Writing from the Self
All the course pages specific to Writing from the Self are shown below.
Also please review the Contributor Code of Conduct, the Privacy Guidelines, and the other pages in the Basics menu at the top of this page.
The Skills area (also available via the top menu) offers practical tutorials to help you improve your writing. These pages will be particularly useful during the weeks in which you are working on your projects.
The Readings area contains many examples (written by your instructor and previously published in various places) of writing from the self. A few of these examples are showcased on the resources homepage.
If you have questions, or if you need help, please get in touch.
Welcome
Writing from the Self
Jan. 5, 2024, 7:51 p.m. • Ross Laird
Creative writing is a powerful, ancient, and yet delicate practice. We write — quietly, often in isolation, in tentative and mercurial moods. We revise, and turn back upon our own narratives, and w...
Self-awareness Project
Creativity is a Journey Inward
Jan. 5, 2024, 7:58 p.m. • Ross Laird
The self-awareness project is an opportunity to reflect upon the depth of your experience in the course. How did it go? What happened? What did you notice? What was diffi...
Writing Project
Writing from the Self
Jan. 5, 2024, 7:58 p.m. • Ross Laird
The three projects in this course are designed to work together. You have a reading project, which is focused on helping to cultivate a lifelong love of reading. You have...
The Art & Craft of the Personal Essay
Building Upon a Storied Tradition
Jan. 5, 2024, 7:49 p.m. • Ross Laird
A personal essay is a non-fiction creative writing essay in which the author utilizes the perspective of personal experience to articulate larger themes (in traditional literary criticism, such the...
Fieldwork
Exploring the World
Jan. 5, 2024, 7:54 p.m. • Ross Laird
Fieldwork is typically a bit different from a field trip , which tends to be focused on education and exposure to educational content in a new environment. Fieldwork, by way of contrast, is not so...
Reading Project
Exploring Personal Pathways
Jan. 5, 2024, 7:56 p.m. • Ross Laird
The reading project is the first page that you create. It is a web page, created and customized by you. The reading project represents your efforts to craft — with text, but also perhaps through im...