Chapter 1 Taking on Three Demanding Situations First 3 --
Cultural Deprivation 4 --
New, Nontraditional Mission of Present-Day Writers 9 --
Eight Elements of Bad or Scanty Teaching of Creative Writing 15 --
Chapter 2 A Fundamental Mistake in How We Learn to Write: Skipping the Long Middle Stage of Writing 33 --
Three Stages of Writing a Manuscript 37 --
Chapter 3 Using Empathic Questioning to Deepen Your First Draft 46 --
Some Final Thoughts 58 --
Chapter 4 How Stage-Development Philosophy Serves Writers 59 --
A Basic Overview of Stage-Development Theory 59 --
Assumptions of Stage-Development Theory 65 --
How Two Authors Offer Us Stage Philosophies That Are Especially Pertinent to Writers 70 --
Chapter 5 We Have Pushed Off from the Animal Kingdom for Good: Good News for Writers from Neuroscientists 76 --
Reentry and Literary Endeavor 82 --
Becoming a Generalist 92 --
Chapter 6 Literary Fixes 100 --
Driving the Exposition Inward 101 --
Changing Statement to Theater (Showing, not Telling) 111 --
Combating Lying and Cowardice 113 --
Removing Self-References 116 --
Pushing Off from Mindless Male Realism and Mindless Female Realism 119 --
Checking for the Skinflint Syndrome and Enhancing Your Manuscript as a Gift to the Reader 121 --
Asking, for a Last Time, What Is Still Missing from This Manuscript? 122 --
Small Language Fixes That Help Remove Humbug 122 --
Starting Sentences with Dependent Clauses 126 --
Getting Rid of We, Everybody, and All 127 --
Chapter 7 Seven General Issues in Teaching Creative Writing 129 --
Writing Literature Can Be Taught 129 --
Protecting Student Writers from the U.S.A. Junk Culture 133 --
Curing Writers of the Bad Habit of Perseverating 139 --
Convincing Writers that Surprise Is the Inevitable, Eternal Principle of Literature 140 --
Practicing Professional Reticence 142 --
Being Aware of Bullying 143 --
Making the Classroom One of the Great Places on Earth 145 --
Chapter 8 Teaching Elementary School Children to Write 148 --
Ways to Use the Appendix When Working with Children 148 --
No Children's Writing Should Ever Be Subjected to Peer Review 155 --
Validating the Serious as Well as the Fun-Loving Spirits of Children 157 --
Offering Some Comment for Every Piece of Creative Writing a Child Does 160 --
Giving a Child Two Opportunities to Answer a Question 161 --
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 --
Asking Children to Memorize One Hundred Stories by the Age of Eighteen 163 --
Chapter 9 Helping People in Middle and High School Learn to Write 171 --
Adolescents and Monoculture 171 --
Using the Appendix of This Book with Adolescent People 173 --
No Peer Reviewing of Manuscripts 178 --
No Teaching of Literary Techniques 179 --
No Asking for Rough Drafts of Creative Writing 182 --
Never Failing to Comment on the Core Content of Students' Papers 183 --
Teaching Adolescent Writers to Continue Memorizing Stories, if They Started in Elementary School, and to Add Poems 184 --
An Ethics Code for Teachers of Adolescents 184 --
Chapter 10 Helping College Students and M.F.A. Candidates to Write 185 --
Leaving Behind the Natural but Useless Attitudes Common to Any Enclave of Creative Writers 185 --
Ways to Help College- and Graduate-Level Writers Experience a Literary Change of Heart 206 --
Chapter 11 Teaching at Writers' Conferences, Community Retreats, and Summer Short Courses 217 --
What These Courses Are, and the Burgeoning Population Who Use Them 217 --
Three Kinds of Populations We Don't Serve Well Enough So Far 222 --
Chapter 12 Some Issues of Aesthetics and Ethics of Writing Literature 235 --
Some Psychological Dynamics of Aesthetics and Ethics 235 --
Distinguishing Hack Work from Literary Artifice 246 --
Normalized Indifference Is Our Comfortable Stance on Any Subject until Something Jars Us 247 --
How the Old, Familiar Dynamic Called Pain Avoidance Affects Creative Nonfiction 254 --
Falsifying What Could Otherwise Be Interesting Psychological Evidence about Homo Sapiens in One or Another Setting 261 --
Hatred of Literature by Those Left Out of It and Sometimes by Those of Us Who Participate in It 267 --
A Psychological Tool for Ethically Minded Writers 272 --
Writing Creative Nonfiction for the 400,000 274 --
Appendix I. Fifteen Writing Exercises 279 --
Appendix II. Usage Sheets 322 --
Appendix III. Abbreviations and Notes for Referencing Margin Comment on Students' Papers 328 --
Appendix IV. Formats and Strategies 330 --
Appendix V. A List of Useful Sentences for Writers in a Tight Spot 335 --
Appendix VI. Two Examples of Class Agendas for M.F.A. Students 340 --
Appendix VII. Robertson-Bly Ethics Code for Teaching Writing to Middle and High School Students 349.
