This week, the creative writers turned in their final revisions! They have now revised two poems, a short story, a creative nonfiction piece, and a screenplay. Next week they will be turning in their final portfolios -- a collection of each piece they've written over the course of the year. This portfolio will also include an "About the Author" page, a revision response (an essay describing and explaining the process of the most extensively revised piece), and an "Artist's Analysis," in which each student will reflect upon the ways in which his/her writing has grown since the first day of class. Finally, each student will come up with a title for the entire manuscript. Holding a year's worth of work in your hands can be quite impressive! Once these portfolios are turned in we will spend the remainder of the year having a class reading and watching the film Stranger Than Fiction, a film about a man who learns he is a character in a novel-in-progress and his attempts to get the author to change her mind about killing off his character.
In Bufo news, the 51st edition should be arriving from the printer in less than two weeks!

4th Marking Period

As the 4th marking period begins, the creative writers are beginning the process of revising the vast majority of the pieces they written this year; a process that will carry them to the end of the marking period.
The big news this week is that the 51st edition of Bufo has been sent to the printers. Student editors Cole Campbell, Brittany Dukov, and Morgan Peele have worked tirelessly all year to get submissions, edit them, and format them on the computer, and now their baby has left their hands. We should be getting a proof copy from the printer soon!

Screenwriting

The creative writers have begun to enter the world of screenwriting. Each student will be writing his or her own six minute short screenplay over the next couple of weeks, and it will then be workshopped. Currently, we are watching the movie version of Whitney Otto's How To Make An American Quilt. We read the book at the beginning of the year during our study of fiction-writing, and once we finish the movie, we will be discussing the art adaptations. Other films we will watch during the screenwriting portion of the course are The Lady in the Water, which is one large metaphor for the structure of a screenplay or story, and Stranger Than Fiction, another film that plays with the idea of character and plot development quite overtly.

Creative nonfiction

This week the creative writers began talking about creative nonfiction, specifically the memoir and the personal essay. We read excerpts from Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs, The Book of Telling by Sharona Muir, Name All the Animals by Alison Smith, and High Tide in Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver just to name a few. This coming week, they will each be working on creating a memoir or personal essay of their own. Instead of a full workshop, they will be doing mini-workshops with one other member of the class.

This week the second poem is due for the creative writing students. Tomorrow is a particularly fun day, as we will be talking about experimental poetry. Senior, Dorian Adams, will be paying the class a special visit to perform some slam poetry for us as well. As we close out the marking period we will have a discussion on song lyrics vs. poetry, which will include a viewing of portions of the Bob Dylan documentary, No Direction Home. This segues nicely into the 3rd marking period, which focuses on screenwriting and creative non-fiction.

Poetry

We are well into our unit on poetry, and the students have just turned in their second original poem. The assignment was to write a form poem, and they could choose to write formal verse, a sonnet, a ghazal, a pantoum, or a sestina. To prepare, we read poems by Agha Shahid Ali, Elizabeth Bishop, Theodore Roethke, Edna Saint Vincent Millay, Philip Larkin, and more. We will be workshopping all the way up to winter break. When we return, we will begin to look at experimental poetry and myth poems.

The creative writers have just turned in their first poems! They will be writing two more during the marking period; one form poem and one experimental or myth-based poem. We just finished reading and discussing Sylvia Plath's collection, Ariel.
Bufo, the school literary magazine has also had two meetings thus far. Check back for more updates on plans!