Creative writing & rewriting [antikvár]

preface This book came into being as a direct result of my experience as a creative writing teacher at Princeton University. There the course was divided between private conferences and a weekly seminar. While the private conferences—which treated each individual's own work-in-progress—seemed successful enough, I soon became dissatisfied with the conventional methods of presenting the subject to a group. These consisted of requiring the class to analyze anthologized fiction on the one hand, and on the other to discuss stories submitted by classmates. Both the student-critic and the student-author learned something, but unfortunately the wrong sort of thing. The student-critic learned to use more skillfully the new-critical tools already acquired through previous English courses; the student-author learned how a few sympathetic peers reacted to his efforts. Neither learned very much about writing, however, as the emphasis was on product rather than process. At this time I was also doing research among the F. Scott Fitzgerald Papers in the Princeton University Library. Here I found the holograph or pencil version of The Great Gatsby, which solved the problem I have just described by providing a fresh exercise for my seminar members. After receiving photocopies of the initial chapter of the