Williamson 1

English 479-01: Writing Practicum

Lori Williamson

Genre: Metafiction
Intended Audience: My audience could be anyone, but ideally it will be people
who are interested in the exploration of inexplicable human leanings, of emotion
without reason, all the while trying to explore the reasons. (Ask about places to
publish)
Length of Project: The project will be about thirty pages of fragmented story, the
beginning of a longer piece, like novella-length. Some fragments will be hermit crab
style, adopting the form of documents such as letters, to-do lists, journal entries.
Other sections will be pure narrative.
Project Description: Initially I wanted to conduct an experiment in which I dressed
as a male, developed his character only slightly, and went out in public responding
to social situations as he would, then writing about what happened. I wanted to
juxtapose my experience as the writer with his as the character. My project has
taken a different route, though. Instead of conducting this experimentally, which I
was afraid may turn too toward gender roles and not character, I want to explore
metafiction and what it's like to be outside of a story while also being inside of it.
I want to write the story of a journalist who falls in love with an older inmate on
death row while writing his story for the paper she works for. I have adopted the
base idea for this from the song "A Journalist Falls in Love with Death Row Inmate
#16" from the 2012 album Rot Gut, Domestic by Margot & the Nuclear So and So's.
The journalist, Rebecca, begins covering the story after the inmate, Jeffrey, writes to
the local Firehouse Subs, requesting that they bring back a discontinued menu item
for his last meal. She is young, 27. He is thirty-eight, maybe. They're both sardonic,
but in different ways and for different reasons. She loves him; it can't be helped.
Reading/Listening/Watching List: Bird by Bird, Annie Lamott; Walking on Water,
Madeleine L'Engle; Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer; How to Become
a Writer, Lori Moore; Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures,
Quasi-Letters, "Found" Texts (and other fraudulent artifacts), edited by David
Shields and Matthew Vollmer; Reply All, "On the Inside" episodes 1-4;
paulmodrowski.blogspot.com, Paul Modrowski; Friend of My Youth, Alice Munro; "The
Third Time My Father Tried to Kill Me," James Claffey; Into the Abyss (documentary),
Werner Herzog; Gilead, Marilynne Robinson; "Really, Doesn't Crime Pay?" Alice
Walker
Objectives: Write 5-7 days each week, finish my reading before the rough draft of
project
Tasks:

Research out of Character

o Look up books about prison, research common prisons, write to an
inmate on death row, listen to podcasts about prison, watch
documentaries, etc.

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Workshop Readers: Stacey Isom, Will Woolfitt, Mitchell Capps, other practicum
writers
Proposed Calendar and Deadlines:
9/7

No class; HMK: Bird by Bird (Intro through Plot)

9/9
Lorrie Moore

Work Day: Send letter to inmate; read How to Become A Writer,

Week 4
9/12
Work Day: spend class time going to a coffee shop in character.
Write her perspective. 12 pages.
9/14

Work Day: work on Project Proposal

9/15

Finish Everything is Illuminated; send Project Proposal to Woolfitt

9/16
Work Day: Finish pp. 1-5; Read excerpts from Fakes- Intro, "Interview
with a Moron",
"The Explanation", "Subtotals", "Discarded Notions", "Will &
Testament", "About the
Typefaces Not Used in This Edition", and any others that you have time
for
Weekend: Use traveling time to write her perspective on riding to see him
for the first time
Week 5
9/19
Pages 1-5 Due (post them on Moodle and email to readers);
Discuss Bird by Bird
9/21
for workshop

Work Day; HMK: Read groups pages and write peer review letters

9/23

Work Day: Write pps. 5-8; finish up Bird by Bird

*depending on when inmate responds, write him back

Weekend: Perhaps set up a phone/email interview with a prison guard to
gain insight on what is or is not allowed on Death Row. Find out
particulars about last meals, regulations, visitation, etc.
Week 6
9/26

Workshop Group 1: Read Alice Munro

9/28

Workshop Group 2; HMK: Write pages 8-10

9/30

Work Day

Weekend: Write pages 10-12, write some more (method?) Continue

developing playlist and try writing to music throughout the next bit.

