Creative Writing: Your Writing Life

In this course, you will explore a variety of genres to discover your unique author's voice. Stretch your creative muscles in this writing workshop as you compose a memoir, devotional, poetry, fiction, and a children’s book. We will also write film and book reviews. This is an important skill, and a wonderful way for you to engage your Christian worldview into the broader cultural conversation!

You will also learn how to resonate as a small group of writers, just like Tolkien, Lewis, and the Inklings. We will take some of your writing to the final stage, other projects will remain at a draft level, but you will have a writing portfolio at the end of the year. Students should have a foundation in writing and grammar and be able to apply those skills to these creative projects.

Course Objectives:

1. To familiarize the student with a wide range of writing genre.
2. To establish a writers' group to encourage and resonate with each other in an Inklings style.
3. To assist the student in finding their personal writing niche by writing in a wide range of styles.
4. To refer to classics of poetry and literature as inspiration for the student's own work.
5. To create a portfolio of writing samples, both draft and finished pieces.

Texts

• Bandersnatch by Diana Glyer
• An autobiography of your choice that you have read before to use as a guide for our Memoir writing. If you are stuck trying to think of one, Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis is one of my favorites!
• The Singing Bowl collected poems by Malcolm Guite.
• Poetic Meter and Form by Octavia Wynne.
• Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Make sure you get the original, unabridged copy. Arthur Rackham and Ernest H. Shepard are the illustrators of the classic versions.
• Choose a copy or two of your favorite children's picture books.
• A Biblical devotional that has resonated with you.
• Selections of mysteries from G. K. Chesterton from The Innocence of Father Brown. You can order a copy but it is also available free online at Gutenberg.org.

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