Beyond the writers' workshop : new ways to write creative nonfiction /
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| Author / Creator: | Bly, Carol. |
|---|---|
| Edition: | 1st Anchor Books ed. |
| Imprint: | New York : Anchor Books, 2001. |
| Description: | xxiv, 376 p. ; 21 cm. |
| Language: | English |
| Subject: | |
| Format: | Print Book |
| URL for this record: | http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/4447184 |
Table of Contents:
- Introduction
- Chapter 1. Taking on Three Demanding Situations First
- Cultural Deprivation
- The New, Nontraditional Mission of Present-Day Writers
- Eight Elements of Bad or Scanty Teaching of Creative Writing
- Chapter 2. A Fundamental Mistake in How We Learn to Write: Skipping the Long Middle Stage of Writing
- The Three Stages of Writing a Manuscript
- Chapter 3. Using Empathic Questioning to Deepen Your First Draft
- Empathic Inquiry
- Some Final Thoughts
- Chapter 4. How Stage-Development Philosophy Serves Writers
- A Basic Overview of Stage-Development Theory
- Assumptions of Stage-Development Theory
- How Two Authors Offer Us Stage Philosophies That Are Especially Pertinent to Writers
- Chapter 5. We Have Pushed Off from the Animal Kingdom for Good: Good News for Writers from Neuroscientists
- Reentry and Literary Endeavor
- Becoming a Generalist
- The Love of Thinking
- Chapter 6. Literary Fixes
- Driving the Exposition Inward
- Raising the Tone
- Changing Statement to Theater (Showing, not Telling)
- Combating Lying and Cowardice
- Removing Self-References
- Pushing Off from Mindless Male Realism and Mindless Female Realism
- Checking for the Skinflint Syndrome and Enhancing Your Manuscript as a Gift to the Reader
- Asking, for a Last Time, What Is Still Missing from This Manuscript?
- Small Language Fixes That Help Remove Humbug
- Starting Sentences with Dependent Clauses
- Getting Rid of We, Everybody, and All
- Chapter 7. Seven General Issues in Teaching Creative Writing
- Writing Literature Can Be Taught
- Protecting Student Writers from the U.S.A. Junk Culture
- Curing Writers of the Bad Habit of Perseverating
- Convincing Writers that Surprise Is the Inevitable, Eternal Principle of Literature
- Practicing Professional Reticence
- Being Aware of Bullying
- Making the Classroom One of the Great Places on Earth
- Chapter 8. Teaching Elementary School Children to Write
- Ways to Use the Appendix When Working with Children
- No Children's Writing Should Ever Be Subjected to Peer Review
- Validating the Serious as Well as the Fun-Loving Spirits of Children
- Offering Some Comment for Every Piece of Creative Writing a Child Does
- Giving a Child Two Opportunities to Answer a Question
- Teaching Children as Well as Ourselves the Psychological Skills that Protect a Person's Personality from Group Bullying or from Unfair Pressure by People in Authority
- Asking Children to Memorize One Hundred Stories by the Age of Eighteen
- Chapter 9. Helping People in Middle and High School Learn to Write
- Adolescents and Monoculture
- Using the Appendix of This Book with Adolescent People
- No Peer Reviewing of Manuscripts
- No Teaching of Literary Techniques
- No Asking for Rough Drafts of Creative Writing
- Never Failing to Comment on the Core Content of Students' Papers
- Teaching Adolescent Writers to Continue Memorizing Stories, if They Started in Elementary School, and to Add Poems
- An Ethics Code for Teachers of Adolescents
- Chapter 10. Helping College Students and M.F.A. Candidates to Write
- Leaving Behind the Natural but Useless Attitudes Common to Any Enclave of Creative Writers
- Ways to Help College- and Graduate-Level Writers Experience a Literary Change of Heart
- Chapter 11. Teaching at Writers' Conferences, Community Retreats, and Summer Short Courses
- What These Courses Are, and the Burgeoning Population Who Use Them
- Three Kinds of Populations We Don't Serve Well Enough So Far
- Chapter 12. Some Issues of Aesthetics and Ethics of Writing Literature
- Some Psychological Dynamics of Aesthetics and Ethics
- Distinguishing Hack Work from Literary Artifice
- Normalized Indifference Is Our Comfortable Stance on Any Subject until Something Jars Us
- How the Old, Familiar Dynamic Called Pain Avoidance Affects Creative Nonfiction
- Falsifying What Could Otherwise Be Interesting Psychological Evidence about Homo Sapiens in One or Another Setting
- Hatred of Literature by Those Left Out of It and Sometimes by Those of Us Who Participate in It
- A Psychological Tool for Ethically Minded Writers
- Writing Creative Nonfiction for the 400,000
- Appendices
- Appendix I.. Fifteen Writing Exercises
- Four Exercises about Background or Place
- 1.. Writing without Cliches about a Beautiful Place
- 2.. Ugly Place, Good Event: Ugly Event, Good Place
- 3.. Pathetically Shallow Use of Places Once Full of Serious Enterprise
- 4.. Paying Respectful Attention to Background Settings
- Easy Exercises
- 5.. Good and Terrible Qualities in Human Nature--An Exercise for People over the Age of Fourteen
- 6.. Ignatow Poem Exercise
- 7.. A Catty Vignette
- 8.. An Essay Pot--A Group Talking Exercise
- 9.. Writing about Work
- Elegant Exercises
- 10.. Attending to Other--Specifically Attending to Relatives, Nonhuman Creatures, or Plants
- 11.. Increasing One's Affection for Utterly Ordinary People
- 12.. A Writing Exercise for Extroverts
- 13.. An Irritating Person Exercise
- 14.. A Nearly Impossible Writing Exercise
- 15.. The Andover Format: Writing Your Life at Two Levels--One the Usual Sort of Memoir, and the Other Secret and Profound
- Appendix II.. Usage Sheets
- Appendix III.. Abbreviations and Notes for Referencing Margin Comment on Students' Papers
- Appendix IV.. Formats and Strategies
- A Format for Writing an Essay
- The Vertical-Line Way of Taking Notes
- Analyzing a Literary Work of Art
- Appendix V.. A List of Useful Sentences for Writers in a Tight Spot
- Appendix VI.. Two Examples of Class Agendas for M.F.A. Students
- Appendix VII.. The Robertson-Bly Ethics Code for Teaching Writing to Middle and High School Students
- Endnotes
- A Reading List
- Index
- Permissions Acknowledgments