Sept. 8

Class Plans: 

Journal: Write an entry titled, “13 Rules of Writing Non-fiction.” Remembering the many types of texts we have read this semester, consider the wide range of interpretations. You might approach this as more informative, pulling together the many readings we have done so far, or you may decide to try something creative, like a story, poem, or comic. (7 minutes)

I. Details and The long goodbye discussion.

II. Peer Review Discussion

III. Practice Peer Review – Seeing the Positives

IV. Reading Planning OR

V. Post Secret Pre-write

 

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Homework: Draft your nonfiction, Internet, or multimedia piece for next week. This is your first required genre in your portfolio (though you may choose from any of these). Bring 5 copies of your work to class R/ Sept. 15 (not on Tuesday 13), Read “Standing By,” by David Sedaris (Burroway) and “Playing With Form: The Lyric Essay and Mixed Media,” (handout) by Miller and Paola and choose one of the following: (from “Try It”) to complete:

  • Write an essay that has fewer than five hundred words. Give yourself a time limit—a half-hour, say—and write about one image that comes to mind or an image that has stayed in your memory from the last couple of days. Use vivid, concrete details. Do not explain the image to us but allow it to evolve into metaphor. If you are stuck, open a book of poetry and write down the first line you see as an epigraph (an opening quote). Write an essay using the epigraph as a starting point for either form or content or imagery. If you write more than five hundred words (about two pages), you must trim and cut to stay under the limit. Find what is essential. (Miller, Brenda; Paola, Suzanne. Tell It Slant, Second Edition (p. 124). McGraw-Hill Education. Kindle Edition.)

 

  • Begin a piece by imitating Bucak’s “I Cannot Explain My Fear.” You can list fears, or loves, or jealousies, or any kind of emotion at all, transforming that emotion into a concrete list that reveals some narrative about your life. Try to do this in three hundred words. (Miller, Brenda; Paola, Suzanne. Tell It Slant, Second Edition (p. 124). McGraw-Hill Education. Kindle Edition.)
  • Structure an essay around a journey of some sort, using brief, discrete sections to build a collage. This can be a journey to somewhere as commonplace as the mall, or it can be more romantic. What kind of purposeful journey can you imagine taking, such as a pilgrimage to a sacred place? (Miller, Brenda; Paola, Suzanne. Tell It Slant, Second Edition (p. 124). McGraw-Hill Education. Kindle Edition.)
  • Choose at least three distinctly separate time periods in your life. Begin each section with “I am _____ years old,” and freewrite from there. Stay in the present tense. After reading what you’ve written, see if you can start finding any thematic connections or common images that would link the sections together. (Miller, Brenda; Paola, Suzanne. Tell It Slant, Second Edition (p. 124). McGraw-Hill Education. Kindle Edition.)
  • Experiment with transitions and juxtaposition. Find one image to repeat in the essay from start to finish, but transform this image in some way so that it has taken on new characteristics by the end of the collage essay. (Miller, Brenda; Paola, Suzanne. Tell It Slant, Second Edition (p. 125). McGraw-Hill Education. Kindle Edition.)
  • Choose a field guide to the natural world as your model (“A Field Guide to Desert Wildflowers,” for example, or “A Field Guide to the Atmosphere”). Write an essay in the form of a field guide, inserting your own experience in this format. (Miller, Brenda; Paola, Suzanne. Tell It Slant, Second Edition (p. 125). McGraw-Hill Education. Kindle Edition.)

 

  • Write an essay in the form of an interview or as a series of letters. (Miller, Brenda; Paola, Suzanne. Tell It Slant, Second Edition (p. 125). McGraw-Hill Education. Kindle Edition.)

 

  • Create a mixed-media piece that uses other kinds of documents and images along with your own prose. Make several photocopies of these documents so that you can cut them up and experiment. Create collages, paying attention to the kinds of textures you create with these elements. (Miller, Brenda; Paola, Suzanne. Tell It Slant, Second Edition (p. 126). McGraw-Hill Education. Kindle Edition.)

 

 

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