The Search

You are lost in a large, anonymous building which has many floors, corridors and doors. You are looking for someone or something. Who or what is it? Describe the building and your search. At last you hear music on the other side of a door. The sound moves you and you stand very close to the door. How does the music make you feel? What does it make you think of? Do you go in the room? Write about all of this.

Year Book Submission/Writing Prompts

Every year, senior creative writing majors submit writing to be included in the year book. Please choose or write a piece today and e-mail it to me. This is for a grade.

While you are going through your work, start to think about what you would like to read/write for the coffee house and what you would like to include in Lambent. Lambent is a literary magazine that we will put together as a class. You will be asked to include various pages of writing for the project.

Need more writing? Here are some links with prompts to inspire your writing. Portfolios are due on Tuesday, April 14th!

http://www.writersdigest.com/prompts
http://www.warren-wilson.edu/~creativewriting/Prompts.php
http://www.litbridge.com/creative-writing-prompts/

Nicholas Virgilio Contest Guidelines

http://www.hsa-haiku.org/virgilioawards/Virgilio-contest-guidelines.htm

Hint Fiction

Hint Fiction

• We are going to write some hint fiction over the next few classes.
• Be prepared to write some today! Check out the following links:
• http://www.robertswartwood.com/hint-fiction/
• http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/10/what-can-you-do-in-twenty-five-words.html
• http://www.npr.org/2010/11/13/131276783/-hint-fiction-celebrates-the-extremely-short-story

Portfolio Requirements

• Writing Portfolios are due Tuesday, April 14, 2015
• Please include polished/workshopped pieces of quality fiction. Remember we are looking for quality rather than quantity.
• If you are having trouble writing your reflection, please ask for help. 

Raymond Carver!

Please read Raymond Carver's "Little Things", which is posted here:
http://www.wsfcs.k12.nc.us/cms/lib/NC01001395/Centricity/Domain/796/little_things.pdf

 We will have a group discussion when you are done.

Here is another!

"Cathedral"
http://www.misanthropytoday.com/cathedral-by-raymond-carver-weekend-short-story/

1. What is the irony of using a blind character in the story as a way of developing one of its major themes? See part where the narrator recounts the blind man burying his wife and how “he had never seen her.” Who’s really blind?

2. Explain the title. A Cathedral is where miracles happen. The miracle is that a dead man will be resurrected. The dead man is equated with the image of skeletons that occur later in the story during the TV show. Clearly, the narrator is dead and reborn by the story’s end.

3. How does the narrator reveals himself in the first paragraph? He’s a defensive ignoramus and a man so isolated from the complexity of the human condition that he is a walking corpse. He’s a dead man. Later we find that he’s friendless. His wife says he has no friends. He lives inside himself, a prisoner of his own solipsism, which is fueled in part by fear.

4. What is foreshadowed in the second paragraph? Robert’s sensitivity, tracing the wife’s face, will be passed on to the narrator at the story’s end.

5. What is the narrator’s real source of jealousy? Dead people don’t like to see people living life fully. They want everyone to be as dead and miserable as they are. The narrator resents the blind man for living life fully.

6. What do we know about the narrator’s habits? They’re reductionary. He does the same rituals over and over to close himself from emotion.  The TV watching, the fear of silence, the fear of conversation, insomnia, the depression, the smoking dope until he can crash in bed. The blind man represents change, a threat, an interference with his routine. Our routines comfort us, but they also imprison and eventually kill us.

7. What is the story’s turning point? Where Robert apologizes for monopolizing the talk with the wife. He shows empathy, something the narrator is lacking. He shows he has this quality, empathy, which evinces Robert’s maturity and gives him the credentials to be trusted as a parent figure for the narrator who is essentially a frightened child. Once that dynamic is established, the miracle can begin.

8. What contradiction about maturity do we learn in the story? The adult is relaxed enough to be a child and possess a child’s hunger to learn new things. We see this on page 397 when they’re watching TV. One of life’s contradictions is that we have to be mature enough to be children, to be relaxed enough to let go and let our child explore.

9. How do we know the narrator is a scared little kid emotionally? He keeps saying, “I’m not doing so well, am I?” He needs an adult’s approval.

10. How does the narrator change at the end of the story? In the beginning he is disaffected. By the end, gets excited, his legs become numb, he’s possessed with a sense of urgency and life purpose. He says at one point, “It was like nothing else in my life up to now.”

"My Life as Bat" by Margaret Atwood

Read "My Life as a Bat" by Margaret Atwood

Here is a link to the text:
http://www.sweetdave.com/moon_safari.htm

WRITING PROMPT
Why does the narrator think being reincarnated as a bat would be the ideal reincarnation? If you were to be reincarnated as an animal, what animal would it be? Write a monologue or short piece from the point of view of this animal.

