Advanced Creative Writing

Group One: Remember your pieces with twenty-one copies. We'll go over workshop etiquette before class but for those being workshopped, there's no talking nor explaining during the workshop, so be sure that if you have special instructions for us, or things that you need for us to keep in mind while reading your piece, that those things are written in what you distribute to us. Also, if you are giving us additional pages (ex: I am giving you the whole forty pages of my project, but I would like for this workshop to focus on the first twenty,) make note of that, too.

For Tuesday, please have read this story:  http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/huntsnow.html

as well as this poem:  http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/may-1968/  and have a letter*(200 words) for each author plus comments for class. We will "workshop" these imaginary folks as if they were with us, so be prepared.

*Your letter might begin something like:
Dear Mr. Hemingway: I really enjoyed your story. It was well-crafted and very clear overall. I found that there were moment where I was less certain of where I was as a reader, temporally, than others. Page seven, the scene with the rainbow trout, was an example. Did this happen before or after the ice cream social? And is there a significant distinction between Dot and Rosemary?  I sometimes struggled with conflating them. Perhaps, Rosemary might be a little older, or perhaps the characters are not both needed? I loved the sentence about the mountain lion and the sycamore. Great simile. Also, your spare but throughful use of metaphorical devise is noted. Although the sentence on page twenty-one that reads "The waiter poured on into the glass so that the brandy slopped over and ran down the stem into the top saucer of the pile seemed somehow less graceful, your story is, overall a well-made thing. --Sophia Kartsonis (sign your note so that people know where to go for clarification or with further questions.

Finally, I liked this week's prompt over at Poets and Writers magazine, so I present it to you. If it helps you to move a story along or to start something new, feel free to use it:

If I Hadn't  

Think about a choice you or your character made in life that led to specific consequences or outcomes. Explore the alternative reality that could have been if you'd made a different choice in an essay that begins If I hadn't...  (If only s/he hadn't, If only you hadn't, If only Throckmorton hadn't, etc.)