "story" your sense impressions. The conversation may generate more memories as the varieties of experience interconnect.

C. Transfer story-telling to written text. Keyboard as quickly as possible, try to be simple and direct as possible to retain freshness. The sense impressions don’t have to be worked into the piece systematically, but the writing should always be rooted in the physical perceptions of a seven year old. The reader should be taken into someone else’s world through the use of sensuous detail. Let any push to story-telling develop naturally as it did in conversation -- don’t strain for a plot or contrive associations.

D. Polish and post. Your piece my be chronological or not -- thematic or fragmentary. Many will use the present tense and stay in the language of the child; other in the past-tense. You may be close or detached. The only thing to avoid is the "would" formula -- "on Sunday we would ....." , "on birthdays we would .....". This pushes you to overgeneralise -- stay specific and concrete. Write about a particular Sunday or birthday, even if you have to roll several incidents into one.

Feedback: Ask for specific responses to your language, diction etc. Focus other feedback on kind and use of sensory detail. Is the experience shown close-up? From a distance? Is there a pattern to the distances created? The type of sensory impression used? Does the piece sound authentic? Do you hear an individual voice or could anybody have written it?

Alternative Four - Changing one thing

"Write autobiographically", says Graham Greene, "but always change one thing" (90).

Take any of your first-person, autobiographical pieces and change one thing. The setting, a character, keep the 1st person but write from the POV of someone of the opposite sex or a different age, change the ending. One alteration may lead to another -- that’s the way of fiction. Polish and post.

Feedback: What difference does the change make to the story? How did it affect the rest of the material? Can you tell what was invented and what not? Does it matter?

On your own

1. Age 15: You’re at the border between childhood and maturity.

A. Make a note of three things: Something you wore, an expression you used, and a piece of music of the time. Post these "symbols" of your teenage self and compare notes with at least one other Edger.

B. Now step back and provide some context. Add something that was in the news at the time. Did your news item have an impact on your life or just pass you by?

C. Next, describe something that happened to you when you were 15. Anything is fine, but try not to roll several events into one. Use any of the symbols you chose or none. You can make reference to the wider world, or not. Use the language of speech. Try dialogue or teenage-slang if it fits naturally, but don’t force anything. Focus on yourself, or on another character or a set of characters.

D. Polish and post it to the whole class for feedback. Ask one or two specific questions about language or style and the following general questions: Does the story sound authentic? Is it a convincing picture of life at 15? What makes it convincing? Where does it flatten or sound strained?

Alternative Five - Other topics

Family legends: the time when ....
A Family gatherings
What is unique about me is ...

What are we reading? (everyone please look at the Whole Class WOE Board and add to this list)

Ray Archee: Glamarama (Brett Easton Ellis); A Perfect Music (Vikram Seth)

Make sure to reply to my post, not start a new thread.