Creative
A S y lla b us f o r EN 4 2 0
Writing
M cP h erso n Col l eg e
E sse n t ial M a t t e r s
EN 420 Creative Writing ......................3 credit hrs.
Course meets in ...................................... Mohler 204
from............................................................2:30 – 3:50
on .......................................................... Tues. & Thurs
Instructor ................................................ Bruce Clary
e-mail ..................................... claryb@mcpherson.edu
Web Site ......................wwwi.mcpherson.edu/claryb/
Office ....................................................... Mohler 201
Office Hours....................................................... TBD
Phones ..............College X: 2530; Home: 242-0530
(In addition to taking drop-in visitors during
posted office hours, I will schedule
appointments during other available times.)
Requirements Met: EN 420 counts toward
elective hours required for degrees in English
and 7-12 teaching certification in English.
Required Texts & Materials
Addonizio, Kim and Dorianne Laux. The Poet’s
Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of
Writing Poetry. New York & London: W. W.
Norton, 1997.
Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on
Writing and Life. New York and London:
Doubleday, 1994.
Steele, Alexander, ed. Gotham Writers’ Workshop:
Writing Fiction. New York & London:
Bloomsbury, 2003.
About 10 file folders and a three-ring binder for
organizing your exercises and the develop-
mental histories of your work, and your
course portfolio.
S p ri n g 20 0 9
C OURS E DESCRIP TI ON
Personalized study in creative writing, with the
student experimenting with various kinds of
poetic and fictional expression. The course
introduces the rigors of the writing life and
emphasizes the serious writer’s need to develop a
writing discipline. The instructor assigns a wide
variety of writing prompts and exercises, but
students choose their own subject matter and
submit only works of their choice for evaluation.
Students also have the option to emphasize poetry
or fiction writing and thereby to adapt the course
to their own interests of goals. (See also the Special
Injunction at the end of this syllabus.)
R A TI ON A L E & MISSI ON
“No writing is a waste of time—no creative work where
the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must
work. With every sentence you write, you have learned
something. It has done you good. It has
stretched your understanding.”
—Brenda Ueland
Through creative use of language, we find and
contemplate meaning, reflect on life and
experience, and formulate our own visions of life
and the world.
Writing poems and stories leads to enhanced
understanding of ourselves, of others, and of
language. Writing poems and stories also increases
our interest in and our critical appreciation of
others’ poems and stories. So that you may enjoy
and increase these benefits throughout your life,
the overarching goal of this course is to motivate
you and provide you with the tools to be a lifelong
creative writer and reader of creative works.
2 EN 420 Creative Writing
O UTC OMES & I NDI C AT O R S
The following statements describe what you are
expected to be able to do upon completion of this
course (outcomes) and to explain how you will
demonstrate that ability (indicators).
1. Use a wide variety of techniques (e.g.,
freewriting, image translation, journaling,
guided imagery, imitation, pattern
appropriation, etc.) to get out of you onto
paper the poems and stories you have in you.
Indicators: (a) Participate enthusiastically in in-
class writing exercises. (b) Submit assigned
exercises employing such techniques.
2. Keep a writing discipline (and thereby
appreciate and understand the processes and
discipline required to produce creative work).
Indicators: (a) Maintain and submit a log of
weekly writing sessions. (b) Submit weekly
exercises and final portfolio on deadlines.
(c) Discuss in classes and workshops the joys
and struggles of your writing process.
3. Explore yourself and your experiences through
writing poetry and fiction.
Indicators: (a) Discuss in classes & workshops
the personal connections in your writing. (b) In
a self-critique submitted with the final
portfolio, explain the personal connections in
one or more works.
4. Identify strengths and weaknesses in peers’
works-in-progress; make suggestions to others
for improving/revising their work.
Indicators: (a) Participate in informal,
impromptu discussions of works-in-progress.
