Novel Writing Class

I'm taking a graduate creative writing course this semester at Iowa State. The focus is the novel. The instructor is Neal Bowers, a poet until recent years. Last night he said he's given up poetry for novels. Neal is very forthcoming about the nitty gritty details of publishing.

He's published one novel so far, Loose Ends, and has three others completed, at least one of which his agent is circulating. I'm reading Loose Ends right now. The main character and voice are engaging. Definitely a character-driven novel.

Our main subject last night was genre. We went around the room and discussed what genre each of us is writing in. Of the 11 or 12 people in the class, three of us are writing young adult novels. Other genres represented include literary/mainstream, chick lit, and thriller.

It was interesting how much some of the students wanted to talk about what they're writing. One student revealed an outline of his whole plot. I had very little to say.

Neal also asked how many of us have written novels before. Three or four hands went up, including mine. One woman wrote a novel in two weeks. Another has published two with iUniverse, which I think is a print-on-demand publisher. I didn't say anything about the Star Trek novel in my drawer or the middle grade fantasy I'm currently revising. Not sure why.

We also talked briefly about How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James Frey, our only text for the course. I thought it was a good basic text. The idea of proving a premise is new to me (and a little strange). Most of it was familiar, however.

Our assignment for next week (the class meets once a week for three hours) is to write five pages of prose elucidating the character of our protagonist. I think we're going to get grilled on how well we know our main character. I have a list of traits done already, but I better flesh it out more and then write a new scene.

Lois Lowry's Messenger

I was just reading about Lois Lowry on her website and about her new book, Messenger. It's the third in a trilogy after The Giver and A Gathering Blue.

I first read The Giver when it won the Newbery years ago and again a few years later in children's lit. course. Everyone in that class, particularly the teacher, thought that Jonas died at the end. I was a firm optimist, however, and insisted that it could also be read that he made it somewhere else--alive.

Looks like I was right because Lowry says on her site that Jonas appears in Messenger. It needs to go to the top of my reading list.