Now we

1
Now were going outside to
2
Eat Snow

• Proceed slowly.
• Pay attention.
• Look around.
• Dont talk.
• Feel everything. Wake up your nerve endings.
• Close your eyes while tasting.
• Dont stay gone too long (frostbite!)

3
On a piece of notepaper and in a couple of
paragraphs, describe/summarize what you just
experienced. Dont ask any questions.Write
Snow as the title.
4

• Under that last writing, write a new title, Snow
  2. Describe the experience again in 4
  paragraphs.
• Use every one of your senses.
• Do not use any of the following words
• Cold
• White
• Childhood
• Crunchy
• Melt
• Freeze
• Frozen
• Imagine that your reader is either
• An alien from space who has never been to earth
  before.
• Someone who has spent her entire life in a warm,
  dark basement, eating only oatmeal.
• A kid from Florida who has never traveled
  anywhere.

5

• The Thing Itself
• vs.
• The Thing as Launch Pad

A couple ways to think about things.
The thing itself super vivid, clear, accurate,
precise description. Do whatever you have to do
with language to make the thing present. To make
it there. This isnt about you. This is about the
thing. Respect the thing. No ideas but in
things.
The thing as launch pad the thing resembles
other things and reminds you of other things. It
shoots you off to other things, thoughts,
subjects. Anything. Anywhere. Goodbye, thing.
6

• Read Elizabeth Bishops The Fish.
• What is the difference between concrete and
  abstract?
• Rewrite Snow 2, but now REALLY describe the
  thing. The thing itself. I mean, come on! Be
  concrete. Be specific. Be minutely detailed.
• Title this new segment, Snow 3.
• This is worth 4 pts. The main criterion is that
  the reader should be able to really see, feel,
  experience the thing.
• Hand it in.
• This is warm-up writing as we start the semester.

7
For Next Week, Jan. 28th

• QUIZ ON READINGS
• In Wolff, read Cathedral, pp. 108-124 and
  Lawns, pp. 445-466, focusing on character
  development.
• Online, read flash fiction samples. Linked on
  schedule.
• Go into Blackboard Discussion Board and make an
  entry in Self Profiles and Art Views.
• Be writing in your notebook!
• Submit workshop material! Email AND BB.
• Watch for email (again) about possible room
  change.

8
How did you do in Eating Snow 3?

• Some great, precise perceptions and
  accurate, vivid language. True to the Thing.
• Im not sure that everyone did this,
  though. Instruction was rewrite Snow 2, but
  now REALLY describe the thing. The thing itself.
  I mean, come on! Be concrete. Be specific. Be
  minutely detailedThe main criterion is that the
  reader should be able to really see, feel,
  experience the thing.
• Too much thinking.
• Too few senses.
• Some cleverness.
• Ill probably give everyone full credit
  this time.
• Im a bleeding heart mushball.

Remember, for this particular exercise, I wanted
you to forget yourself. Respect the Thing. Love
the Thing. With words. See The Fish and Ponge.
9

• In your snow writing, I also saw a lot of
  over-writing, with elegant, surprising, resonant
  tid-bits buried inside.
• So heres a little demonstration in editing.

10

• Eating Snow
• The shivers that begin to track up my arm and
  into my skin, tell me it's time to taste.

11
Kristen

• The shivers that begin to track up my arm and
  into my skin, tell me it's time to taste.
• Sniffing delicately, the fresh smell bites my
  nose. I close my eyes and push it into my
  awaiting mouth. It burns for a moment, then for
  just an instant I swear I can feel each
  individual crystal as it rests on my tounge.
  However the heat of my mouth wins over this small
  part of winter and smoth as the coldest of silk
  it slides down my throat.

12

• Eating Snow
•   Brussel sprouts, cauliflower and broccoli. 