(b) Respond in writing to your peers’ works-
in-progress. (c) In a presentation to the class,
read one or more works by a peer and respond
with a constructive, 5-10 minute critique.
5. Use feedback from others to revise your work.
Indicators: (a) Acknowledge in discussions of
your work how you have incorporated
previous responses/suggestions. (b) In a self-
critique submitted with the final portfolio,
explain how responses/suggestions helped
shape the final form of one or more works.
(c) Submit all process work for the poems and
stories included in final portfolio.
6. Read your own work critically, identifying
weaknesses and improving subsequent
versions.
Indicators: (a) Report in in-class discussions
how your work-in-progress has evolved. (b) In
final portfolio, include all process work to
illustrate developmental histories of the poems
and stories submitted.
7. Craft language (in poetry and prose) so as to
• Create an authentic voice
• Create a believable, complex character
• Control plot or narrative movement
• Control point of view
• Impart structures that exhibit thoughtful
choice
• Create striking, surprising figures of
speech
• Use images that appeal to all the senses
• Choose vivid, specific nouns and verbs
• Avoid “empty” words and clichés
• Pattern sounds and images in pleasing,
provocative ways
• “Play” with language semantically and
syntactically
• Achieve standard surface features (as
appropriate)
Indicator: Compile and submit a portfolio of
the works that best illustrate your competency
in these areas.
S TRUC TURE & PROCEDURES
Structure & Instructional Methods
The first half of the course emphasizes writing
disciplines and processes. Our immediate concern
will be generating a body of material so that we
can select from it the most promising works for
further development and revision later in the
semester. In general, our class sessions before mid-
term will consist largely of in-class exercises,
instructor presentations, discussion, and informal
sharing of works-in-progress. Class sessions
following mid-term will be devoted largely or
exclusively to workshops where we will share our
work or present the work of other class members
for feedback.
 Spring 2009
Procedures & Requirements
Attendance and Participation. Because we will be
a small community of writers responding to and
depending on one another, regular attendance and
active participation are crucial to the achievement
of the class’s desired outcomes. Your absence or
failure to participate fully hurts not only you but
also the other members of the group. By prior
arrangement with me, you may miss three class sessions
without penalty. In all but extenuating circumstances,
four or five absences will lower your grade, and six
absences constitute grounds for failure. (I subscribe to
the institutional policy of counting absences
immediately before and after holidays and breaks
as double-cuts.) Regardless of the activity—writing
exercises, discussion, workshop critiques,
workshop presentations, etc.—your enthusiastic
participation (and preparation, when applicable) is
expected.
Attitude. Nothing exposes our minds quite so
nakedly as our writing. Rejection and ridicule hurt,
so, understandably, writing for others is scary.
Class participants need to know and trust that they
are sharing with persons who are fair, who
understand the difficulties and anxieties of
writing, and who mutually support and respect
one another's efforts to become a writer. We must
feel free to fail, because we will do so time and
again and because fear of failure leads to the only
unacceptable failure—chronic failure to write. We
could do much worse than adopt “Do unto
others . . .” as our class motto.
But this matter of attitude has a flip side, too. We
sabotage the educational process and our own
growth as writers if we are overly sensitive, overly
defensive, of our writing. Review Outcomes #4
and #5 above. One of the primary expectations of
this course is that you learn to constructively
critique creative works. Another is that you learn
how to hear others talk about your writing and to
sift from it that which can help you improve your
work. Joyce Carol Oates, in her book On Boxing,
says that she knows only one occupation aside
from boxing whose participants willingly undergo
continual punishment to the head—writing. We
need to acknowledge the truth of Oates’ statement,
but also to understand that, in this class at least,
we are not entering the ring with lethal
heavyweights impatient to knock our blocks off
with one vicious hook but rather with sparring
partners, persons on our side who only want to
help us write better.
3
Poetry Is the Art of Not
Succeeding
Poetry is the art of not succeeding;
the art of making a little ritual
out of your own bad luck, lighting a little fire
made of leaves, reciting a prayer
in the ordinary dark.
