Metro Journeys in Writing Creatively

by Ostrom, Hans; Bishop, Wendy; Haake, Katharine

• ISBN13: 9780321011329
• ISBN10: 0321011325
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-07-17
• Publisher: Pearson

Summary

Metrois a unique multi-genre creative writing book that provides exercises and prompts to help readers move beyond terms and concepts to active writing.By using "guided writing," the authors help the reader through the creative processes in fiction, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction. A mini-anthology with relevant exercises makes this sourcebook complete.For anyone interested in enhancing their creative writing skills.

Table of Contents

Alternate Contents	ix
Genre
Introduction With Mainly Teachers in Mind	xix
Introduction With Mainly Students in Mind	xxiv
Prologue Concerning Writing Exercises and Ways to Approach Them	xxvii
PART I WRITING PROMPTS AND ACTIVITIES	1	(278)
Riding the Blue Line---Reading	3	(41)
Getting Started	3	(1)
Of Reading	3	(1)
Fitting Yourself into the Conversation of Writing You Love	4	(2)
Reading Yourself	6	(1)
And How About Your Reading Habits?	6	(1)
Your Own Canon	7	(2)
Reading Your Times: When You Came to Be	9	(1)
Reading Home: Organizing and Developing Memories	10	(2)
Correspondences: Imitation and Inspiration	12	(1)
Collecting Epigraphs for a Textual Mosaic	12	(1)
Writing Provocations: Responding to Other Writing	13	(5)
Eight Steps for Inhabiting and Transforming a Poem	18	(5)
Travels With the Essay	23	(3)
Reading and Writing Out of Other Art	26	(1)
History as a Collaboration of Fact and Imagination	27	(3)
Shadows, Doubles, and Others	30	(2)
Can You Name That Epiphany?	32	(3)
The Narrow Road to Mixing Genres	35	(1)
Reading Form as a Product of Perspective	36	(3)
Reading and Writing in the Workshop	39	(1)
Responding to, Evaluating, and Grading Alternative Style	39	(5)
Riding the Green Line---Invention	44	(74)
Getting Started	44	(1)
Dislodge the Icon of ``The Writer''	44	(4)
Narrative Anxiety Cure-All (Not Sold In Stores)	48	(3)
Coming to Our Overlooked Senses	51	(1)
Taste: Writing About Food and Family	51	(5)
Sounds and Smells	56	(1)
Places and Things	57	(1)
The Familiar Place As Frontier: Seeing the Rare in the Ordinary	57	(1)
Beginning With Nostalgia: Lost Childhood Places	58	(2)
Places, Memories, and Desires	60	(2)
The Text(ure) of Public Places	62	(2)
Writing About or With Objects	64	(3)
Writing from Expertise, Not Just from Experience	67	(3)
Language and Form	70	(1)
The Power of Names	70	(3)
Writing from Your Name: An Introductory Poem (an Acrostic)	73	(4)
First Words of Stories: This Sentence, These Words	77	(5)
The Perfect Grammar of Form: Finding Your Own Ideal Form	82	(3)
Nonsense and Sound Poems: Demystifying Formal Verse	85	(2)
Burrowing: Writing That Springs from Language Itself	87	(2)
There's Something About a Sonnet: Easing Into a 10 x 14 Poem	89	(4)
Piecemeal Fictions	93	(2)
Comparison vs. Contiguity: Using Metaphor and Metonymy	95	(2)
Working with Metaphor	97	(1)
Premises, Assumptions, Hypothetical Situations	98	(1)
Y in X-land: Dropping Characters into Places They Don't Belong	98	(1)
Under What Circumstances Would Someone ... ?	99	(1)
Against the Grain: Ignoring Conventional Wisdom	100	(2)
Against the Grain, Part Two	102	(2)
The Nonexistent Relative: Viewing ``Facts'' as Malleable	104	(1)
Ambiguity Is Certainly Useful	104	(2)
Drama = Conflict = Power	106	(3)
Story Spinning: 51 Prompts for Story Ideas	109	(2)
Memory	111	(1)
Listing and Memory	111	(2)
The Most Important Spectator in Your Writing Life---You	113	(2)
