Writing from the Senses

Just finished teaching my first multi-week class at Northwestern University’s Lifetime Learning Center. The class I designed was Writing from the Senses, so I spent 8 weeks leading students through sense-prompted writing exercises, class discussion and critique—all designed to improve their use of metaphor and help them write more vivid characters and descriptions. We discussed writers from Collette, Proust, and Hemingway to Aimee Bender, Sandra Cisneros, and Stuart Dybek. What a blast—I expect to be teaching variations of this course for years to come.

Writing from the senses 1-day class

Tomorrow, I'm teaching a one-hour class as a requirement of the teaching seminar for my MFA studies at Northwestern. The class is one I designed, titled "Writing from the Senses." My class, and about 10 others taught by my classmates, will be offered free of charge to the public, since it's a way for us to practice our teaching skills, so the crowd will be a friendly, receptive one. Still, I'm nervous, so I'm easing my anxiety by WAY over-preparing. Before we do the writing exercises, I'll distribute sensory prompts; i.e.,  so I'll pass around essential oils, a box filled with tactile objects, some music snippets, a number of odd images, and a few flavorful nuts and seeds. We'll also read some Proust aloud, natch.