13
Hattie

• Authority has directed me to eat the snow and
  think about it. The snow is brussel sprouts,
  cauliflower and broccoli. It is the last thing I
  a child of mother earth want to eat. I, the
  child, am dreading the meal of brussels sprouts,
  cauliflower and broccoli. The color is dull and
  unwelcoming. The steamed vegetables that were
  once frozen in a zip locked container stare at my
  glaringly. I, the child, ingest the horrific meal
  as quickly as possible. After it is in my stomach
  and the damage is irreversible I am made to think
  about it. The side portion of snow was enough. If
  I had been made to count ten bites before I was
  allowed to leave the table I would have been
  belligerent.

14

• Eating Snow
• I reached down slowly, looked around to see
  where everyone else from my creative writing
  class was along with authority figure they call
  the teacher.

15
Bethany

• I reached down slowly, looked around to see where
  everyone else from my creative writing class was
  along with authority figure they call the
  teacherI felt the chills it brings to my tongue
  and immediately disappear as it dissolves in my
  mouth and my mouth return to its normal warm
  state. I realized that this little task was
  nothing difficult. It was only difficult in the
  anticipation of preparing to put the snow in my
  mouth. I began walking back to the building,
  following my authority figure like the rest of
  the students

16

• Eating Snow
• It is very reflective, shining sunlight in
  every color.

17
Josh

• It is very reflective, shining sunlight in every
  color.  It forms high up in clouds, and falls to
  earth under very specific circumstances, namely
  temperature.
• Snow burns to the touch.  It feels as though
  being burnt by an infared source, but this runs
  counter to what we know about snow from science. 
  I like to think of the taste of snow as sort of
  an empty canvas.  IF the snow is clean, which is
  rare, it is essentially whatever flavor your
  conscious thought infuses it with.  It also has
  the enviable ability to smell sort of clean and
  airy, much like its composition.
• a heavy snowstorm is a silent fury.  it can bury
  everything, yet seems weightless.  But when it is
  on the ground, it can be noisy underfoot. The
  non-sound of a heavy snowfall is something that a
  nodak guy like myself finds strangely comforting.

18

• Eating Snow
•   Move away from the others to a snowbank
  nearby.  Snatch a fistful of snow and look for
  who's watching.  Close your eyes to their eyes
  and just feel the stares. 

19
Michael

•   Move away from the others to a snowbank
  nearby.  Snatch a fistful of snow and look for
  who's watching.  Close your eyes to their eyes
  and just feel the stares.  Press the ball to your
  mouth and try to taste the water.  You felt it
  too close your teeth are screaming.  They're
  watching now.  The snow is a needle, but you'll
  tough it out.  Grind your jaw against the ache
  and you start to taste it.  A smoky bitter on
  your tongue and dry through the water.  It's
  exhaust in your mouth.  Open your eyes to the
  staring but you can't see the eyes.  Try to taste
  the water while the sweat starts to bead.  Nobody
  is staring, but you still feel the eyes.  The
  shame is a chill and it's burning hot.  The
  cringe is the wind, but the coat is inviting.  Be
  careful now.  Surrender to the cold and keep the
  shiver inside.  Guilt dots your forehead and
  drips down your back.  Grin with the flavor of
  smoke and stare at the others.  Like they stared
  in your head.  Shame them with your stares and
  wipe the snow from your mouth.  Your chin was
  never wet and your shirt's almost dry.  Zip up
  your coat and walk in.

20

• Eating Snow
• My tongue cools as the snow warms.

21
Emma

• I find myself staring down a snow bank,
  scanning for a clean, taste-worthy patch. I
  settle for a handful that may have sported a few
  questionable specks. I ingest it. My tongue cools
  as the snow warms. The end product is a mouthful
  of mysterious, speckly water.

22
Little kids usually dont have too much trouble
being fresh and surprising they dont over-think
the thing.See Kenneth Kochs experiments in the
schools
23
So

• Consider the way that simple attention to
  something outside of yourself can reveal
  something you didnt intend.
• Let yourself say a lot of dumb, boring things
  to get to the brilliant, astonishing, simple
  things.
• Writers block is a myth.
• In the editing stages of your work, try
  cutting the piece WAY downby half, by
  three-fourthsand just see what happens.
• Be a kid again. Play with wrods.