How New Writing Grows Out of Old	115	(3)
Riding the Orange Line---Development and Improvisation	118	(47)
Time	118	(1)
Playing With Time: Some Basic Moves	118	(3)
Telling Time 1: Order	121	(2)
Telling Time 2: Frequency	123	(1)
Telling Time 3: Duration	124	(4)
Telling Time: Down and Dirty	128	(1)
Developing Characters, Points of View, and Other Elements	129	(1)
Character Witness: 20 Questions	129	(4)
Building Character	133	(2)
Pardon Me, Your Nemesis Is Showing	135	(2)
Turning the Lens: Framing Narrative Perspective	137	(2)
Narrative ``Voice'' and Listeners Within Stories	139	(2)
Using Delay As an Organizing Principle	141	(2)
Writing What Cannot Be Filmed	143	(2)
A Certain Conventional Element	145	(2)
Deconstructing and Reconstructing	147	(1)
Things Are One Way, Then They Are the Other	147	(3)
Fiction Backwards and Forwards: Interlocking Narratives, Prequels, and Sequels	150	(2)
When Losing Control Is About Finding It Again	152	(4)
More Work with Language Itself	156	(1)
The Fat Draft and the Memory Draft: When Energy Runs Out	156	(3)
Thinking Poetically to Develop and Improvise	159	(3)
Word-Surfing Safari: Playing with Language	162	(3)
Riding the Red Line---Revision and Editing	165	(29)
Strategies: Different Approaches to Revising and Editing	165	(1)
The Executive Summary: How to Respond to Workshop Criticism	165	(2)
The Voices of Revision: What to Do with Advice	167	(2)
Radical Revision: A Strategy of Risk	169	(2)
Sentence Sounds: Exploring the ``Conjunctive'' and ``Disjunctive''	171	(2)
Getting Unstuck: Slowing Down to Pay Attention	173	(4)
Quickness as Complementary to Complexity	177	(1)
Forms Within Formlessness: Seeing the Potential Shapes of a Poem	178	(3)
Old Faithfuls: Some Enduring Approaches to Revision	181	(1)
Tactics: Specific Tasks of Revision and Editing	182	(1)
The Arbitrary Reviser Looks at Fiction	182	(2)
Paper, Tape, Scissors: The Arbitrary Reviser Acquires Tools	184	(1)
Directed Revision and Editing: Variations on Arbitrary Revision	185	(2)
Writing Between the Lines: Revising as ``Adding To'' Not ``Taking Away''	187	(2)
``Blowing Up'' Your Poems: Large-Font Revision	189	(1)
Revising Openers in Prose Genres: Eight Options	190	(4)
Union Station---Alternative Guided-Writing Scenarios	194	(44)
Multiauthored Texts	194	(1)
Coauthoring---Some Whys and Wherefores	194	(6)
Dream Wandering: Writing with a Group	200	(2)
Public Poetry	202	(1)
Video Poem: Let Each Medium Teach the Other	203	(2)
Experimental Forms and Less Familiar Modes	205	(1)
Writing from Your Autobiography Box	205	(3)
Parodies---Pushing Imitation to the Edge	208	(4)
Palimpsest: Writing ``Over'' the Forbidden Story	212	(2)
The Possibility of Play and the Play of Possibilities: Trying Writing Games	214	(2)
Multimedia, Cross-Cultural Writing	216	(2)
The Virtual Hypertext Game	218	(3)
Fortuitous Textual Coincidences; or When Fragments Collide	221	(4)
What the Words Grow Out Of: Building Multidimensional Collages	225	(2)
Flooding Yourself: A Strategy to Gather, Freewrite, Assemble, Construct	227	(1)
Vantage Points on Language	228	(1)
The Center Holds: Weaving Multiple Discourses in a Single Text	228	(2)
Warp and Weft: More on Weaving	230	(2)
What Hands Make: Using ``Instructions'' as a Model for Other Writing	232	(2)
In the Same Breath: Rewriting as Part of the Conversation	234	(1)
Silence	235	(3)
Exact Fare---Guided Writing Related to Selected Matters of Grammar, Precision, Style, and Punctuation	238	(41)
Behold the Sentence	238	(1)
The Care and Feeding of Sentences	238	(3)
Sentence as Style	241	(4)
