A New President, Snow Days, and ENGL565: Forms of Nonfiction

The first day of class comes upon us so suddenly. Usually. But this semester our third week has become our first week, thanks to the inaugural festivities and our snow day last Tuesday. (There’s more bad weather in the forecast for next week, but let’s ignore that possibility for the moment.)

You’re reading my blog dedicated to ENGL565, Forms of Nonfiction, a course designed for graduate students in George Mason University’s various MFA and MA programs in creative writing and English. I’m course blogging (or blogging, period) for the first time this semester; I guess the fact that you’re reading this indicates I must have done something right. Please bookmark this web address, as it includes the course description and schedule (see tabs above). I’ll be regularly posting course information, important links, course writing, etc., and I’ll also be linking to and sometimes commenting on the blogs you’ll create as one part of your work for the semester.

Notice that the course will meet on May 5, the university’s designated extra day in exchange for the inauguration; this means that we’ve really only missed one class period, not two. Still, let’s see what we can do to get ahead a little bit, or at least to keep us from falling behind. Here’s what I suggest you do before next Tuesday. If you don’t complete all of these tasks by Tuesday, it won’t hinder the class; but completing some or all of them might help things to run more smoothly.

– Read the course description and look over the schedule using the tabs above.

– Get to the bookstore and buy the two course texts on sale there: The Fun of It, edited by Lillian Ross, and 3 Minutes or Less, edited by the Pen/Faulkner Foundation.

– Find or buy or order or borrow a copy of David Sedaris’s Holidays on Ice OR his book Barrel Fever. Holidays on Ice is pretty self-explanatory, a collection of Sedaris’s holiday-themed writing over the years, while Barrel Fever is his first book, a fairly edgy collection of early fiction and nonfiction pieces. Again, find or buy one OR the other. Lots of copies are available online and in your local bookshop.

– Think about what kind of topic you’d like to make the focus of a twelve-week blog for our course. I’d like this to be a topic near and dear to your heart, NOT a topic chosen to impress anyone. Obvious choices might include fiction or poetry, but the field’s also open to other kinds of topics: music, video games, knitting, sports, drinking, politics, auto repair, fashion, real estate, hair plugs,  gardening, computer programming, media-watching, club-hopping, glass-blowing, snail raising, Dumpster diving, and so on. In other words, the field’s wide open and you should choose according to what you care about and pretty much no other criteria. Some of you, of course, may already be blogging, which is great — but unless your blog is topic-oriented, you will need to either create a new, separate blog OR temporarily alter the nature of your current blog.

If you have questions about any of this — and remember, we’re not starting the course until next Tuesday, weather permitting, so all of this is suggested work, not required — please send me an e-mail at sberg1@gmu.edu.

I’ll leave off now by saying that I hope to see all of you soon. Really, I do.

Scott

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