Artist Profile

Grumpy Cat works in oils

Please profile the artist you chose to study in a New Post on your blog.  Please all include the information from your brochure, but instead of listing it, write the information more like a life story in paragraphs.  Include an image and/or self-portrait of the artist as well as 2-3 images of the artist's most famous works.  Give your post a creative title.   Thanks!

in the news{papers}

Please post some writing inspired by our dig through newspapers Wednesday.  You might have one longer piece or several shorter ones.  Include some images and a catchy title.  You could note the headline, photo, ad, etc. that sparked your idea, or you could leave that a mystery...

Take some time between now and the end of the week to get caught up on anything you are missing.  Please let me know when you've added a post you need points for so I can track it right away.

If you still have time, please click through your classmates' blogs and leave some comments.  You don't have to read every piece...Just choose one or two, read and comment, and move on to another blog.

Six Word Memoirs

In a New Post on your blog, please share whichever of the 6-Word Memoirs you came up with in class  that you are comfortable sharing.  Just one or all of them.  Include an image or images.  You don't need to explain them, but you could if you wanted to.  You could also submit what you've come up with to the Smith magazine website.

Thank you, Harris Burdick

Using the artwork, title and sentence you selected from the Burdick book as your inspiration, please draft a creative piece of your choice.  Spend some time on this one and shoot for at least 350-500 words, more if you can to really develop your story.  Use plenty of vivid details and consider using dialogue.  You might create a fictional short story or maybe adapt a narrative from your own experience that connects to Burdick's picture or words. 

You'll have today and Thursday in the lab to draft and polish your story and then create a New Post on your blog by the end of class on Thursday that includes both your writing and the Burdick image (looks like most of them are on Google images if you search "harris burdick").  Use the title that went with your image as the title of your post.  Use the sentence that went with your image somewhere in your piece--put that sentence in bold.

I'd like to move on to using art as writing inspiration next week, and this seemed like an interesting transition from our study of text for ideas--it so creatively (and mysteriously) fuses both.  You can read more about The Mysteries of Harris Burdick (and submit your story if you'd like!) here.

Blackout

Thanks for trying the Sharpie blackout technique (scientific terminology there) in class. Please share one of your blackout text pieces as a COMMENT on this post. You could type the text you left on the page as a sentence or poem or story.  You could also take a picture with your phone and just post your work that way.

I'm thinking you could do this same technique with any printed material containing a good chunk of text to work with. I also think you could be inspired to write all sorts of other pieces by using your blacked out piece as a starting point.

You could visit Austin Kleon's website to see what others have come up with and even post your own work there if you're up for it. 

Another interesting Sharpie-related item you can check out here...

If you'd like to, you can also post some of the writing you came up with using the words and phrases cut from magazines--the poem you pieced together with the words you cut or maybe the story you came up with using the lines I cut out.  You could post a picture of your poem.  Just if you have time and want to add to your collection...all optional.

Readers as Writers

In a new post on your blog Friday, please create an entirely new piece of writing inspired by one or more of the stories, books, topics, etc. we have touched on in our discussion of how reading shapes us as writers.  This could be fiction or something from your own life.  It could be a story or a narrative poem or something else, but go for at least 300 words.

Here are some ideas I jotted down in my notebook as you all were sharing your books that mattered to you last week...just things connected to the stories themselves or what you said about them...maybe something you can take and run with:

• a forgotten piece of paper or photo or receipt or note left behind in an old book
• a modernized retelling of a myth or a mythological character's story
• a well-known story from the perspective of a minor character 
• a secret hidden or revealed
• how to prepare for the end of the world
• stories of September 11th
• a story inspired by a letter or a series of letters of the alphabet
• a story for a character whose first name is also the name of a country or place
• a girl choosing between two guys
• a crazy ex-girlfriend
• a secret society or group
• meeting someone you admire
• a twisted version of another story
• falling in love over and over again
• living in a different lifetime than your own
• being an outsider
• a silly but wise story
• middle school nerd
• dealing with guilt
• an accident
• a kid obsessed with something unusual
• dragons and magic and all that
• how an animal came to be

You could also use the text you ended up with when we blacked out the book and magazine pages as inspiration for a story or poem.  Let's also say you could steal a starting point from one of your classmates' pieces from the comments section in the BLACKOUT post following this one.  Same with your text cut from magazines.

Also, take a look at the grade check I printed for you and see if there are pieces you have missed posting or something I missed seeing.  I've been trying to get caught up on commenting on your blogs.  I will read all of it, I promise!  Thanks for being patient with me and for taking the time to put your own comments on your classmates' pieces. 

Famous First and Last Lines

In a new post on your blog Wednesday, type up some original writing of about 250 words or more  inspired by the blue famous first line and the yellow famous last line you glued into your journal.  This could be one continuous piece or two separate pieces.  Include an image and an interesting title to your post. 

Then, create another new post on your blog presenting the following information  for each of the lines you chose.  Title this post Famous First and Last Lines.  Be sure to include the following for EACH:

• the line word for word
• the author, his or her birth/death years, and a bit of info about him or her
• the year it was published
• a 40-50 word summary of the novel in your own words
• 40-50 words on why you personally would or wouldn't like to read this book
• at least one image for each

Here's an example:

Famous First Line:

"You better not never tell nobody but God."

This line opens the novel The Color Purple, published in 1982 by author Alice Walker, who was born in Georgia on 9 February 1944. Through letters written back and forth to one another, the novel traces the story of two poor, African-American sisters who are separated, one married off to an older, misogynistic neighbor and the other called to serve as a missionary in Africa. The main character Celie also writes letters to God because she has no one else to share her shameful secrets and her deepest feelings with. 

I first read The Color Purple novel in a college class at Drury, a class taught by one of my favorite professors who I have long admired and tried to emulate as a teacher myself. I had read the work of Maya Angelou and found myself drawn to the stories of African-American women, and this story captivated me. I have since read the book 6 or 7 more times, and every single time I find something to shake my head at, mumble an "amen" to, laugh about, cry about...Such a powerful work to me--I will read it many times more, I know.

Famous Last Line:

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

F.Scott Fitzgerald ended his most famous novel The Great Gatsby with these lines, considered by some to be the best closing lines of any novel ever. The novel came out back in 1925 but still shows up on collections of all-time classics and high school reading lists. Narrator Nick Carraway offers insight into the vapid society of West Egg, New York, in the 1920s, as well as the mostly empty marriage between Tom and Daisy Buchanan. The action centers on languid afternoons and extravagant parties at the mansion of Gatsby, an enigmatic millionaire.

I read The Great Gatsby in English class my junior year in high school. I re-read it again la couple of summers ago and enjoyed it very much. I liked the new film starring Leonardo DiCaprio (so cute! totally one of my girlhood crushes) as Gatsby released a year or so ago. The director, Baz Luhrman, also did one of my all-time favorite movies, Moulin Rouge, so I knew I'd really like what he did with Gatsby.