Creative Writing Minor

Philosophy

Considering that the value placed on writing of literary merit and artistic vision is continually degraded in our society, considering that writing is a difficult, lonesome, and most necessary craft, considering that writing creative works cannot simply be "taught," it is a wonder why anyone tries to write ambitious, uncompromising, and intelligent creative works. But some do. Think of Joan Didion, Charles Johnson, Belle Waring, Alexie Sherman, Eavan Boland, Denise Duhamel, Norman Mailer, William Styron, Sam Shepard, Yusef Komunyakaa, Alice Fulton, Martin Amis, Tim O'Brien, Jorie Graham, or Dean Young. Many of these writers took creative writing classes, and some didn't. The value of a creative writing class is not that it will make you a writer, but that it will require you to work on your craft within a community of other writers. And about being a part of a community of writers--that means a writer must be a reader, a part of the great audience that makes for great poetry (according to Walt Whitman, and he's right).

At the heart of our program is the workshop, where in small, roundtable classes, student work is considered and critiqued by peers and a professor. The workshops emphasize constructive criticism and the incorporation of criticism in revision. The workshop process helps students to practice their craft, to experiment, and to grow as writers. 

Mission

Words, our first and most sophisticated technology, are a medium, enriched or bastardized in our hands. Our principle mission is to reacquaint ourselves with our words, their aesthetic textures, and their consequences.

Faculty

Our faculty have published books, chapbooks, essays, articles, stories, and poems, by nationally prominent publishers, journals, and literary magazines.  They do and teach.  More importantly, they understand the difficult processes at work in composing creative works, and they are experienced in helping students discover their own ways through.  For more about our faculty, see the faculty directory.

Curriculum

Semester Hours Required for the Creative Writing Minor: 15 hours

Required Course (3 hours)

• CRW 2001 Introduction to Creative Writing (3 hours)

Elective Courses (12 hours)

• CRW 4120 Advanced Fiction Writing (3 hours)
• CRW 4320 Advanced Poetry Writing (3 hours)
• ENC 2160 Introduction to Nature Writing (3 hours)
• ENC 3250 Professional Writing (3 hours)
• ENC 3310 Advanced Expository Writing (3 hours)
• ENC 4930 Selected Topics in Writing (3 hours)
• JOU 3101 Introduction to Journalism (3 hours)
• FIL 3100 Scriptwriting (3 hours)

Outcomes

In fulfilling the requirements of the FGCU minor in Creative Writing, a student should be able to perform the following outcomes:

• read and respond to peers' works constructively;
• compose and revise poems or narratives with a critical eye;
• use technology, perhaps to present and disseminate their work, or to research markets, or to discover writers or literary magazines;
• understand and enact the dictum, show, don't tell;
• share their work with others.