Creative Writing Workshop Description (Creative Writing)

ENG6950YY
Creative Writing Workshop

G. E. Clarke F-TERM (Fall or First Term) / I. Williams S-TERM (Spring or Second Term)

NOTE: This course is restricted to students enrolled in the MA in English in the Field of Creative Writing program.

Course Description

A creative writing workshop in multiple genres. Students will submit their work on a regular basis for group discussion and workshopping.

F-Term Course Description

Our workshop will help each of you discover your individual VOICE-organic and original; that is to say, what makes you a distinctive writer-via life experience, learned and "innate" vocabulary, and engagement with "Tradition" (T.S. Eliot)-albeit plural and borderless. You will emerge from this workshop with a better understanding of who you are (including your de facto identity as an intellectual) and why you write what you write. Thus, you will try a selection of imagination-stimulating assignments, across genres, to be submitted weekly, along with the pieces of prose, play, or poetry that you wish to workshop. (If interested in my musings on VOICE, see GEC, "On Speaking VOICE: Vernacular, Orature, Imagery, Cadence, Emphasis." In Awake to Love and Beauty: Proceedings from a Conference in Honour of George Whalley. Eds. Michael John DiSanto, Alana Fletcher, Shelley King, Jaspreet Tambar. Algoma UP, 2016, pp. 173-180. http://georgewhalley.ca/gwps)

S-Term Course Description

The second part of the course expands the traditional workshop model beyond giving and receiving peer feedback. My premise is that a sustainable creative writing practice operates in a cycle of writing, reading, revising, and sharing. Moreover, we focus on developing necessary capacities or traits that are essential to your success as a writer in the program and beyond. These capacities include self-discipline, curiosity, risk, vulnerability, empathy, courage, etc.

Course Method of Evaluation and Course Requirements

The final grade will be based on the student's demonstrated writing skill, conscientiousness in submitting assignments, development, and class participation. Methodology for conducting seminar: Students will submit their work in advance to the professor and their fellow students for group discussion during class. The final grade will be equally weighted between the two semesters.

F-Term Components (50% of your course grade) (September 2022 to December 2022)

This semester's components and Marking Scheme will be based on class participation worth 20%, submission of weekly assignments worth 30%, and a Final Portfolio of works new and/or revised worth 50%. It's all simplicity itself: Some reading, some talking, "much" writing-with gravitas in analysis and joy in discovery.

S-Term Components (50% of your course grade) (January 2023 to April 2023)

This semester's components and Marking Scheme will be based on:  Portfolio: Literary Jounal Submission 30%; Blurb/Review and Presentation 15%; 2X7/7 Project 25%; Revision Exercise, 10%; and ongoing Examination Workshops and In-Class Activities, 30%. Note also that there is a 10% per day, up to one week, penalty for lateness. 

Term: F-TERM (September 2022 to December 2022)
Date/Time: Tuesday / 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm
Location: Room JHB 617 (Jackman Humanities Building, 170 St. George Street)
Delivery: In-Person

Term: S-TERM (January 2023 to April 2023)
Date/Time: Tuesday / 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm
Location: Room JHB 617 (Jackman Humanities Building, 170 St. George Street)
Delivery: In-Person