Required Workshop Discussions
This semester you are asked to send work to the entire email list of students. Thereafter, you should, yourself, pick out at least two students' work to write comments on their work which you will send to them and to me.
Don't forget that you need to send me both copies of your own work and copies of the comments you make on the work of other students.
FOR A DISCUSSION OF HOW WORKSHOPS ARE CENTRAL TO THE STRUCTURE OF THE COURSE, CLICK HERE.
Note: there is no guarantee that you will get any
comments on your own work. I, of course, will comment and email you back
your work so you can see where you can improve your writing. However, just as
who you decide to send comments is completely unpredictable and subjective, so,
too, is it true that your fellow students may not pick your work to send you a
comment. You will not lose credit for the course if no one picks your work to
comment. Nor should you be offended by that (though I hope you do get
comments).
You will lose credit if you skip or do a weak job on the workshop part of
the course. It is a core requirement for the course and you should do a thorough
job of it!
For your first, poetry workshops, first you will send two (2) poems to me and to everyone of your fellow students. Soon after that, you will send two fellow students and me comments on two student poems. Send the comments just to me and the students themselves, not the entire list.
On deadline, you will send just me the balance of a total of ten (10) poems. You can count the first two as part of the total of ten. You don't send the eight other required poems to everyone on the list.
PLEASE! Please
label your comments when you send them to me to check off as requirements you
completed for the course:
Your email label when sending me comments should be
RE: WORKSHOP COMMENTS
Here's more on how the workshops work:
Poets, artists, should create first, for themselves. If you write from the
heart, you are, at least, sincere! However, if you desire any audience beyond
your bureau draw or hard drive files, you should learn to revise--for others.
For poets, revision is as often the result of "workshopping" your
poem. Give your poem to a reader who can react to it, analyze it word by word,
line be line, even suggest words and lines to improve it.
You will send your work to your fellow students and together you will form a workshop, a self-improvement society! Writing is infinitely variable--it can be written or revised in an unending number of ways.
The test of good writing you will apply here is whether your poem gets the desired effect. To know that you will ask others to read and react to your work.
HERE ARE SOME SUGGESTIONS/RULES REGARDING YOUR WORKSHOP EXCHANGES:
Click here: RULES
Instructions:
1. Send a copy of your writing to your instructor and also to the other students whose email addresses are listed on our Students page.
2. In turn you will receive poems, then a script, then a piece of prose fiction from each of your fellow writers.
3. Send an explication and revisions back to your instructor and to each of your fellow writers.
FOR A SAMPLE OF HOW TO WORKSHOP POEMS CLICK HERE:
SAMPLE POETRY WORKSHOP COMMENTS
In total you will send three forms of writing via email, for comment--2 of your 10 poems; a 5-page dialog/script; a piece of prose fiction.
You should, in turn, pick at least two other students' work to comment on--for a total of six comments, with copies, of course, to your instructor as well. You may comment on more work (for extra credit) as evaluating the writing by other students is a great way to learn!
Note that the work is due during each month a particular form of writing has been assigned. Don't save up and try to do all the commenting at the end of the term!