CREATIV

E WRIT

ING –

VEJEN B

USINESS C

OLL. –

MARCH 2014

B E N T S Ø R E N S E N ,

A A L B O R G U N I V E R S I T Y

CREATIVE WRITING AS PART OF YOUR ENGLISH CLASSES – WHY?

In English we always work with these skill areas:

English communication skills – You need to be able to understand, describe and produce English language for different and specific purposes.

Academic writing – a genre you need to master at the university and can use elsewhere

Grammar – formal and functional understanding of the English language

All of the above can also be practiced in creative ways

CREATIVE WRITING, CONTINUED...

Creative writing - will not teach you to be artists

But it gives you a chance to study poetry, fiction, and non-fiction in new ways – by participating in them!

You will produce several types of texts, playing with these three creative genres…

4 PERCEPTIONS OF WRITING – WHO WRITES FOR WHOM..?

Life-writing (about me)

Cultural practice (for us)

Dissemination (“Formidling”)(from me to you)

Professionalism (for them)

WRITING GAME 1

Write a poem in five minutes. Think about the ’creativity’ of it.

Is it creative?

Why/why not?

WRITING GAME 2

Consider the instructions on the following slide. Try following them.

Would this work as a way of getting your creative writing going?

INSTRUCTIONS

“Whatever you write is right. You can’t write the wrong thing.

It doesn’t even have to be in proper English. Write when and where you feel like it; day or

night, in bed, in a café or on your bike (difficult!).

Write only two lines, or lots – in a notebook, on scraps of paper, perhaps in a folder, or on your computer...”

INSTRUCTIONS, CONTINUED

Type whatever comes into your head for 2 minutes – don’t stop to think!

It might be a list, or odd words or phrases – spelling and proper sentences don’t matter

AND THE SOURCE:

Gillie Bolton: ‘Writing or Pills’ in The Self on the Page, ed. Celia Hunt and Fiona Sampson

IN OTHER WORDS, A LEAFLET DESIGNED TO HELP ANXIOUS OR DEPRESSED PATIENTS!

Does that make you feel differently about the writing you have just done?

WRITING THE INVISIBLE

Something deep and invisible ‘comes out’ in writing.

Whether the ‘source’ of the writing comes from ‘inspiration’ or from expressing ‘self’, that source cannot be seen.

Writing is individual, with its materials all invisible until words are put on paper. It is imagination and thought - until organised in written language.

WRITING AS READING

If you don’t read, you cannot write. Read journalism, reviews, travel writing, scientific articles, editorials, etc., etc. That is why we have a blog roll with good stuff to read…

All writing does not come from personal experience, but from reading, analysing and thinking about the above.

WRITING AS WORK AND REWRITING

“All completed writing involves preparation, taking notes, writing rough, perhaps fragmented versions, rewriting, producing drafts, revising, editing, proof-reading”

The muse doesn’t hand down any complete and perfectly formed novels, poems or plays to writers

Writing is (hard) work.

MYTH 1

Myth: you need inspiration to write – good writing begins spontaneously in an inspired moment

Reality: Inspiration emerges from writing.

MYTH 2

Myth: you have to think before you can write

Reality : you think when you write or after you have written

MYTH 3

Myth: it is important to begin well

Reality : the best beginning is often written as the last thing. It is more important to begin at all than to begin well!

MYTH 4

Myth: all texts must be original – you always have to write something new

Reality: very little is thought, written or said which is completely new.

MYTH 5

Myth: all texts must be flawless and perfect

Reality: there is no such thing as a perfect text.

MYTH 6

Myth: good writing progresses easily

Reality: writing is full of ’relapses’. You need to rewrite, delete and be patient!

MYTH 7

Myth: writing is most effective if you write in very long sessions, and writing demands long streches of uninterrupted time.

Reality: the above leads to long breaks and getting burnt out. Creativity arises from continuously working with writing.

WRITING GAME 3: WORD HOARD

Take the book I’ve given you.

Close your eyes, open the book and put your

finger on the page anywhere you want.

Take the word your finger is pointing to and copy

it into your word doc on your laptop.

Copy also the three words before ’your’ word, and

the three words after.

You should now have a seven-word phrase…

WORD HOARD 2

 

Read your phrase carefully and then start writing

anything that comes to you, as fast as possible.

There are two rules: don’t stop writing, don’t think

about what comes next.

Write for five minutes, non-stop.

WORD HOARD 3

You have now made a word-hoard. Read through it to see what it is about.