It’s the art of those who didn’t make it
after all; who were lucky enough to be
left behind, while the winners ran on ahead
to wherever it is winners
go running to.
O blessed rainy day, glorious
as a paper bag. The kingdom of poetry
is like this—quiet, anonymous,
a dab of sunlight on the back of your hand,
a view out the window just before dusk.
It’s an art more shadow that statue,
and has something to do with your dreams
running out—bare branch darkening
on a winter sky, the week-old snow
frozen into something hard.
It’s an art as simple as drinking water
from a tin cup; of loving that moment
at the end of autumn, say, when the air
holds no more promises, and the days are short
and likely to be gray.
A bland light is best to see it in.
Middle age brings it to flower.
And there, just when you’re feeling your weakest,
it floods you completely,
leaving you weeping as you drive your car.
—Joe Salerno
Compassion, sensitivity, fairness, and tact;
openness, honesty, mental toughness, and
objectivity: these are the watchwords we must
balance if this class is to succeed.
Exercises/prompts/process work. Each Thursday I
will distribute a writing log form along with the
next week’s exercises, which will consist of a
variety of reading and/or writing assignments.
You will submit the completed log and exercises
the following week in a manila file folder.
Follow these guidelines in preparing this work:
4 EN 420 Creative Writing
• Schedule a time five days a week when you
will have an uninterrupted hour to devote to
each exercise. Record your anticipated
schedule on your log sheet.
• Important Note: I will always expect you to
come to Tuesday’s class session with at least
the first three exercises completed and in your
notebook.
• Begin each new writing session/exercise on a
fresh page. Put a heading at the top of the first
page that includes the assignment number (if
applicable) and some cryptic descriptor of the
session's activity, the date and time you wrote
the entry, and where you were when you
wrote it. For example, the heading on one of
your assignments might look like this:
3.4: Freewrite
Sun., Feb. 23, 8:30 p.m., library carrel
If you write habitually at the keyboard, I
would love to receive these exercises typed or
word processed; however, unless it is important
to you, do not retype exercises written in
legible longhand.
• After each writing session, record the actual
time you spent writing and a few comments
about the session on your weekly writing log.
• Keep all your backdated exercises and session
entries organized in a three-ring notebook and
carry it to class with you. There may be
occasions when we will build class discussions
or activities upon previous weeks'
assignments.
Keep everything you write in this course. Discard
nothing! This doesn’t mean that everything you
write deserves to be preserved. Most of what you
will generate should be thrown away. I am only
asking that you reserve judgment on what should
be thrown away until after you have determined
the final contents of your portfolio. [See next
requirement.)
Portfolio. Your ultimate goal in the course is to
develop a portfolio of your best material to submit
at the end of the course. Reasonable guidelines for
the portfolio might be
• Fiction 10+ pages
• Poetry 125+ lines
However, you may prefer to emphasize poetry or
fiction writing. In that case, the guidelines might
look more like the following:
Emphasis in Fiction
• Fiction 20+ pages
• Poetry 50+ lines
Emphasis in Poetry
• Fiction 5+ pages
• Poetry 225+ lines
Follow these additional guidelines in preparing
your portfolio:
• Sometime between April 14-23, make an
appointment with me to develop a preliminary
table of contents for your portfolio.
• Along with a typed copy of the final version of
each work you select for your portfolio, submit
in chronological sequence all the process work
and preliminary drafts that constitute the
developmental history of each work.
• Determine the reading sequence for your
portfolio pieces and prepare a table of
contents. Feel free to develop your own format
for your final portfolio (three-ring binding
with a divider for each work; folder for each
work). Just make sure that process work for
each final piece is clearly identified and
correctly sequenced.
Self-evaluation & grade proposal. During finals
week (May 17-20), all students will schedule a
grade negotiation conference. At that conference,
you will present a formal self-evaluation and grade
proposal of 1,000-1,500 words along with your
portfolio.
