Seriously Funny              

Quick Announcement:

While I can’t breathe, talk, or hear . . . I can still type. So the good news is that I’ve been able to finish up reading & commenting on your writing autobiographies. Not all of them seem to have made it into my GoogleDocs folder, though. Check your GoogleDoc, and if you don’t see my comments on it, please re-send it.

Mudpit for Significant Event Essay: Building Meaning

How did you feel about this event at the time?

How do you feel about it now?

If you feel differently about it now, why? What accounts for the difference?

Process Writing for “Shitty First Drafts”

How is a Shitty First Draft connected to the New Game approach?

What are some big things you’ve learned about writing–through reading, conversation, or your own experience–in the last couple of weeks?

Did this essay challenge any of your ideas about writing? What were those ideas?

What questions about the writing process do you still have?

For this 750, you’ll write out your map (this part of the 750 is necessary), then move on to the following process-writing questions.

The first prompt is necessary; the rest are optional.

What does this essay mean? To get at the meaning,  finish one of these sentences:

This is a story of _______.

or

This is a story about ___________.

(Three abbreviated examples of how this kind of thing works with other stories:

1. This is a story of a man coming to a kind of reckoning with his grief over his father’s suicide.  For years, this man has been stuck on the question of why? about his father’s suicide.  But then he goes on a fishing trip alone – alone for the first time in years – where he meets a stranger who helps him get over that hump.

2. It is a story of healing.  Emma is resurrected from her obsession with grief and her misery by art.

3. This is a story about a period in Revie’s life when his father is making the transition to a new state of life, post mom and post marriage, while Revie flounders.  He is being left behind by his father.  It’s really a story about grief, and how grief is private, a room one enters (and leaves) alone.)

How does the writer construct this meaning in this essay?

How does the writer set up (or foreshadow) the violent event at the end?

In what ways is this an essay about the visible & invisible?

What makes this essay funny?

This is a personal essay built around the cornerstone of a significant event. What technique(s) might you steal for your own essay?

Responding to the Readings:

Name 3 things you learned from the essays on freewriting & “The New Game.”

Name 2 questions you still have.

Name 1 way that any of these essays have changed your mind, or clarified your thinking about writing.

A Writing Autobiography:

How do you feel about your writing?

What experiences have affected your learning how to write?

What is the hardest part of writing for you? The easiest?

How do you start a piece of writing? How do you find out what you have to say?

What does the concept of revision mean to you?

What do you think the characteristics of “good writing” are? Is your writing “good?” Why or why not?

In terms of writing, what do you want to work on this semester? What are you targeting for improvement?

This Writing Autobiography will be the first part of your Running Record, a living transcript of your development as a writer over the year. I want you to bring a hard copy into class for your buy-in, but also—and this next step is very important—share the Writing Autobiography with me via Google Docs.

How to do this? Create a Google Docs document. Copy-n-paste your words onto it. Title it with your name. Then click on the Share link on the upper right side, and type in my email (furuness(at)gmail.com) in the Add People box. Make me an editor, not a viewer, or I won’t be able to make this a running record for you.

Here’s a step-by-step guide. If you have trouble, ask a friend, or make a trip to Information Commons on the main floor of the library.