Week 1

Welcome to The Art Institute, and to your first writing class here at the school. This class is designed for practice and instruction in writing short essay compositions. In it, you will discover some of the ways in which writing can help you to develop your creative capacities and understand better your particular kinds of knowledge and experience of the world. Writing is a process that will reveal to you what you know, and what you don't. The simple act of putting words on paper (and screen!) will open the spring of remembered people, places, events, and ideas that you carry inside. What is more, writing will reinforce your sense of what you can contribute to the lives of others, for all of us are seeking greater knowledge and understanding of the very large and often complicated world we live in, and all of us are in need of the perspective and experience contact with others can give us. Each of us brings something fresh and unique and lovable to the world. In giving expression to our thoughts, memories, dreams, desires–and in sharing them with others–we discover the many ways we have been shaped by life, and the connections we have with others.

Getting started is easier than you might think. The first step is to take the pressure off yourself. Forget rules, forget rules, forget rules. Comma? Semi-colon? Forget them for now. Restrictions can make anyone freeze up, and most of what anyone writes will be forgotten or lost or trashed at some point. Suspend your inner critic. Write for the sheer pleasure of it, the sense of discovery and surprise at how the mind works, and what you've got hidden inside. The following prompts and exercises are designed to help you get started. There is no purpose to them beyond getting words to flow from you, and having a little fun. You may well find something in what you write, something for keeps, something to shape and present to the class or others. But that part of the process, which involves making decisions, making decisions about what tokeep, what to toss, and how to order, shape and polish the stones if rough, all that comes later. The start of anything is often messy. And that is fine. So jump in the water. And get your hair wet!

Exercise 1: Write for two minutes on anything that comes to mind, no matter what it be. Pretend, if you must, you've been let loose in a grocery store and the more items you can pull down into your cart, the fewer you'll have to pay for later.

Ex. 2: Write for five minutes a mini sketch of yourself, right here, right now. Record the five senses–what you see around you (objects, colors, lights, people), what you imagine you look like, what you are feeling (nervous, relaxed, tired, hungry, etc.) what you hear (even to the voices in your head), what you smell.

Ex. 3: Word Prompts: respond to one or several of the following words for two or three minutes at a stretch.

lima beans

cherries

lips

goddess

stones

grass

the sea

music

Ex.4: Write a ten-word (or more) sentence. Now use each word as the first word in a new sentence.

Ex. 5: Peruse the headlines of today's LATimes. Pick one and make-up a one-paragraph article to go along with it. Now go back and read the real news.

Ex. 6: Imagine a situation, a young boy or girl neatly dressed (or shabbily dressed!) and being led by the hand of Father or Mother to the gates of the schoolhouse, on the first day of school. Include whatever conversation or dialogue occurs between the two people, characterized by great joy, or fear, concern, suspicion, love or desire, whatever comes to mind. Write it down.

For Homework: Sort through the material you wrote today in class. Select the best of it, here an artful or interesting sentence, and here a dramatic image or fresh thought. Arrange these cuttings or clippings together in a single paragraph that illustrates something you learned in today's writing work, arrange them in such a way that you could present the whole paragraph to the class as a discovery about the writing process, about yourself, or whatever the discovery may chance to be. Alternatively, develop an idea that came to mind in your work today and develop a single paragraph around the idea.

In addition, write a one-paragraph essay on the meaning of life. Yes, that's right, the meaning of life. I've given some handouts, excerpts from a book titled The Meaning of Life. These excerpts provide some examples of the way others have responded and may be helpful.

Bring these two one-paragraph essays of about 150 words each to class next week (saved electronically). As a group, we'll look at some of these individual pieces and comment on what each brings us.