The persuasive proposal will be carefully keyed to
the goals and expected outcomes of the course and
will point to the developmental work as well as the
finished pieces in the portfolio for supporting
evidence. It will answer such questions as
• What writing habits have you developed?
• What habits of critical reading have you
developed?
• How have your attitudes toward writing
(including defensiveness toward criticism)
changed, if any?
• What sort of peer critic/responder have you
become?
• What has writing helped you better
understand about yourself and/or your
experiences?
• What sort of a self-critic and reviser of your
own work have you become?
 Spring 2009
• Which of the qualities or skills listed in
Outcome #7 are strengths of your writing?
Weaknesses?
• How do you see your experiences in this
course affecting you in the future?
E V A L U A TI ON OF L E ARNING
Weekly Writing (5 pts/week x 12 weeks). I will
collect your writing log and file folder of weekly
writing each Thursday, primarily to record that
you have completed the week’s assignments in
good faith and that you are keeping your writing
discipline. I will also engage in some limited
marginal dialog with you and return these folders
at the next class session.
Each weekly folder is worth five points. The only
way you can lose points is by not maintaining your
writing discipline, either failing to do the
assignments or doing them inadequately.
Discipline—that is, writing, and writing a lot—
outweighs all considerations of quality in the weekly
folder.
Participation/Attitude. During class sessions, I
keep some records of participation and
contributions to class activities. Enthusiastic
participation is expected. I will be in touch with
you individually if I have concerns about your
classroom participation or attitude.
Self-evaluation/grade proposal & portfolio. As
you will learn in this course (if you don’t already
know), poems and stories are incredibly diverse,
the results of extraordinarily complex creative
processes. Likewise, evaluating fiction and poetry
is complex, highly subjective, and involves
weighing a multitude of factors against each other.
One individual can’t do it without risking
unfairness.
For this reason, I will give every consideration to
your end-of-term self-evaluation and grade
proposal in awarding a course grade. I expect you
will be honest and forthright about yourself and
your work in the course, that you will have an
accurate sense of how your work and performance
squares against the standards and expectations we
set, and that you will neither inflate nor
underestimate your achievement.
This means the self-evaluation/grade proposal is
an extremely important paper, a paper that
exhibits how objectively you can reflect upon your
own writing and habits. As I review your self-
5
evaluation and portfolio, I will be considering the
following criteria:
• Depth of insight: the range and depth of
understanding you reveal about your course
performance and your writing—includes
connectedness to goals, clarity & precision of
the evaluation & proposal language, specific
nature of claims, thoroughness of self-
assessment.
• Strength of evidence: the quality, power, and
relevance of the evidence supporting your
claims of learning and achievement; the extent
to which you prove or show claims with
specific references to works in the portfolio.
• Quality of finished works: the extent to which
your final poems and stories exhibit your
command of the criteria listed in Outcome #7
(voice, imagery, structure, etc.)
The purpose of the grade negotiation conference is
to confirm an agreement on your final grade.
Provided that you have violated none of the
conditions affecting final grades (see below) and
that I agree with or am persuaded by your self-
assessment, you will receive the grade you
propose. If necessary to reach agreement, we will
schedule a second negotiation conference.
Conditions Affecting Final Grades
• Attendance: Students with four or five absences
lose one letter grade. Students with six or more
absences must make a persuasive argument
for passing the course.
• Weekly Folders: Students who do not earn 91
percent of total daily writing points cannot
propose an A. Students who do not earn 81
percent cannot propose a B. Students who do
not earn 71 percent cannot propose a C.
Students who earn less than 61 percent cannot
pass.
• Incompletes: Failure to submit an adequate
portfolio during finals week will result in a
failing grade unless the student can provide
persuasive arguments for an Incomplete
during the grade negotiation conference.