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Week 7 (week of convocation)
10/3

CONFERENCES

10/5

CONFERENCES; HMK: Write pages 12-15

10/7

Work Day

Week 8
10/10

Work Day: Write pages 15-18

10/12

Work Day; HMK: Write pages 18-20

10/14

Work Day: Write pages 20-23

Weekend: Work on finishing the rought draft.

Week 9
10/17-19
10/21

FALL BREAK: Finish all reading that is not finished

State of the Union; HMK: finish rough draft

Week 10
10/24

Rough Draft of Project Due (post on Moodle for group)

10/26
letters for

Work Day; HMK: Read groups rough drafts and write peer review
workshop

10/28

Work Day: Finish reading and writing peer letters

Week 11
10/31

Workshop Group 1 (Last day to withdraw)

11/2

Workshop Group 2

11/4

Work Day: Spend class time revising. Focus on one aspect to revise.

Week 12
11/7

The Writers Resume

11/9

Work Day: Complete first half of annotated bibliography

11/11

Work Day: Complete second half of annotated bibliography

Weekend: Make another major revision, focusing on one aspect and

revising the entire piece. Email to readers and Dr. Woolfitt.
Week 13
11/14

Work Day

11/16

Annotated Bibliography Due; CONFERENCES

11/18

Work Day

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Week 14
11/21

Significant revision of an excerpt due

11/23-5

Thanksgiving Break

Week 15
11/28

Work Day

11/30

Work Day

12/2

Practice defense session

Week 16
12/5

Last day of class; Practice defense session

12/13, 10:15 AM-12:15 PM: Presentation and Defense; Portfolio with Cover
Letter Due
Artist's Statement: I'm interested in interesting people, which, luckily, seems to
be every person I encounter. My fiction, no matter how hard I try to oppose it,
always ventures back to character (and trust me, I have ridiculous plot outlines to
prove it). To me, the story will always be in the inner workings of people. How they
interact. How they live. What makes them feel or not feel or try to feel something
different. My characters are average. There are no fantastical characters doused in
perfection or evil; real people are always a combination of both. And I think that's
why I'm so interested in character. I'm sure that no person can be wholly good or
bad or funny or serious or fat or skinny or ugly or beautiful. And that's important.
People are just bumbling messes that should be written about.
It is my hope that my fiction will never become a complex arrangement of words
that does absolutely nothing. I want it to do something. Obviously, the ideal would
be for my readers to stand immediately after reading my fiction and run through the
door with minds made up to change the world. But, yeah. A laugh'll do.
This project will explore character in a format that I never have before. I want to
write metafiction because it interests me, and I was inspired by Jonathan Safran
Foer's metafiction piece, Everything Is Illuminated. There is something fun about
metafiction, and I thought it might help me to understand the characters if I was
somehow in the story. My role in the story is infinitesimal. I'm a blip in the world of
this story, so small that it almost doesn't count as metafiction. I have plans to
expand the meta aspects of the story beyond myself though. In future revisions, I
want to include Paul Modrowski, a prison inmate in real life who keeps a blog, one I
heard about in a Reply All podcast I heard on Spotify one morning. I also want to
include Margot and the Nuclear So & Sos, which is the band who wrote the song
that inspired the whole of my project.
Inspiration for the genre came from Everything Is Illuminated, as I already
mentioned. But the initial idea for the entire project came from a song I've loved for
some time now, A Journalist Falls in Love with Death Row Inmate #16 by the band I

Williamson 5
mentioned in the above paragraph. I was listening to the song along the same time
I was struggling to settle on a topic. As I was listening, I kept thinking, I want to
know more about their story. And then it dawned on me that I am a writing student
in need of a writing project, so I should just write their story. And I fell in love with it.
The characters seemed real to me (in an un-creepy writer type of way and not an Italk-to-them-as-if-they're-here kind of way). They probably seemed real because
they were so heavily based on real people, Jeffrey in particular. I heard the story of a
current real-life death row inmate and wrote to him, though he never wrote back. He
had a profile on PrisonInmatePenpal.Com, so I read all about his likes and dislikes.
He was an average guy who did a really, really terrible thing. And he inspired
Jeffrey's character along and along. I was very inspired by the idea of taking
someone unredeemable, like a death row inmate who murdered his infant child, and
making them redeemable. It's the cosmos from chaos that L'engle talked about in
Walking on Water that inspired the way I wrote Jeffrey and the way I wanted
Rebecca and the audience to see him.