Writing at Three Miles an Hour

Designed as an intermediate nonfiction writing seminar, ‘Writing at Three Miles an Hour’ will center on slow writing. Peripatetic writers, the subject of Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust, detach themselves from the speed and distractedness of the everyday and return to writing at a mediative pace. Students will write every day and their writing will be based on what they observe while walking—anywhere: to class, to coffee shops, through libraries and museums. Readings will be gathered from writers on walking, among other things. The objectives: to learn how to discover the extraordinary in the ordinary; to learn how to accumulate notes and reflections and to integrate them gradually into longer narratives.