Then read it backwards word for word. When you read it backwards the text will be strange and new.

When you get to a phrase (just a few words – 3 to 6 maybe) that makes some strange sense, sounds funny or otherwise inspires you, take that phrase and use it as part of a new text – your next writing task...

WORD HOARD 4

The word-hoard that comes from your unconscious is just the raw material.

The real task is to write a new text – inspired by and containing your backwards phrase!

This text must be a speech

You can imagine it is a speech given by a politician who wants to be elected, or by your teacher who wants to persuade you of something, or by a bride/bridegroom who gives a speech for his/her loved one…

TASKS…

Post some of your writing on the blog: writing games 1 (optional) & 3 (a must)

You will receive comments from me on every post

Read some of your class-mates’ posts, and comment on at least one of them!

TEXTUAL INTERVENTION

Challenging and changing the textChanges can be made at all levels:From nuances of punctuation, spelling

or intonationTo total recasting in terms of GENRE,

TIME, PLACE, PARTICIPANTS and MEDIUM

Other terms: Adaptation, Remediation

TEXTUAL INTERVENTION - EXAMPLES.

Substitution of single words (‘Hi!’ instead of ‘Hello!’, ‘she’ instead of ‘he’)

Use of punctuation (inverted commas: she ‘loved’ him; continuation dots instead of full stops: she opened the door …)

Shift in genre or medium (f. ex. part of a play recast in the form of a novel, series of letters, legal testimony, psychiatric interview)

Development of the existing characters, scenes, events or arguments in a text…

WRITING GAME 4: TEXTUAL INTERVENTION

De- and re-centering:Read and understand the poemRe-write as a story told in the 1st or 3rd

personUse only words of one syllable

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE - SONNET #18

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd;And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE - SONNET #18

But thy eternal Summer shall not fadeNor lose possession of that fair thou owest;Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

WHAT WAS HARD IN THAT TASK? OBVIOUSLY NOT THE ONE-SYLLABLE WORD RESTRICTION…

TASK…

Post your stories based on the Shakespeare sonnet, complete with a suitable illustration to go with it…

AUTHORSHIP…

So far we have spoken a lot about writing as an individual process, no matter whether one writes for oneself or for others, privately, publically or professionally…

What if we look at collective authorship for a second…?

SURREALISM AS A CASE

Automatic writing

Collective authorship

Randomness as compositional principle, cf. also Dada…

Exquisite corpse game, named after this collaborative sentence: “The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine.”

VISUAL EXQUISITE CORPSE

DETAILS

DETAILS

DETAILS

EXQUISITE MOTION CORPSE

About this video project

The Bodies and Beat App!

WRITING GAME 5: EXQUISITE CORPSE

Rules: In groups of 5, take turns writing a word or two without knowing the preceding bit(s)

It’s the responsibility of the no. 5s to write down the sentence!

Follow this sentence structure: 1. Pronoun/article + adjective2. Noun3. Adverb + Verb4. Pronoun/article + adjective5. Noun

EXQUISITE CORPSE 2

Choose one word each for the first sentence – do this simultaneously without consulting the others

1. (Article/pronoun + adjective): My green2. (Noun): friend3. (Adverb (if you want one) + verb): usually

makes4. (Article/pronoun + Second adjective): the best5. (Second noun): Sunday

Result: “My green friend usually makes the best Sunday”

TASK…

Post your Exquisite Corpses on the blog…

Make sure that they have an illustration! Use Google image search – you’ll be surprised what you might find if you use your imagination

CREATIVE NON-FICTION AND TODAY’S GENRE

Travel writing – one of many forms of creative non-fiction…

Has to contain: ‘description and travel’ & ‘social life and customs’

Who writes travel writing? – Journalists & Fiction writers

READER EXPECTATIONS

The journalists have a strong interest in maintaining their credibility

The fiction writers have more creative freedom

Yet they must still confirm some kind of credibility (they must have some personal experience with the place the describe)

EXAMPLES OF ‘LITERARY TRAVEL WRITING’

The Writer and the City series…

Peter Carey:30 Days in Sydney: A Wildly Distorted Account (2001)

INTERNATIONAL COVERS: KOREA & CHINA

INTERNATIONAL COVERS: JAPAN & GERMANY

30 DAYS IN SYDNEY: A WILDLY DISTORTED ACCOUNT

The title refers to David Messent’s classic guide to Sydney, Seven Days in Sydney

The subtitle illustrates the difference between a fiction writer and a journalist (this is a different kind of guidebook)