Mid-term Grades. You have two options for mid-
term grades: (1) you can request the most
appropriate mark for this course, IP (in progress),
or (2) you can request a mark reflecting your
weekly folder scores and your participation &
attendance records. If you choose the latter, it is, of
course, with the full understanding that the grade
6 EN 420 Creative Writing
means nothing. Your final grade is based solely
upon your self-evaluation and portfolio (minus
any penalties incurred by violating the conditions
affecting final grades).
S P ECI AL INJ UNC TI ON
You are responsible for seeing that this syllabus
does not interfere with your education. You can
always do more work or different work (within
reason) than the syllabus requires. Consult with
me if you wish to explore the possibilities for
adapting this course to better suit your needs.
B IBLIOGRA PH Y
You learn to write not only by writing but also by
reading. Indeed, writing follows reading. It is
unreasonable to think you can write better than
you can read: writing develops after close reading.
Thus, becoming a better reader, a more
experienced reader, is an important part of
becoming a better writer.
You should read as much contemporary fiction
and poetry as you can as part of your regimen to
become a better writer. I have asked you to
purchase the Best American 2000 anthologies so you
will have collections of good contemporary poems
and stories conveniently at hand a.
In addition, Miller Library carries the following
periodicals that publish at least one poem or story
in each issue. You should pull each of these from
the current periodical shelves at least once during
the semester:
American Poetry Review
Ms.
Atlantic
New Yorker
College English
New Republic
Harper’s
The single best contemporary poetry site on the
World Wide Web is Poetry Daily at
http://www.poems.com. The course Web page
will provide links to other online literary
magazines and sites.
A good number of consistently rewarding
collections of classic modern and contemporary
stories and poems are available in Miller Library.
Look in the 811s for the poetry, in the 813s for the
fiction. I promise enjoyable browsing in the
following:
Poetry
Barresi, Dorothy. The Post-Rapture Diner.
Berg, S. and R. Mezey, eds. Naked Poetry.
Brautigan, Richard. The Pill Versus the Springhill
Mining Disaster.
Collins, Billy. Nine Horses.
-----. Sailing Alone Around the Room.
Creeley, Robert. Words.
Daniels, Jim. M-80.
Dubie, Norman. Illustrations.
Frost, Robert. Complete Poems.
Gallagher, Tess. Moon Crossing Bridge.
Gildner, Gary. Blue Like the Heavens.
Goldbarth, Albert. Saving Lives.
Graham, Jorie. The Dream of the Unified Field.
Hawkins, Hunt. Domestic Life.
Halpern, David, ed. American Poetry Anthology.
Hogan, Linda. The Book of Medicines.
Kasdorf, Julia. Sleeping Preacher.
Kooser, Ted. Weather Central.
McDonald, Walter. Counting Survivors.
Meinke, Peter. Scars.
Norris, Kathleen. Little Girls in Church.
Ochesther, E. and P. Oresick, eds. Pittsburg Book of
Contemporary American Poetry.
O'Hara, Frank. Lunch Poems.
Olds, Sharon. The Unswept Room.
Orr, Gregory. City of Salt.
Ostriker, Alicia S. The Crack in Everything.
Plath, Sylvia. Ariel.
Plumly, Stanley. Out-of-the-Body Travel.
Robinson, Edwin Arlington. Tilbury Town.
Rohrer, Matthew. A Hummock in the Malookas.
Snyder, Gary. Riprap.
Solomon, Sandy. Pears, Lake, Sun.
Stafford, William. Traveling through the Dark.
Tate, James. Absences.
-----. The Oblivion Ha-Ha.
Weaver, Michael. Timber and Prayer.
Wright, James. Collected Poems.
 Spring 2009
Short Fiction
Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their
Accents.
Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio.
Atwood, Margaret. Bluebeard’s Egg.
-----. Dancing Girls.
Bambara, Toni Cade. Gorilla, My Love.
Barrett, Andrea. Ship Fever.
Barthelme, Donald. Sixty Stories.
