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Creative writing:HE Landskursus – November 2014 1

Bent Sørensen, AAUbent@cgs.aau.dk

+ Creative Writing – part of an English curriculum

English communication skills – You need to be able to understand, describe and produce English language for different and specific purposes.

Academic writing – a genre you need to master at the university and can use elsewhere

Grammar – formal and functional understanding of the English language

Basics of translation and language revision – comparative language skills

+Creative Writing, continued

Creative writing - will not teach you to be artists

But it gives you a chance to study poetry, fiction and non-fiction in new ways

You will produce several types of texts, playing with creativity across the genres…

+Writing game 1

Write a poem in five minutes.

+Writing game 1

What did you write about?

Reflect on the ’creativity’ of it. Is it creative? Why/why not?

+Writing game 2

Consider the following instructions. Try it out.

Would this work as a way of getting your creative writing going?

+Instructions

“Whatever you write is right. You can’t write the wrong thing.

It doesn’t even have to be in proper English.

Write when and where you feel like it; day or night, in bed, in a café or on your bike (difficult!).

Write only two lines, or lots – in a notebook, on scraps of paper, perhaps in a folder, or on your computer...”

+Instructions, cont’d

Type whatever comes into your head for 2 minutes – don’t stop to think!

It might be a list, or odd words or phrases – spelling and proper sentences don’t matter…

+And the source:

Gillie Bolton: ‘Writing or Pills’ in The Self on the Page, ed. Celia Hunt and Fiona Sampson

IN OTHER WORDS, A LEAFLET DESIGNED TO HELP ANXIOUS OR DEPRESSED PATIENTS

Does that make you feel differently about the writing you have just done?

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4 perceptions of writing – who writes for whom..?

① Life-writing (about me)

② Cultural practice (for us)

③ Dissemination (“Formidling”)(from me to you)

④ Professionalism (for them)

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WRITING THE INVISIBLE

Something deep and invisible ‘comes out’ in writing.

Whether the ‘source’ of the writing comes from ’inspiration’ or from expressing ‘self’, that source cannot be seen.

Writing does not involve the use of pre-existing materials, beyond paper/screen, and pen/fingers. There is no musical instrument, no clay, no paint and canvas, no marble.

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WRITING AS READING

“Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.” —Annie Proulx

If you don’t read, you cannot write. Read journalism, reviews, travel writing, scientific articles, editorials, etc., etc.

All writing does not come from personal experience, but from reading, analysing and thinking about the above.

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WRITING AND REWRITINGAS WORK

All completed writing involves preparation, taking notes, writing rough, perhaps fragmented versions, rewriting, producing drafts, revising, editing, proof-reading

The muse doesn’t hand down any complete and perfectly formed novels, poems or plays to writers

Writing is (hard) work.

+Myth 1

Myth: you need inspiration to write – good writing begins spontaneously in an inspired moment

Reality: Inspiration emerges from writing.

+Myth 2

Myth: you have to think before you can write

Reality: you think when you write and after you have written

+Myth 3

Myth: you need a sense of control and coherence in your thinking before you can write.

Reality: control and coherence appear when you write

+Myth 4

Myth: it is important to begin well

Reality: the best beginning is often written as the last thing. It is more important to begin at all than to begin well!

+Myth 5

Myth: all texts must be original – you always have to write something new

Reality: very little is thought, written or said which is completely new.

+Myth 6

Myth: all texts must be flawless and perfect

Reality: there is no such thing as a perfect text.

+Myth 7

Myth: good writing progresses easily

Reality: writing is full of ’relapses’. You need to rewrite, delete and be patient!

+Myth 8

Myth: writing is most effective if you write in very long sessions, and writing demands long streches of uninterrupted time.

Reality: the above leads to long breaks and getting burnt out. Creativity arises from continuously working with writing.

+ Writing game in textual intervention: Shakespeare sonnet

# 18

De- and re-centering:

Read and comprehend the poem

Re-write as a story told in the 1st or 3rd person

Use only words of one syllable

+William Shakespeare - Sonnet

#18Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:

But thy eternal Summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

+ What was hard in that task? Not the one-syllable word restriction…

+Surrealism as a case

Automatic writing

Collective authorship

Randomness as compositional principle

Exquisite corpse game, named after this collaborative sentence: “The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine.”

+ Visual Exquisite Corpse

+Details: Head

+Details: Upper body

+Details: lower body

+Details: Feet

+ Writing Game 7: Exquisite Corpse

Rules:

In groups of 5, take turns writing a word or a sentence without knowing the preceding bit(s)

It’s the responsibility of the no. 5s to write down the sentence!

+Exquisite Corpse rules 2

Choose one/two word(s) each for the first sentence – simultaneously without consulting the others…

1. Article/pronoun + adjective (My green)2. Noun (friend)3. Adverb (if you want/need one) + verb (usually makes)4. Article/pronoun + Second adjective (the best)5. Second noun (Sunday)Result: “My green friend usually makes the

best Sunday”

+Ex. Corpse cont’d

Repeat the procedure one more time – the two sentences together will form a Surrealist mini-story

For instance: My retarded house finally eats a huge dog. The

incompetent bird mainly takes the pink star.

The no. 5s in each group are responsible for posting this Exquisite Corpse on the blog!

+What is hyperfiction?

• Fictions to be read on screens

• Words, images, sounds, links creating connectivity, forming a web

• Difference from other (narrative) media (novels, films, plays)? Non-linear texts, potentially non-linear reading experience, interactivity, open-endedness, playfulness…

+ Hyperfiction – a few recent examples

Peace - Play - Space (a DIY attempt)

Signal to Noise by Ian Hatcher

screen - a Virtual Reality-Cave hypertext by A.W.

McClain

+Writing game 12a

Opening Sources

Play the game!!! Reflect on the interplay between you and the text (who’s in charge?)

Post your reflections on the blog…

+Writing Game 12b

Create your own idea for a hyperfiction!

OR

Post your critical/analytical responses to one or more of the hypertexts you’ve interacted with...

+ Hypertexts from my classes

Where I Did Not Meet My Brother (an intervention into Google Maps)

Wolfgang, Amadeus & Mozart

Mirror Reflection

+List of writing games

1. 5-minue poem

2. Process writing

3. Word Hoard

4. Shakespeare sonnet in one-syllable words

5. Rewriting neutrally

6. “My Last Duchess” from another view-point

7. Exquisite Corpses

8. Author Function

9. Genre modulation (Hemingway)

10. Travel writing (based on blind vocabulary choices)

11. Pastiche/parody (Naming of Parts)

12. Hypertext

13. Dictionary gifts