Field Trip: Pine Hill Cemetery

If you were at Discovering SHR a few weeks ago, you might have heard author Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams talk about the ways in which our own brains can keep giving us the same images, syntax, characters, sabotaging our creative impulses.

Author Cristina Garcia gives a talk called "Cultivating Chaos," in which she praises chaos as a fresh path to creativity. What she means, which is similar to Dela Cruz Abrams' idea, is that as writers we grow stagnant when we write in the same places, about the same things. There is a "randomness and  mystery that enlivens are best work," Garcia explains.

And that's what our field trips this semester aim to do.

So, with that in mind...

Instead of class on February 12th, make time to visit either Pine Hill Cemetery on Armstrong Street, or Baptist Hill on Dean and Thatch. Take an hour to walk around the grounds. These places have stories to tell. Open wide your faculties of perception.

Then, go somewhere quiet to write. You can either write at the cemetery, or somewhere nearby (the public library is across from the Pine Hill Cemetery, and it's a great place!). Don't let too much time go by between your field trip and your writing time.

Now, write a 3-4 page story, or scene, inspired by your visit. Perhaps you use one of the names you read on a headstone. Or you observed someone else at the cemetery mowing the lawn. Or you found yourself spending time wondering about the houses whose backyards are basically IN THE CEMETERY (this is true at Baptis Hill), or want to know why there are BROKEN TOMBS THAT YOU CAN LOOK INTO (also true at Baptist Hill).

Let chaos rule the day in your imagination. Strive for a story, an image, a line of dialogue, that is totally unlike what you've ever done before.

We will share these on February 17th, and you will turn them in for a grade. So please, type and double space these pieces.