My observation has been that the most valuable advice for student writers, especially when they are on their own after school ends, is Just Do It. The enclosed text is the last assignment that I distribute during spring term.
Final Assignment
WRITING FOR YOUR LIFE
The Assignment:
Write for 1/2 hr per day for seven days—from today until
our second-to-last class—and thenceforth as you wish.
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Think about what type of writing would be most useful for your personal needs, intellectual goals, and psychological/social development at this time: personal essay? film reviews? a reading journal? poetry? a diary of imaginary dialogues and/or unsent letters? critical analyses of an interesting topic? something else?
Choose your genre.
Choose a way of being “easy in the harness” while completing this assignment. Would it help to write the 1/2 hour at the same time every day? or at different times but in the same place? to use the same type of tools or paper—or different ones? to build in a preliminary activity such as a walk or a telephone conversation before the writing session—or after it? Think about your predilections and realistic needs.
Prepare for them.
Another form of preparation: List your own criteria for good writing. If you use an abstract word for one of good writing’s qualities, define what you mean or give an example of the particulars of how you sense that quality. You can say what good writing does as well as (or instead of) what it is.
Write this now.
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Mary Gilliland, past recipient of the Stanley Kunitz Fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center and a Cornell University Council on the Arts Faculty Grant, is author of The Ruined Walled Castle Garden and The Devil’s Fools, has poems anthologized in Rumors Secrets & Lies: Poems on Pregnancy, Abortion & Choice and Wild Gods: The Ecstatic in Contemporary Poetry and Prose.