1. Creaciones individuales

For each instance of Fab Lab in the syllabus (roughly one for each genre studied), you’ll be asked to create texts of your own design —for instance, a poem, a microcuento, a dramatic scene — according to the following procedure:

• Write an original work (or two, or more) according to the instructions provided on the day the activity is announced. You’ll have a couple of days to write it, so that you’ll have time to fashion it, look it over, polish it, refine it.

• Next, ready it for “publication” by providing a paragraph or two in which you reflect on your creative process: what worked, what did you struggle with? What you were trying to do? What did you discover in doing it — about literary expression, about yourself?

• Collect your writings and “publish” them as a blog post on this site.

2. “Craft Talks”

During the semester, you should view or virtually attend at least three events involving creative writing or literary performance and then for each, write a page or so explaining what you took from it regarding literary craft. The objective here is twofold: what challenges do creators face in making imaginative texts? How do imaginitive texts challenge conventional notions of who we are and how we live?

There are a few such events built into the syllabus and you are encouraged to attend them. However, you may also attend a livestream reading elsewhere, watch a TED talk about writing, see a movie sponsored by the Spanish club, view a theater performance or rehearsal put on by the Theatre Department, ACT, Arts Transcending Borders, or Uni2Act. If you are a participant in a literary performance (actor, member of a creative writing class), or a creator of visual texts (i.e. filmmaking) you may reflect on your own approach to your craft as one of your entries.

Antología particular

Throughout the semester, stay alert to literary works and language that particularly strike you, and include them in a personal literary anthology. Although you may add as many as you want, you should include at least one work from each literary genre studied, accompanied by a brief reflection — a paragraph to a page — on why you have chosen it. In the case of theater or film, you should focus on a scene rather than the whole work.

Overall Considerations

Your Fab Lab Notebook should conclude with a final written reflection on what you learned through the process (2-3 pages should be enough). Your final projects will culminate in an in-class reading (Recital). For those of you interested in publishing your work more widely, remember fósforo: Revista de Inspiración Hispánica has a call for submissions every spring.

Your work will be graded on the basis of your entire production: the works themselves, evidence of sustained commitment to project (journal, drafts of writing), your ongoing reflections, and final creative presentation.