Writing Requirements

Two draft prose assignments (each 1500w minimum + 250w min. artist statement) are due this quarter; each should work from any of the prompts from the list below. I'm glad to take suggestions for additional prompts that might be added to the list.

These prompts are to initiate the process and execution of your work, rather than to delineate a particular subject area or genre. These may be entirely new works of creative prose, of any subject or genre, or you may use one of your previous creative works as a starting point for transformation. (If it is a previous work, please note this and also attach the original work.)

Your accompanying artist statement should briefly address the intent of the work, the process behind it, and should quote specific lines from your own work to back your contentions. How did the piece evolve, and what did you find particularly challenging or useful in its construction? How might it be further developed or expanded upon?

At the end of the quarter, your final project will be a revision of either of these assignments, to any length you wish, with an accompanying 1000w artist statement. This statement should address both the previously noted statement questions, and follow through on your resulting revision process.

Prompts

Adaptation

Adapt a creative work from one genre or form to another -- for instance, a work of narrative nonfiction rendered into playwriting, graphic nf, oral history, etc. Include both the original and the adaptation.

Collaboration (I)

This can be a single work, or it can be separate co-works on which you and your collaborator have respectively served as the primary writer. Your collaborator may be a classmate, though they do not have to be; they must, however, be credited by name.

Collaboration (II)

You and a partner from the class take an original work by one of you, and have the other partner design or develop it further through one of the other prompts on this list.

Explication

This is, in effect, letting the artist statement portion of the assignment take over. Develop a detailed analysis and critique of one of your own creative works.

Interpretation
A creative work that responds to, alters through treatment, or continues in subject matter or form one of the readings from this course.

Juxtaposition
Alteration through cut-up technique, erasure, strikethrough, resequencing, or integration of outside works.  (For the latter, please properly credit the outside work in your artist statement.)

Publication

Departure from the usual medium or process by which your text is printed or rendered, or incorporation of mixed media and physical elements beyond text. 

Translation

Translate one of your creative works into another language -- natural, artificial, and constructed are all fair game. Please include both the original and the translation.

Visualization

Incorporate visual elements into your work via illustration, multimedia, typography, and/or layout.