Barth, John. Lost in the Funhouse.
Beattie, Ann. The Burning House.
-----. Where You’ll Find Me.
Becker, Geoffrey. Dangerous Men.
Bell, Madison Smart. Barking Man.
Bloom, Amy. A Blind Man Could See How Much I
Love You.
Butler, Robert Olen. A Good Scent from a Strange
Mountain.
Caldwell, Erskine. Complete Stories.
Carver, Raymond. Any title.
Cather, Willa. Stories, Poems, and Other Writings.
Cisneros, Sandra. Woman Hollering Creek.
Dorris, Michael. Working Men.
Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine.
Faulkner, William. Collected Stories.
Gilchrist, Ellen. The Age of Miracles.
Halprin, Mark. A Dove of the East.
-----. Ellis Island.
Hemingway, Ernest. Snows of Kilimanjaro.
Jackson, Shirley. The Lottery.
Joyce, James. Dubliners.
Kincaid, Jamaica. At the Bottom of the River.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. Interpreter of Maladies.
Leavitt, David. Collected Stories.
London, Jack. Novels and Stories.
MacLeod, Alistair. Island.
Major, Clarence. Fun & Games.
Malamud, Bernard. The Magic Barrel.
McCullers, Carson. Collected Short Stories.
Means, David. Assorted Fire Events.
Moore, Lorrie. Birds of America.
-----. Like Life.
-----. Self-Help.
Mukherjee, Bharati. The Middler and Other Stories.
Oates, Joyce Carol. The Assignation.
O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried.
O'Connor, Flannery. A Good Man Is Hard To Find.
-----. Everything That Rises Must Converge.
Ozick, Cynthia. The Shawl.
Paley, Grace. Collected Stories.
Porter, Katherine Anne. Collected Stories.
Russo, Richard. The Whore’s Child.
Selzer, Richard. The Doctor Stories.
7
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony.
-----. Storyteller.
Shaw, Irwin. Short Stories: Five Decades.
Spark, Debra, ed. 20 Under 30.
Spencer, Elizabeth. Ship Island.
Stegner, Wallace. Collected Stories.
Steinbeck, John. The Long Valley.
Tan, Amy. Joy Luck Club.
Templeton, Edith. The Darts of Cupid.
Updike, John. Music School.
_____. Problems.
Welty, Eudora. Stories, Essays, and Memoir.
Wharton, Edith. Collected Stories.
Woolf, Virginia. A Haunted House.
Helpful Books for the Creative Writer
Bell, Madison Smartt. Narrative Design: A Writer’s
Guide to Structure. New York and London: W.
W. Norton, 1997.
Bernays, Anne and Pamela Painter. What If?
Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers. New York:
Harper Perennial, 1991.
Bradbury, Ray. Zen and the Art of Writing.
Brande, Dorothea. Becoming a Writer. 1934. Los
Angeles: Tarcher, 1981.
Dillard, Annie. The Writing Life. Perennial, 1990.
Friedman, Bonnie. Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear,
Distraction, and Other Dilemmas in the Writer’s
Life. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993.
Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing
the Writer Within. Shambala Publications, 1986.
Hemley, Robin. Turning Life into Fiction. Cincinatti,
Ohio: Story Press, 1994.
Hugo, Richard. The Triggering Town: Lectures and
Essays on Poetry and Writing. New York and
London: W. W. Norton, 1979.
Kowit, Steve. In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet’s
Portable Workshop. Gardiner, Me.: Tilbury
House, 1995.
Novakovich, Josip. Fiction Writer’s Workshop.
Cincinnati, Ohio: Story Press, 1995.
Smith, Michael C. and Suzanne Greenberg.
Everyday Creative Writing: Panning for Gold in
the Kitchen Sink. Lincolnwood, Ill.: NTC, 1996.
Ueland, Brenda. If You Want to Write. 1938.
Graywolf P, 1997.