Journals
"Keep a journal and someday your journal will keep you."
                                                                                        -Anonymous
    As part of the creative writing curriculum, you will keep a journal.  This journal must be kept in a marble composition notebook (please, no spirals) or on your laptop.  You will write in your journal on topics assigned during class.  Your journal will be graded on how thoughtful and lengthy your responses are.

       Your journal should be your record of your thoughts, reactions, and opinions.  As a student in my classroom, we will talk about various issues, ideas, concepts that I expect you to react to.  I expect you to express yourself in my classroom as much as I expect you to express yourself in your journal.  Find your voice in your writing.  Express yourself.  Question.  Think critically.  Analyze your life.

        I will collect your journal one or two times during each nine weeks.  Your journal will count as 10% of your overall grade.

JOURNAL TOPICS:
1.  9/8  Changes
2.  9/9  Your idea of a dull evening.
3.  9/10 Freewrite
4.  9/13  Look at a website.  Choose a character and describe his or her voice.
5.  9/14  Describe your first brush with danger.
6.  9/15  How dos what you are wearing reflect or not reflect your personality?
7.  9/16 Tell the story behind your nickname or the most unusual nickname you've ever heard.
8.  9/17  Freewrite
9.  9/28  Tuna fish on rye--come up with a story with this in it
10.  9/29  Describe the largest crowd you've ever been a part of.
11.  9/30  Begin a story about a character who has lost something important to them.
12.  10/4  Describe a lonely person.
13.  10/5  Describe someone you'd fall in love with.  Make them seem REAL, not ideal.
14.  10/6  What are your pet peeves?
15.  10/7  Describe / create a character who is totally the opposite of yourself.
16.  10/8  Freewrite

17.  10/13   Write dialogue between a man and a woman based on music.
18.  10/14  Freewrite

JOURNALS DUE TUESDAY 10/19

1.  11/8    What makes something funny?
2.  11/9    Where do you see yourself in the future?
3.  11/10    Food
4.  11/12   Freewrite
5.  11/15   What makes a good parent?
6.  11/16   What worries you the most in this world?
7.  11/17    If you could describe yourself as any kitchen object, what would you be?  WHy?
8.  11/23    What is poetry?  Do you like poetry?  Are we born knowing poetry or do we learn it?
9.  11/24     Freewrite

10.  11/29   What is the worst lie someone's ever told you?
11.  11/30    What's the worst piece of advice you've ever received?
12.  12/1   Would you rather be deaf or blind?
13.  12/2   Freewrite
14.  12/6   What's wrong with American society?
15.  12/7   Think of a person you dislike.  What would you say if you had to share an elevator?  What if the elevator broke down....for six hours?
16.  12/8   Imagine what life would be like if you had the occupation you wanted as a child.
17.  12/9   If you could script the plot of your dream tonight, what would it be?
18.  12/10   Freewrite
19.  12/13  Are the holidays overdone?
20.  12/14  Tell me about one of the BEST / WORST days of your life.
21.  12/15  Plans for break....
22.  12/16  Freewrite

THIRD NINE WEEKS
1.  2/3    Invent a character whose life is governed by Murphy's Law.
2.  2/4    Freewrite  
3.  2/7   Dialogue to silent film.
4.  2/8   Write about a trait you would have killed to change in middle school.
5.  2/9   Describe a time you settled an argument between two close friends.
6.  2/11   Freewrite
7.  2/14   Valentine's Day...Is it overrated?
8.  2/15   Describe an experience with snow.
9.  2/16   Freewrite
10.  3/8   What was your childhood like?  (PERIOD 4 ONLY!)
11.  3/11   Freewrite
12.  3/14   What was your favorite t.v. show as a kid?
13.  3/15    Take a character from a published story and change it to its anthropomorphic form (animal form)
14.  3/16    the 1980's
15.  3/17   Luck
16.  3/18   Freewrite

FOURTH NINE WEEKS
1.  4/19  More than 25,000 Americans seek help each year for compulsive gambling.  Write about one of them.
2.  4/20  Insanity
3.  4/21  Write a story in which you invent the perfect crime.
4.  4/22  Freewrite
5.  4/25   Tell s story of a job interview that goes badly.  The more your character wants the job, the better.
6.  4/26   Your favorite childhood toy.
7.  4/27   Write a story about the images on a roll of film.
8.  4/28   Freewrite
9.  5/2  What is your favorite movie? Why?
10.  5/3  What's the dumbest thing you've ever done?
11.  5/4  If you could write a book about your life, what would you title it and why?
12.  5/6  Freewrite
13.  5/17  What is your favorite song? Why?
14.  5/18   Violence on t.v.
15.  5/19   What makes a happy family?
16.  5/20   Freewrite
17.  5/23   What has been the greatest surprise to you this year?
18.  5/24   Describe the unhealthiest meal you've ever eaten.
19.  5/25   An evaluation of creative writing