More vocabulary words

admonishing, circuitous, depleted, consoled,complacency, ambiguity, mystically, repugnance, fastidiousness, perplexity, provocation, conjecture, coquetry, perpetual, discomfiture, disillusionment, conducive, pessimism, promenade vindication, seclusion, denouement, denunciation, grotesqueness

Creativity and "flow"

Watch this video by the the social scientist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and come to class prepared to discuss his ideas involving creativity, fullfillment, and flow.

Registering for Engrade ...

Grades for this class will be recorded on Engrade, the online grading system. How to sign up:

1) Go to Engrade at www.engrade.com.

2) Click on Sign Up, and then click on Student.

3) In the box provided put your information: teacher name-student id-special access code. Example: mrvilbig-284950604-5403.

4) Note: mrvilbig is spelled with no capitals or periods; I'll give you your special access code in class.

5) Click next and set your own username and password.

Once you are registered, you and your parents or guardians can check grades at any time.

9/11 Reactions

The playwright Christopher Shinn offers some thoughts on his personal reaction to the September 11 attacks and how they affected his writing. I'd like you to watch the video this weekend and think about his reaction for a discussion in class on Monday. What was the main way, in his view, that his focus as a writer changed? He questions whether television and movies will be able to address the profound issues raised by the September 11 events. Why do you think he takes this view? What are your own thoughts?

Contact

I can be reached at (718) 724-8500. Leave a message, and I will return the call as soon as possible. A more effective way to reach me is to write an email using your Engrade account. Or you can email at my Dept. of Education email: pvilbig@schools.nyc.gov.

Grades

Grades will be based on the following:
Tests/ at home writing and projects (including creative writing projects): 40 percent
Classwork, quizzes, and homework: 60 percent
Total: 100 percent

How we'll work:

For creative writing, we will use a workshop approach, in which you'll share your work with other writers in the class and get their feedback. (More on this later.)

For each book or literary work we read, you’ll be expected to read about 15 to 25 pages a night. In addition you will sometimes have homework in which you'll be asked to write brief responses or answer questions about your reading or topics for class discussion. You can expect that for each book or literary work, you'll write one at-home essay and have one to two tests. Pop quizzes occur whenever the teacher (me) gets the sense that students are not reading the material!

IMPORTANT: Grades are cumulative. That means the grades you make now count as much as the grades later in the semester. So it's important to work hard from the very beginning and not dig yourself into a hole in the first weeks of our class.

We will use Engrade, an online grading system in this class. I’ll give you information shortly about how to register. You’ll have your own account, where I’ll post grades. Your parents or guardians should be given access to your account.

Welcome to Creative Writing!

We will be focusing in this class on becoming skilled writers in a variety of genres, but our special emphasis will be on fiction. You'll be asked to write your own short stories and to respond to fictional works of literature in a way that demonstrates your increasing understanding of how fiction works.

This class will take the view that fiction remains one of the most powerful means by which human beings can pose basic questions about the meaning of their lives, about right and wrong, about their place in society, and even the nature of reality itself. In other words, fiction can be seen as a form of philosophy (the branch of knowledge that asks ultimate questions about the meaning of human life), and we'll approach it from the standpoint of the big ideas it addresses, while never forgetting that what makes fiction unforgettable is powerful and dynamic storytelling. Honing your skills in these areas will be a big part of what this course is about.

This class will involve a great deal of writing in which you will be asked to become a self-aware writer and creator, knowledgeable about the traditions of literature and conscious of the choices you make in creating a work. Because good writers are also good readers, we’ll read a wide variety of fiction of high literary polish. I’ll ask you to begin reading as a writer – that is, you will read with the goal of understanding the techniques and methods that permit writers to create their own unique vision and style, while just incidentally writing prose that dazzles and demands attention.