Thursday, September 10, 2009

Exploiting my friends makes my job easier

Enjoying Justin Taylor's notes about the intro creative writing class he's teaching at Rutgers--sometimes you get a group of students who are magical. Although my husband, who lives for teaching and teaches everything from poetry to tech writing, has pronounced that if you treat all your students like honors students, they'll act like honors students.

With that in mind, I'm trying to cook up a VIP guest lecture/reading series for my undergraduate advanced fiction writers--I'm going to try to get some of my flashy friends to write flash-length notes/essays on writing very short fiction that I can post on Blackboard (the evil gated community of social networks), along with links to two or three of their stories.

Anyone want to help out? Anyone have a better idea?

14 comments:

Erin said...

Even though thinking about it makes me a little tired, I wish I was in college now. Seems like it's much more enjoyable and engaging.

Laura Ellen Scott said...

are you passively/aggressively volunteering to write one for me?

R. Gay said...

I'd be happy to do something for you.

Laura Ellen Scott said...

Yesss! thanks roxane.

Ethel Rohan said...

I'm also happy to help.

Laura Ellen Scott said...

brilliant, ethel. this thing is shaping up nicely.

Ethel Rohan said...

I sent a note through Zoe just let me know what you need.

Ryan W. Bradley said...

that sounds like a pretty cool idea!

Laura Ellen Scott said...

thanks ryan. I was thinking about how much i hate the bloviation of most writing about writing, and how it would be nice just to get an idea at a time, with lots of white space.

Do you think you want to pitch in?

Ryan W. Bradley said...

yeah, reading books on writing always drove me nuts in classes. this will be way better. and i would be more than happy to take part if you would like, shoot me a message on facebook with the particulars and i'll take my best shot!

Erin said...

Actually, I really was thinking about how I used to read my Raymond Carver photocopies and think "If I write like this, no one will roll their eyes at me anymore!"

But yes, I'd love to help.

Lauren Becker said...

let me know if you have additional exploitation needs ... sounds very cool!

Robert said...

would you be interested in doing some hint fiction? if so i'd be more than happy to write something up :-)

wv: cordembl

Laura Ellen Scott said...

ryan, erin, lauren, robert. this is awesome. I want it all. I'll send details, insofar as I've dreamed them up, by email.