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Tables of Contents for Beyond the Writers' Workshop
Chapter/Section Title
Page #
Page Count
Introduction
xvii
 
Taking on Three Demanding Situations First
3
30
Cultural Deprivation
4
5
The New, Nontraditional Mission of Present-Day Writers
9
6
Eight Elements of Bad or Scanty Teaching of Creative Writing
15
18
A Fundamental Mistake in How We Learn to Write: Skipping the Long Middle Stage of Writing
33
13
The Three Stages of Writing a Manuscript
37
9
Using Empathic Questioning to Deepen Your First Draft
46
13
Empathic Inquiry
48
10
Some Final Thoughts
58
1
How Stage-Development Philosophy Serves Writers
59
17
A Basic Overview of Stage-Development Theory
59
6
Assumptions of Stage-Development Theory
65
5
How Two Authors Offer Us Stage Philosophies That Are Especially Pertinent to Writers
70
6
We Have Pushed Off from the Animal Kingdom for Good: Good News for Writers from Neuroscientists
76
24
Reentry and Literary Endeavor
82
10
Becoming a Generalist
92
2
The Love of Thinking
94
6
Literary Fixes
100
29
Driving the Exposition Inward
101
8
Raising the Tone
109
2
Changing Statement to Theater (Showing, not Telling)
111
2
Combating Lying and Cowardice
113
3
Removing Self-References
116
3
Pushing Off from Mindless Male Realism and Mindless Female Realism
119
2
Checking for the Skinflint Syndrome and Enhancing Your Manuscript as a Gift to the Reader
121
1
Asking, for a Last Time, What Is Still Missing from This Manuscript?
122
1
Small Language Fixes That Help Remove Humbug
122
4
Starting Sentences with Dependent Clauses
126
1
Getting Rid of We, Everybody, and All
127
2
Seven General Issues in Teaching Creative Writing
129
19
Writing Literature Can Be Taught
129
4
Protecting Student Writers from the U.S.A. Junk Culture
133
6
Curing Writers of the Bad Habit of Perseverating
139
1
Convincing Writers that Surprise Is the Inevitable, Eternal Principle of Literature
140
2
Practicing Professional Reticence
142
1
Being Aware of Bullying
143
2
Making the Classroom One of the Great Places on Earth
145
3
Teaching Elementary School Children to Write
148
23
Ways to Use the Appendix When Working with Children
148
7
No Children's Writing Should Ever Be Subjected to Peer Review
155
2
Validating the Serious as Well as the Fun-Loving Spirits of Children
157
3
Offering Some Comment for Every Piece of Creative Writing a Child Does
160
1
Giving a Child Two Opportunities to Answer a Question
161
1
Teaching Children as Well as Ourselves the Psychological Skills that Protect a Person's Personality from Group Bullying or from Unfair Pressure by People in Authority
162
1
Asking Children to Memorize One Hundred Stories by the Age of Eighteen
163
8
Helping People in Middle and High School Learn to Write
171
14
Adolescents and Monoculture
171
2
Using the Appendix of This Book with Adolescent People
173
5
No Peer Reviewing of Manuscripts
178
1
No Teaching of Literary Techniques
179
3
No Asking for Rough Drafts of Creative Writing
182
1
Never Failing to Comment on the Core Content of Students' Papers
183
1
Teaching Adolescent Writers to Continue Memorizing Stories, if They Started in Elementary School, and to Add Poems
184
1
An Ethics Code for Teachers of Adolescents
184
1
Helping College Students and M.F.A. Candidates to Write
185
32
Leaving Behind the Natural but Useless Attitudes Common to Any Enclave of Creative Writers
185
21
Ways to Help College-and Graduate-Level Writers Experience a Literary Change of Heart
206
11
Teaching at Writer's Conferences, Community Retreats, and Summer Short Courses
217
18
What These Courses Are, and the Burgeoning Population Who Use Them
217
5
Three Kinds of Populations We Don't Serve Well Enough So Far
222
13
Some Issues of Aesthetics and Ethics of Writing Literature
235
120
Some Psychological Dynamics of Aesthetics and Ethics
235
11
Distinguishing Hack Work from Literary: Artifice
246
1
Normalized Indifference Is Our Comfortable Stance on Any Subject until Something Jars Us
247
7
How the Old, Familiar Dynamic Called Pain Avoidance Affects Creative Nonfiction
254
7
Falsifying What Could Otherwise Be Interesting Psychological Evidence about Homo Sapiens in One or Another Setting
261
6
Hatred of Literature by Those Left Out of It and Sometimes by Those of Us Who Participate in It
267
5
A Psychological Tool for Ethically Minded Writers
272
2
Writing Creative Nonfiction for the 400,000
274
5
APPENDICES
Appendix I. Fifteen Writing Exercises
279
43
Four Exercises about Background or Place
1. Writing without Cliches about a Beautiful Place
281
2
2. Ugly Place, Good Event: Ugly Event, Good Place
283
1
3. Pathetically Shallow Use of Places Once Full of Serious Enterprise
284
2
4. Paying Respectful Attention to Background Settings
286
2
Easy Exercises
5. Good and Terrible Qualities in Human Nature-An Exercise for People over the Age of Fourteen
288
1
6. Ignatow Poem Exercise
289
3
7. A Catty Vignette
292
3
8. An Essay Pot---A Group Talking Exercise
295
2
9. Writing about Work
297
4
Elegant Exercises
10. Attending to Other-Specifically Attending to Relatives, Nonhuman Creatures, or Plants
301
2
11. Increasing One's Affection for Utterly Ordinary People
303
3
12. A Writing Exercise for Extroverts
306
3
13. An Irritating Person Exercise
309
2
14. A Nearly Impossible Writing Exercise
311
4
15. The Andover Format: Writing Your Life at Two Levels--One the Usual Sort of Memoir, and the Other Secret and Profound
315
7
Appendix II. Usage Sheets
322
6
Appendix III. Abbreviations and Notes for Referencing Margin Comment on Students' Papers
328
2
Appendix IV. Formats and Strategies
330
5
A Format for Writing an Essay
339
8
The Vertical-Line Way of Taking Notes
331
1
Analyzing a Literary Work of Art
332
3
Appendix V. A List of Useful Sentences for Writers in a Tight Spot
335
5
Appendix VI. Two Examples of Class Agendas for M.F.A. Students
340
9
Appendix VII. The Robertson-Bly Ethics Code for Teaching Writing to Middle and High School Students
349
6
Endnotes
355
6
A Reading List
361
2
Index
363
10
Permissions Acknowledgments
373