Teacher Notes: Preparing for Workshop

The day has arrived!  The day where all the days of teaching Composition finally pay off.  I am teaching a fiction workshop this summer at PCC, and I couldn't be happier about it.  I've had the opportunity to teach workshops before at PCC, but this summer feels like serendipity, a coincidence of the fates that conspired to allow me to dive into craft at a moment when I am feeling a creative resurgence.

For me, workshop is a divine space, a space of unadulterated creativity, where writers are allowed to stretch their craft, to dabble, to experiment, to try things they might not have the chance to try when writing in isolation.  In order to model this for my students, I write with them.  I try to show them that the exercises I've produced for them are not just for the "new" writer, but, like any exercise physical or mental, an opportunity to try and try again, to hone and battle, to dive headlong against a task in order to become stronger, more lithe and flexible, to remake ourselves in ways that might be surprising after multiple repetitions.

More than anything, workshop is a chance to write and write a lot.  My workshop classes are full of prompts, of freewrites, of imitations and modeling.  It is a time to read from great works, and then to try our hand at creating our own.  Today is the first day, and I feel like it is the opening of a grand adventure.

Coincidentally, today is also the day I will return to Pacific University's Low-Residency MFA for a faculty reading.  This is the space where I was taught the art of the workshop, the knack of the craft talk, and the unending passion for honing the written word.  The line up for tonight?

Pete Fromm:

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Hopefully reading from his forthcoming novel If Not for This:

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Craig Lesley:

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I'm hoping for new material, but he could read from his nonfiction Burning Fence...

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Or some of his fiction, like Storm Riders...

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The final author is a new one to me: Eduardo Corral

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While unknown to me, a quick search brings the edge of excitement even closer as his poetry promises to ignite me with inspiration.  If he dazzles, then I'll be picking up his collection Slow Lightning.

In preparation for this day full of excitement?  Double barreled coffee.

Teacher's Note: End of Term

The last two days have been a whirlwind of essays, late assignments, grades, rubrics, spreadsheets, and exhaustion.  Even in the wee hours of Father's Day, I found myself at the screen, responding to emails, grading online assignments, and drying out my eyeballs.

But...

It is done!  Grades were submitted this afternoon and the term has been put to rest.  As a treat, I allowed myself a meal on the couch as I watched an independent film, Hump Day, by Lynn Shelton and starring Mark Duplass, who is an actor I've come to trust and follow.  Some of you may recognize him from his work on The League.

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I've already cracked the book Ron Carlson Writes a Story and I've started a cursory rewrite of a piece of flash fiction that I wrote a couple of months back.  Every term starts this same way for me.  After I fulfill my obligations to my students, I burst forth in a frenzy of ambition to read, to write, to hike, to spend time with family.  The week after term is often one of my most creative periods as my desk is cleared of essays and grading.  

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I'm looking forward to what the week will serve me.  Ah, the life of a teacher!