HU 5090
Writing Literary Nonfiction
Fall 2000
Randy Freisinger 305 WAHC
Office Hours: 10-11 MWF; 2-3 Th; or by appointment TEXTS: William Strunk et. al, The Elements of Style, 4th ed. (Allyn & Bacon, 2000)

Phillip Lopate, ed., The Art of the Personal Essay (Anchor Books, 1994)

Chris Anderson, ed., Literary Nonfiction: Theory, Criticism, Pedagogy. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989.CONTENT: This is a course in the writing and editing of a substantial work of literary nonfiction which, if it meets editorial standards, will appear in the department's upcoming issue of Blue Ice Anthology, a general interest journal written by this class, then printed and distributed to the department and university community later in the year. In addition to work on your own piece of writing, you will serve on the editorial board of Blue Ice, your collective goal being to produce professionally polished and camera-ready copy by the end of this quarter.
Your finished essay should be fifteen to twenty typed, double-spaced pages. The collection of essays listed above should be viewed as a resource. I will assign a few essays from it for purposes of class discusion. Otherwise, you should read widely in it to discover what you can about stylistic and formal strategies in the personal essay.
Once your writing groups have been established, I will ask each group to choose one essay and study it closely for the ways in which it establishes its voice, its ethos. Once you have had a chance to study it closely, I will schedule group presentations (roughly 30 minutes long) in which you will provide a close stylistic reading of the text you have chosen. Ideally, you will choose an essay because it teaches you something about good writing in this genre and you feel what the author does with prose style is something you might like to approximate in your own writing. These presentations will be scheduled somewhere around the 5th week or 6th .
Otherwise, your major work is to plan and draft and redraft until you have a piece of writing you are ready to workshop in a variety of contexts—with your group, with the rest of the class, and with me in conference. Progressively over the first 12 weeks you should push hard on your essay until it has arrived at the editing/proofreading stages, which again will occur in a variety of contexts. At term's end, each of you will submit a copy of your essay in publication-ready form.
Although I don’t require it, I suggest you keep a process journal during the drafting editing stages to help you think through the formal strategies of your essay. You may also want to save copies of all major drafts of your essay in case you want to loop back to something you had tried earlier.
All of you should have access to the CCLI. Typically, much of your drafting and revising will be done there, and final copy must be placed on Mac disks at term's end to be turned over to the production editor for the production phase of BIA. Right now that looks like it will be Michael Moore, who will be teaching the relevant undergrad STC class.
A FEW KEY PROVISIONAL DEADLINES:
Tuesday of Week 2—Tentative Prospectus for your essay due (1 page/single-spaced; copies for all class members)
Week 3—Groups collaborate on selecting an essay for the group presentation
Tuesday of Week 4—group decision about writer you will study
Weeks 4 --working draft of essay due
Weeks 5-6—group presentations
Week 6--Good, full draft of essay due
Week 7-12—Workshopping & conferences
Week 13-15—Editing
Week 16—Prayer, burning of incense, other offerings to the Writing Gods; final copy due.FINAL COMMENTS: We will have several primary goals this quarter. Our main business will be to produce copy for Blue Ice Anthology. We have sixteen weeks to do that: ambitious but possible, and possible at a high level of quality, as the previous issues of Blue Ice, I think, illustrate. Our broader, long-term goal is to become overtly sensitive to the sound and look of language used by established writers of literary nonfiction. Your eyes and ears must become highly tuned to the nuances of words and sentences. In attempting to grasp conventions of usage that at times baffle the most acute critics of standard written English you will, almost as by-product, become aware of the disputes between linguistic liberals and conservatives over language issues, some of which are substantive, some of which deal with minute distinctions. You may prefer, finally, the liberal perspective, or you may take sides with conservatives like John Simon. As Joe Williams says somewhere, we all, as writers, have our “black beasts,” those quirky usages and stylistic tics that drive us crazy. Whatever the case, at the end of 16 weeks I want all of us to have a much more discriminating eye and ear for the way good literary prose looks on the page and resonates in the mind—and how/why it works the way it does.
Because this is a graduate class and because time is relatively short, near-perfect attendance and a responsible attitude toward deadlines are essential. You must provide your group with quality drafts, not vague sketches or outlines. The essay you write must be approached carefully, diligently, and patiently. Vision and Re-vision, crafting until you get it right: the blessings and burdens of serious writers. Because the work of this class--yours as well as mine and the production team--is published, we must all commit ourselves to the highest possible standards. I will be in my office, or at least around the department, quite a bit this term, though I will be trying to find my own writing space. Come by to chat whenever you need it or feel like it. I don't mind being called at home (482-8046) if you have some pressing business, but I hope to write afternoons M-W-F and would appreciate not being disturbed then.
If Blue Ice Anthology is to succeed, we need to cooperate and collaborate with one another this term. Let me know what is on your mind. I'll do the same.NOTE: MTU’s Affirmative Action Officer has asked that all faculty include the following statement on each course syllabus:
MTU complies with all federal and state laws and regulations regarding discrimination, including the Americans with Disability Act of 1990 (ADA). If you have a disability and need a reasonable accommodation for equal access to education or services at MTU, please call Dr. Gloria Melton, Associate Dean of Students, (2212). For other concerns about discrimination, you may contact your advisor, department head, or the Affirmative Action Office (3310).