What's in a Sentence: The Possibilities Exposed by Breaking the Rules	245	(2)
Building-Block Stories: Practice Mixing Sentence Styles	247	(3)
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? Writing Using Only Question Sentences	250	(2)
Dueling Banjoes: The Use of Parallelism	252	(1)
Sentence Economics	253	(3)
Grammar, Punctuation, and Creativity	256	(1)
Grammar-Check Your Favorite Author	256	(2)
This Adventitious Music: Exploring Grammar with Nonsense Writing	258	(1)
By All Devious Means (But With Grammatical Consistency)	259	(2)
The Problem (Okay, One Problem) With Punctuation	261	(4)
In Praise of Punctuation	265	(1)
Word-Choice in Particular, Language-Awareness in General	265	(1)
Words: Choice and Precision	265	(3)
Figures of Speech	268	(3)
The Opposites of Everything	271	(2)
Poetry Phobia Cure-All (Not Sold in Stores)	273	(2)
Scavenger Hunt	275	(4)
PART II MINI-ANTHOLOGY	279	(131)
``Learning to Write'' (poem)	281	(1)
Audre Lorde
``Elektra on Third Avenue'' (poem)	282	(1)
Marilyn Hacker
``Mourning the Dying American Female Names'' (poem)	283	(1)
Hunt Hawkins
``Harlem'' (poem)	284	(1)
Langston Hughes
#712 (``Because I could not stop for Death---'') (poem)	285	(1)
Emily Dickinson
``Ode on a Gregian Urn'' (poem)	286	(2)
John Keats
``Where We Live Now'' (poem)	288	(1)
Marilyn Chin
``(Untitled)'' (poem)	289	(1)
Peter Meinke
``Arte Poetica'' (poem)	290	(1)
Pablo Neruda
``The Art of Poetry'' translated from the Spanish by Robert Bly (poem)	291	(1)
Pablo Neruda
``Of Reading'' (poem)	292	(1)
Hans Ostrom
``Metaphors'' (poem)	293	(1)
Sylvia Plath
Anonymous, [Early English riddle] (poem)	294	(1)
``Drug Store'' (poem)	295	(1)
Karl Shapiro
excerpt from Black Mercury translated from the Swedish by Hans Ostrom (poem)	296	(1)
Marie Silkeberg
``The Children'' (poem)	297	(1)
William Carlos Williams
``Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey'' (poem)	298	(4)
William Wordsworth
``Musee des Beaux Arts'' (poem)	302	(1)
W. H. Auden
``Horoscope Imperatives: A `Found' Ghazal'' (poem)	303	(1)
Wendy Bishop
Anonymous, ``Go Down, Moses'' (song lyric)	304	(1)
Five Sonnets:
``My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun''	305	(1)
William Shakespeare
``Design''	306	(1)
Robert Frost
``My Daughter Considers Her Body''	307	(1)
Floyd Skloot
``Sonnet''	308	(1)
Robert Pinsky
``The Windhover''	309	(1)
Gerard Manley Hopkins
``In Praise of the Humble Comma'' (essay)	310	(2)
Pico Iyer
``Meander'' (essay/creative nonfiction)	312	(2)
Mary Paumier Jones
``Primary Sources'' (essay)	314	(6)
Rick Moody
``Anomalies in Relief: Notes of a California Expatriate'' (essay)	320	(7)
Hans Ostrom
``Library Card'' (essay)	327	(7)
Richard Wright
``My Children Explain the Big Issues'' (essay)	334	(2)
Will Baker
``Consanguinity'' (essay/creative nonfiction)	336	(6)
Jill Carpenter
``Landscape and Dream'' (short story)	342	(4)
Nancy Krusoe
``A Questionnaire for Rudolph Gordon'' (short story)	346	(4)
Jack Matthews
``How To Tell a True War Story'' (short story)	350	(10)
Tim O'Brien
``Street Map'' and ``RE/Collection'' (memoir)	360	(7)
Sheila Ortiz-Taylor
``A Conversation With My Father'' (short story)	367	(4)
Grace Paley
``Paris in `73'' (short story)	371	(5)
Grant Cogswell
``Arrow Math'' (short story)	376	(15)
Katharine Haake
excerpt from ``Hamlet'' (drama)	391	(5)
William Shakespeare
``A Really Big Shoe'' (performance piece)	396	(14)
Diana Marre
Suggested Reading	410	(3)
Reference Books	410	(1)
Anthologies	410	(1)
Criticism and Theory	411	(1)
Books on Writing	412	(1)
Publishing	412	(1)
Glossary	413	(15)
Acknowledgments	428	(2)
Index	430