Grades and Final Business

Grades have been updated in Blackboard. Please check these to make sure they are in line with what you think you turned in.

As of this morning, only four students have emailed me a screenshot of their proof that they completed the course eval! (There's a link below to accessing this, and I will reiterate that I will award you an extra credit participation point--which works out to be about 3% of your total participation grade-- if you do this. PLEASE, PLEASE do this, even if you don't need the extra credit. I will love you forever if you just DO THE EVAL.

Portfolios are due WEDNESDAY, DEC 14, by 12:30 P.M. in your student folder of Dropbox. If for some reason you doubt it is uploading to Dropbox properly, email it to me. Better to be safe. The portfolio is worth a whopping 50% of your total grade, and I WILL NOT ACCEPT IT LATE. As in, if you turn the Portfolio in at 12:45, you will fail my class.

I just want to say again what a total pleasure it was to teach this class, and I wish you all the very best, both in your submission (woohoo! first submission!) and in your writing lives. Please keep in touch. The email that will work best for this is writercynthiahand@gmail.com. Let me know the outcome of your submissions! And please, feel free to use me as a reference and approach me if you feel you're ready to start trying to get published.

I'm eager to read your portfolios!

CH

Revision Resources

Here's a link to seriously one of my favorite articles regarding revision, EVER, "Revising Your Prose for Power and Punch."

https://www.dropbox.com/s/i372l2qwua9pswd/David%20Michael%20Kaplan%20Revising%20Your%20Prose%20For%20Power%20and%20Punch.doc?dl=0

I've also included Kit Reed's "What to Leave Out and What to Put In"
https://www.dropbox.com/s/m9umfs2iysq2xjt/Kit%20Reed%20What%20to%20Leave%20Out%20and%20What%20to%20Put%20In.doc?dl=0

and Jesse Lee Kerchival's "Revision," (which I couldn't link here for some reason, but all three of these articles will be in a new "Revision Articles" folder of our class Dropbox.)

Happy revising!

Portfolio Time

It's portfolio time. So here's what I want in your portfolio:

• One of your two revised short stories, formatted exactly to submission standards, ready to go on submission. (Times New Roman, 1 inch margins, page number with your name on the top right--I will put a sample of this in Dropbox.)

• A query letter for said story. (see the post immediately before this one for an example)

• A SASE (stamped), if you are sending out via snail mail.

• A larger manila or priority envelope, if you are sending out via snail mail. (I will pay postage.)

• A letter to ME, about your progress and analysis of the class, which I will keep.



• 2 of your very best workshop responses.

All of these things can be turned in at the ASH lobby between 12:00 and 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday the 13th OR in your specific student folder (the one with your name on it) in the Dropbox. Just make a folder for yourself entitled FINAL PORTFOLIO and clearly label everything that goes in that folder. If you are sending your submission via the internet, please send me a screenshot of your confirmation that you have submitted the story. Visit this website if you need instructions on how to take a screenshot.

Final Letter Guidelines

 The idea behind the final letter is to show a context for the class.  The point of teaching in a portfolio style is that I, the instructor, am able to evaluate you, the student, based on your process as a young writer, not on the final products that you produce.  Here is your chance to explain your process and effort to me, before I grade your work.

            The letter should answer some or all of the following questions:

1)      What was your attitude about writing (and publishing) before you entered this class?   

2)      How were these ideas about writing (and publishing), listed above, challenged or affirmed in this course?  What challenged them?  What was your favorite Conversational Topic?

3)      What was your writing process like during the course?  What did you feel was your biggest achievement?  How did you grow as a writer?

4)      How would you evaluate your “level of engagement” in the course?  How intellectually engaged were you with the readings we read, the workshops, and finally, your own work?   

5)      How did the readings impact your own sense of creative writing?  What were your favorite pieces?  What were the pieces that most affected you, challenged you, made you see another way of thinking?  What pieces did you struggle with the most, and how did you respond to that friction?

6)      (mandatory) How did Jerome Stern affect your ideas about writing?  How did you see his ideas working through the published stories that we read?  Give at least one clear example of something Stern wrote about that you could apply to one of the stories that we read.

7)      What do you want me to know before I read your portfolio?  How do you want me to consider it?  What grade do you believe you deserve in this class?  Why?

The best final analysis letters are the ones that vividly show me your process as a writer, using specific texts, making specific reference to moments in the class or moments in your writing, referring to and even quoting your own work and the work of others.  In other words, specificity is the key.  Don’t write this letter in general terms, saying that “this was good,” or “I didn’t understand this. . .”  Dig deep into your experience.  Ask questions, and try valiantly to answer them.    

Query letters

So it's about that time for you to be drafting your query letters! Can you believe that you're about to send out your first submission?!

Below I've pasted my own query letter, which I sent to my first publication, The Iowa Review, almost exactly thirteen years ago, I'm just now noticing. Wow. A lot can happen in thirteen years.

Feel free to use this as a basic template for your own letter. They should all look basically the same.





                                                                                                                 2225 S. 27th Street
                                                                                                                 Lincoln, NE 68502
                                                                                                                 402-742-4150
                                                                                                                 Cindybojam1@aol.com

November 25, 2003

Fiction Editor

Iowa Review
University of Iowa
308 EPB
Iowa City, IA, 52242

Dear Editor:

Please find enclosed my short story, “The Sugar Shell,” for your consideration.  If accepted, this will be my first published story.

This past May I completed a short story collection entitled What the Good Is.   “The Sugar Shell” is the first of nine stories set in rural Idaho near the Teton mountains, where I lived for almost twenty years.  Currently I teach creative writing at the University of Nebraska Lincoln and also serve on the editorial staff of Prairie Schooner.  In the past I’ve read for The Idaho Review and screened poetry book manuscripts for Ahsahta Press.  In various workshops, I’ve worked with Robert Olmstead, Mitch Wieland, Greg Hrbek, Anthony Doerr, and Jonis Agee.  

A SASE is enclosed for your reply.  There is no need to return the manuscript.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Cynthia Hand

Course Evals

Here's the link to the course evals. If you send me a screen shot or something, proving you completed this, I will give you an extra participation point. So yay, extra credit!

https://ir.boisestate.edu/broncocourseevals/student-course-evals/

I will also pick your brain about how you felt the course went next week.

Thanks for being awesome.

Cynthia