Yeah, I mean WRODS!
24

• Well probably come back to the eating snow
  thing soon.
• But lets try again with some different stuff,
  focusing on language, especially figurative
  language.
• After all, to really see something in
  languageto love the thing itself with words

25
maybe you have to love the words too !
26
Whats figurative language?

• How do you say that someone is drunk?
• How many animal metaphors do we use everyday?
• Where did most worn-out metaphors come from, and
  how do we keep the language alive? Look at Lorrie
  Moore

27

• Sometimes it helps to take a really unusual
  perspectivesay, that of an animal.
• Once a student wrote a piece from the point of
  view of a deer. It described a hunters gun as a
  branch that barks.

28
Ok. So.

• Describe what you see on the table. REALLY LOOK.
  The thing. The thing itself.
• Make the object

luminous
29
STOP ! !

• Are you being dull?
• Are you being predictable?
• Are you thinking too much?
• Try a thesaurus

30
Try Being Surreal
31
Surrealism
Surrealism
32
1924 Andre Breton

• The Surrealist Manifesto
• I believe in the future resolution of these two
  states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so
  contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a
  sur-reality.

33

• The idea of surrealism aims quite simply at
  the total recovery of our psychic force by a
  means which is nothing other than the dizzying
  descent into ourselves, the systematic
  illumination of hidden places and the progressive
  darkening of other places, the perpetual
  excursion into the midst of forbidden territory
  (Breton).

34
Between WWI and WWII

• Surrealism
• the principles, ideals, or practice of
  producing fantastic or incongruous imagery or
  effects in art, literature, film, or theater by
  means of unnatural juxtapositions and
  combinations. An attempt, through these random,
  irrational juxtapositions and combinations, to
  make make a new reality or a new whole.

35

• Instead of
• I saw the rabbit, as soft as cotton, his eyes
  bright, munching the grass.
• you get
• I saw the rabbit, ripe as a hammer, his eyes
  boiled, baptizing the grass.
• (random words from carpentry, religion, cooking)
  
• or
• I saw the rabbit, as Monday as Van Goghs ear,
  eyes in search of Harvard, document the grass.
• (random words from stuff on my desk)

36
Early Surrealists Valued
When a doughboy missed his sweetheart, he
couldn't just write, I miss your muffin, because
of the censors. Apollo, who ate the most pussy of
al the ancient gods, was out. The Holy Ghost was
in. Everyone knew where the Holy Ghost stood on
cunnilingus even though He was ineffable.

• random CHANCE
• convulsive beauty, the marvelous, the uncanny,
  the disruptive, and the unexpected
• strange and unexpected juxtapositions
• defamiliarizing the everyday so that it once
  again appears strange and new
• liberation of mind from bourgeois modes of
  thinking
• the oblivion ha-ha silly brain
  brillo stain

The names of Aztec gods were on one
page, serotonin uptake inhibitors on the other.
Here, you said another baby avocado tree. You
threw your shoe. I broke the refrigerator and the
fossil fish. I broke my shoulder blade. I tried
to make jambalaya. To relax the organism, the
cookbook said, pound with a mallet on the head or
shell.
I love you. This remarkable statementhas
appeared on earth to substantiate the clams.
Here's your fire extinguisher, welcome to
the glacier.
Don't think I wasn't shocked when you were a
traffic signal and I a woodpecker.
I can't make it any clearer than that and stay
drunk.
37
FICTIONSmall GroupsWhat are the elements of
any story6?
38
Reminder For Next Week, Jan. 28th

• QUIZ ON READINGS
• In Wolff, read Cathedral, pp. 108-124 and
  Lawns, pp. 445-466, focusing on character
  development.
• Online, read flash fiction samples. Linked on
  schedule.
• Go into Blackboard Discussion Board and make an
  entry in Self Profiles and Art Views.
• Be writing in your notebook!
• Submit workshop material! Email AND BB.
• Watch for email (again) about possible room
  change.

39
In WolffCathedral, pp. 108-124 Lawns,
pp. 445-466.Character development
40
See you next week.
See you next week.
See you next week.
See you next week.