Literature Is Not Dead

My brother and I issue ourselves a literary challenge every month, and this month since we were halfway through when we got started we picked a fun, easy one. We decided to design our own undergraduate writing program. Below is mine. I know I was highly influenced by Dennis Cass’s dream MFA program he posted about a few weeks ago.

The key is that my program, like Dennis’s, isn’t an academic program but a professional one. It is designed to produce profesional working writers, the same way engineering programs produce fully capable engineers.

As it currently exists it embraces the traditional ficiton/poetry dichotomy, with students picking one track to focus on. Lately I’ve been thinking that professional preparation makes little sense for a poet. Poetry may be best served in the current academic programs, while professional programs like mine maybe should have a fiction/creative non-fiction split.

This is a three year program because it assumes that creative writing majors will waste their first year as undecided. However, a creative writing workshop 101 class is required at some point before the students begin the LIND program, just so they know a little of what they’re in for. Students should be able to accomplish most of their general academic requirements before their junior year. Literature classes would be added to this curriculum as well in order to fulfill English program requirements.

Here it is: The Literature Is Not Dead Undergraduate Creative Writing Program

Year 2:

Semester 1:

• 201 Workshop – A standard creative writing workshop in either fiction or poetry.

• Reading as a writer – Writers read works differently from literature majors. This class will teach young writers to dissect and learn from the masters they’ll encounter in the future.

Semester 2:

• Boot Camp – it is recommended that students take a light course load this semester. This is a weed-out class, designed to purge the uncommitted, and purge the surviving writers of the idea that real art comes from moping about in ivy-clad towers for three years to produce a deep book. The class will feature writing at high volume, to strict deadline, and writing to spec. Writer’s block will not be an option.

• The publishing industry – An overview of the industry in which the writer will be working

Year 3:

Semester 1:

• Workshop in alternate forms – students can chose from screenplay, poetry (if they are fiction majors), fiction (if they are poetry majors), creative-nonfiction, flash fiction, or plays.

• 301 Workshop

• Plotting/planning a novel – A class designed to familiarize fiction writers with ways to wrap their heads around the novel, the industry’s major form. (a similarly awesome class of some kind would be available for poetry majors)

Semester 2:

• Marketing – possibly taught in conjunction with the business school as a marketing 101 class, but will also focus on the specific marketing tasks facing a writer: branding, web presence, media relations, etc.

• Research and reporting – This class will teach the student the basics of conducting an interview, how to avoid plagiarism, and how to research larger works (possibly taught in conjunction with the school of Journalism). (Not sure if this class would apply to poets)

• 301 Workshop

Year 4:

Semester 1:

• Writing the Community: students are required to perform community service of some kind. Students will occasionally check in with teachers to discuss how the real world is an essential element in all fiction and poetry, and how a writer’s life effect his or her work.

• 401 Workshop (in the 400 level workshops, submission of a poem or story to a journal or magazine will be required. Publication is not necessary. This requirement is mainly to toughen a writer to the fact of rejection)

• Public speaking – How to prepare poems or stories for reading, and which poems and stories read best. General speaking principles, how to deal with a crowd, and some discussion of how to record one’s voice for podcasts.

Semester 2:

• 401 Workshop

• Workshop in alternate forms (as above, must be a new form)

• Business for writers: students will learn about the many business concerns they will face in the future, including taxes, contracts, copyright law, submissions, and agents.