Chance, Synchronicity & Mind-writing
TABLE OF CONTENTS
 

2015

Introduction

Class 1: Luminous Details (Annie Dillard; Natalie Goldberg; Allen Ginsberg)
Write About an Environment (Patrick O'Neil, The Demise of Horticulture; Ron Silliman, from Jones, Homage to Bromage; Lisa Thompson, Tom Petty Epiphany)

Class 2: Images Haunt / Where Does Writing Come From? (Robert Graves, Gary Snyder, Joan Didion)
Write About a Non-ordinary State (Chase Twitchell)
Write About a Stranger (Gayl Jones)
Class 3: The "Ordinary"
Write About the "Ordinary," in Detail (Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space; Nickolson Baker, The Mezzanine.)
The Comma (Gertrude Stein)
Class 4: Response
Write About a Transition / Confinement (Joy Harjo, Compassionate Fire from A Map to the Next World, "Barbed wire" from Harpers)
Class 5:
Write About Using All the Senses & Write About What You See Outside Your Window (Jamaica Kincaid)
Show Don't Tell / Adjectives & Verbs (Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire; Kenneth Patchen, The Origin of Baseball)

Class 6:
Write a Short Autobiography (Jack Kerouac, Lonely Traveler; Jamaica Kincaid, Girl)

Class 7:

Write About a Spiritual Crisis or Transition (James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Rene Daumal, The Skin of Light)

Class 8:
Write About Aging (M.F.K. Fisher, Sister Age, Allen Ginsberg, Don't Grow Old)

Class 9:

Write About a Relative (James Baldwin, Lenna, Monica Ochtrup)
Class 10:
Write About Your Name (Bruce Weigl, The Impossible; Sandra Cisneros, My Name; Ryszard Kapuzcinski, The Shadow of the Sun)
Class 11:
Write About a Body of Water (Susan Beaver, Cole Swenson, Bill Scheffel)
Class 12:
Write About Then and Now / A Morning Ritual (Bruce Chatwin, quotes from The Songlines)

Class 13:

Write About Darkness (W.B. Yeats, Crazy Jane and the Bishop; Vicki Hitchcock, Psychosomatic; Chernobyl; Karen Chrappa, Search, Rescue and a Million Miracles in Between)
Class 14:
Write About Food and Cooking (Miriam Goodman, Caroline Collier, Lisa Thompson, Joanne Brothers, Bill Scheffel, M.F.K. Fisher)

Class 15:

Write about Money and/or Secrets (Ryszard Kapuscinski, from Shadow of the Sun; Lewis Warsh, Secret; Bill Scheffel)

2016

Class 1:

Write about Being and/or Dying (Stew Brinton, Being and Oddity; Rene Daumal, Jesus Before Pilot; David Bowie reflections)

Class 2:

Write about Losing Something / or Morning or Night (Thomas Transtromer, Prelude; Patti Smith, from M Train)

Class 3:

Write About New york City (Ocean Vuong, The Weight of Our Living: On Hope, Fire Escapes, and Visible Desperation)

Class 4:

Write About Your Home Town (Mary Karr, The Hot Dark; Jack Kerouac, Dr. Sax; Annie Proulx, Close Range; Melina Mejia)

Class 5:
Write About Desks and/or a Job (Bill Scheffel; Herman Melville, from Moby Dick)

Class 6:
Write About An Other (George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia; Susan Sontag, a tribute to her by Katie Roiphe; Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities; Azar Nafisi, Reading Nabakov in Tehran; William Carlos Williams, Heel and Toe to the End)
Class 7:
Write About a TV Set

Class 8:

Write About Love and Sex or Sex and Love (James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room;
Class 9:
Write About Anything (Michael Lally, Talk About it, Love Never Dies)

Class 10:

Write About a Chance Event

Class 11:

Write About a Dream (Edgar Allan Poe, William Blake, Pat Nolan, Sarah Hepola, Ocean Vuong)

Class 12:

Write About Nature

Class 13:
Write About War

Class 14:

Write About an Animal

Class 15:

Write About a Spiritual Awakening

Class 16:

Write About a Hero

Class 17:

Write About School

Class 18:

Write About a Creative Period of Your Life

Class 19:
Write About Simplicity and Aloneness

Class 20:

Write About a Foreign Environment

Class 21:

Write About a Train

Class 22:

Write About a Political Event

Class 23:

Write About a Car

 

2017

Class 2:

Write about a Tree or Trees

Class 3:

Write about Oneself as Other

Class 4:

Write in a Serial Fashion

Class 5:

Write About a Laundromat and an Old Person
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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