Writer's Workshop

Writing Tips From the Masters
https://www.writingclasses.com/InformationPages/index.php/PageID/269

5 Tips on How to Run a Writing Group
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/5-tips-on-how-to-run-a-writing-group/

Tips for an Effective Writing Critique
http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/crafttechnique/tp/Creative-Writing-Critique-Tips.htm

Agenda:

1. Read the links above
2. Workshop (and use the information you learned from the links...)
3. Work on stories.

HOMEWORK: Read The Age of Miracles, Final copies of stories due...?

The Shawl Themes

The Shawl is noteworthy because of its scrupulous control of its limited point of view, with the point-of-view character being the mother of a starving infant during the Holocaust. There is nothing in the story about the political conditions in Germany’s Third Reich, which developed a policy of mass extermination of Jews; yet, within just a few pages, the story provides an inside view of the horror as it affected those who were the victims of this unspeakable policy. The story requires great attention, for the details are not described objectively but rather appear as they have been filtered through the suffering eyes and mind of the major figure, Rosa.

Survival
Underlying Ozick's story is the theme of survival. Rosa struggles with this constantly. During the march to the concentration camp, Rosa struggles over whether or not she should pass Magda to an onlooker, possibly ensuring her child's survival. Rosa decides against this, however, realizing that she would risk her own life in doing so and could not guarantee Magda's safety. Rosa chooses survival in the moment for both of them, rather than probable death for herself and uncertainty for her child. As Rosa struggles over what to do about Magda, Stella longs to be Magda: a baby rocked and sleeping in her mother's arms. Rosa also thinks that the starving Stella gazes at Magda as if she wishes to eat the child. Magda, though far too young to have any knowledge of what is happening to and around her, gives up screaming and quietly sucks on the shawl.
Life in the camp is a constant battle for survival. Rosa, apparently caring more about Magda's survival than her own. gives most of her food to her child. Stella, caring mostly about her own survival, gives no food to Magda. Magda herself turns to the shawl for comfort: it is her "baby, her pet, her little sister"; when she needs to be still—and stillness is necessary to her survival—she sucks on a corner of it.
Halfway through the story, Stella takes Magda's shawl because she is cold. It is, perhaps, the only one of her afflictions that she can do anything about. There is no food to ease her hunger, and there is nothing she can do to escape from the camp; but Magda's shawl might ease her cold. This, too, is a form of reaching for survival. Stella has chosen to bring what small comfort she can to herself, ignoring the potential cost to Magda and Rosa.
Magda, knowing no better, leaves the barracks in her search for the shawl. Again, Rosa has to make a choice about her survival. If she runs to Magda, they will both be killed. If she does nothing, Magda will be killed. The only solution she can think of, however slim, is to get the shawl to Magda before she is discovered by the camp's guards. She runs for the shawl and returns to the square with it, but she is too late. A soldier carries Magda away toward the electric fence at the other side of the camp. Rosa watches her baby fly through the air, hit the fence and die, then fall to the ground. Again, there are choices. If she goes to Magda, she will be shot; if she screams, she will be shot. Rosa chooses survival, using the shawl to mute her scream.

Motherhood and Nurturing
Closely linked to the theme of survival are issues of motherhood and nurturing. Throughout "The Shawl," Stella longs to be nurtured. On the march, she longs to be a baby, comforted by her mother's arms. In the camp, she longs for food, sometimes causing Rosa to think that she is "waiting for Magda to die so she could put her teeth into the little thighs.'' She takes the only bit of nurturing she can find: warmth from Magda's shawl.
The issues of motherhood are more complex. Because she is a mother, Rosa cannot think only of herself, as Stella does. Each decision must be weighed. What is the possible benefit to her? To Magda? What are the possible costs? With each decision, Rosa must decide whether it is in her best interest to sacrifice herself, her baby, or both of them.

Prejudice and Tolerance
Issues of prejudice and tolerance are also raised in "The Shawl." Rosa, Stella, Magda, and the others are imprisoned or killed in concentration camps simply because they are Jewish. Prejudice exists on then- part too—at least on the part of Stella. Looking at Magda's yellow hair and blue eyes, she says "Aryan," in a voice that makes Rosa think she has said, "Let us devour her."
The issue of tolerance is raised in the camp itself. Rosa and Magda are not alone in the barracks they occupy. The other occupants are aware of Magda's existence and of Rosa's deception. In the camp, "a place without pity," they cannot know what might happen to them if Magda is discovered in the barracks. Yet no one reports her presence.

Betrayal
Rosa constantly fears that Stella—or someone else—will kill Magda to eat her. While this does not happen, it is Stella's betrayal that costs Magda her life and Rosa her child. "The Shawl'' points to one reason for this kind of betrayal: the inhuman treatment Stella has received has made her pitiless. "The cold went into her heart," the narrator says. "Rosa saw that Stella's heart was cold."

Deadlines

Here are some important deadlines:

Homework due Wednesday, 3/4/15 read Cynthia Ozick's The Shawl on page 601.

First drafts of your unlikable character stories are due on Friday, 3/6 at the end of class. We decided on a 5-10 page limit.

We will discuss The Shawl in class on Wednesday and I will be providing workshop guidelines and resources for you.