International editions change this dynamic:By leaving out the subtitleBy (mis)translating the main title

WHAT WE EXPECT FROM TRAVEL WRITING BY A FICTION WRITER…The writer should have a personal relationship

to the place he/she describes

We expect the account to rely on the writer’s experience and memory

We expect some literal truthfulness (not necessarily expected in fiction by the same author)

WHAT WE EXPECT FROM TRAVEL WRITING BY A JOURNALIST

The writer will try to be neutral and objective

This is about something important, not (just) about the writer

The sources will be made clear and their reliability will be assessed

The reader can disagree, but there really is no point in doing so

BRUCE CHATWIN, 1940-89

BRUCE CHATWIN – BIO

English novelist, essayist and traveller

1972: worked for the Sunday Times Magazine as an advisor on art and architecture

Went to Patagonia in 1974 (South America), later travelled to the West African state of Benin, Australia

Died in 1989 in France (of AIDS)

BRUCE CHATWIN – STYLE OF TRAVEL W.

A story-teller

Has been criticised for his fictional anecdotes of real people, places and events

Chatwin did not claim his portrayals to be faithful representations

“He tells not a half truth, but a truth and a half” (Nicholas Shakespeare, Chatwin’s biographer, a British journalist and writer (1999) )

THE CHINESE GEOMANCER

Published in What Am I Doing Here? (1989)

Glossary:

geomancer -- an expert in geomancy; geomancy – noun: the belief that arranging your home, house, office etc. in a particular way will bring you good or bad luck [ feng shui]↪

HONG KONG AND SHANGHAI BANK

GOOD LUCK HSBC LION - STITT

STEPHEN AND STITT

HOW TO READ THE CHINESE GEOMANCER

Chatwin speaks as a visitor to Hong Kong (he is British, meeting a Chinese) – Them versus us…

Distance to what he narrates

Uses irony

Informs the reader (about feng-shui)

Reflects a little on China history and contemporary Chinese politics

Light entertainment w. political overtones

WRITING GAME 6 – TRAVEL WRITING(PAIR WORK)

Compare your lists of words, choose the best and make one list.

Choose a title for your piece

Write a piece of travel writing of no more than 400 words that uses all the ingredients on your list

Revise this writing until the use of this data seems completely natural, and neither random nor forced

Post on blog.

DATA-INGREDIENTS FOR NEXT WRITING GAME – WORDS AND SENTENCES

1 conversation between adults

Something said by a child3 names of birds (species)2 brand names for foodText from 3 signsThe name of a planet or a

starThe name of a lipstick1 time of day (High noon,

night, lunch time, 2:30 p.m. etc.)

The title of a bookThe title of a paintingThe name of a dead

politician2 types of vegetables3 items from a hardware

store (what we in Danish call an “isenkræmmer”)

A type of gun (Colt, Winchester, etc.)

DO NOT WRITE FICTION!

Travel writing is a genre of creative non-fiction – not a brand of science fiction, fantasy, or any other type of fiction

Be realistic, but still entertaining

Present some facts, but make it exciting

SOME QUESTIONS/CHOICES YOU MOST LIKELY WILL RUN INTO:

Who is travelling?

Where are they going?

Why do they travel, and how?

What do they do there?

What happens to them?

Who do they meet?

How does the journey end?

HYPERTEXT 1

Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access by a mouse click or a screen tap.

Apart from text, hypertext may contain tables, images, videos, sound files and other presentational devices.

Hypertext is the underlying concept defining the structure of the World Wide Web (using HTML = hypertext mark-up language)

HYPERTEXT 2

Most non-fiction hypertexts are linear in construction and we read them in the same way that we read other non-fiction texts

Imagine a set of IKEA assembly instructions done as a non-linear hypertext…!

WHAT IS HYPERFICTION, THEN?

A storyworld consisting of: Words, images, sounds, links connectivity, webs

Difference from other (narrative) media (novels, films, plays)?

• Non-linear texts,

• Non-linear reading experience

• Interactivity

• Open-ended…

HYPERFICTION – A RECENT EXAMPLE

Ian Hatcher: Opening Sources

Let’s play..!

Can we turn this into a coherent story?

WHAT NOW…?

In the days to come, finish your writing tasks and post them on the blog

Within a few days I will have commented on every single post – you are welcome to comment back!

You should also read some of your classmates’ posts and comment on them

The blog is yours to use, also in the future – maybe your teachers will use it for more writing games…