Assignment 3
The Nitty-Gritty: Yes, let's do 4 essays. And if it would be all right let's extend the class a bit so I can revise them, because I will be writing most of them "on the road": one in South Dakota, one in New York, and one in Boston (I think!?). I'm excited because it will be back to days of writing on notebooks and transcribing them, which I haven't done since high school.
My target audience would probably be: everyone. I want everyone to like what I read, everyone to be interested, and smart and dumb people to cling to each other when it gets to the scary parts. That sort of thing. Mostly I guess I just want to write something really good. And I know that I have to lower my expectations sometimes, because I can be a perfectionist (but that's what makes me get better, I always think). I guess I'm just freaking out. The story turned out all right, I think. It just seems like something that men would NOT be interested in reading about, but I really want men to like my writing. I don't just want to write something that women would like. I don't know why that is. It's not because I like men better, it's because I'm just interested in EVERYONE and I want to try and "get" the hard readers.
AMENDMENT:
First, I apologize for the weird tone of the above post. Some of it came off sounding really snide, and I didn't mean it to. I just get really myopic about my writing sometimes.
And now . . .
1. What, from the readings, did you learn to do or not do when crafting your own essay?
I learned a lot about writing in general--especially the kind of humor that I started to see in all of the excerpts I read. I really liked it and I wanted to be able to do that in my writing. I like how definitive the Shadowboxing book is--I didn't know that there were all of these categories! But I'd like to see a book that had the "feint" and terms that you gave me, in it. At the same time, I don't really think about structure until it's finished, and then I go back to the weak spots and try to figure out why they need editing. So I guess I need to pay more attention to structure from the beginning. I learned a lot from the excerpts because I analyzed the tone, style, etc. (just all of the elements) to see if I could explain how they "did it".
The Style book helped me to be more aware of "strong" nouns and verbs. I found it interesting to see how "flowery" language versus the more minimal style differ -- I swear, I don't know this stuff. I just go by instinct, but when I make a mistake, and can't understand why it doesn't work, then I'm completely lost. Some people seem to think I'm lying when I make mistakes -- for example, one professor was kind of shocked that I won the writing award, because I had just turned in a last-minute, hastily-written paper to her. She said she was "kind of surprised."
2. What stylistic techniques did you employ?
Probably the "Memoir" (though I'm not wholly sure) because, although I told it as a chronological story (sort of) I began the story by "looking back" on myself from the future. So the reader knew that I was writing this as a (semi)adult. I also kept dipping back in between sections and during sections to explain how I felt about it overall.
3. Anything else you choose to comment on: audience, challenges you faced, etc.
I would guess that my target audience for the personal essay would be young women, ages 13 to 30. But why can't guys read it? Wouldn't some guys be interested? When I write, I focus more on making it something that I would read--or that my "ideal reader" (I heard that term somewhere) would--which is to say, it's more singular than an audience. But I'm into classic sort of writing, like Flannery O'Connor, and I always want to write those kind of things. Stuff that manly men read, too :) I don't know where this need comes from. Maybe having 5 brothers?
Next, you said that you were curious as to why I found my personal piece to "not be as interesting as anything else I've written or read". I tried to write about going to the lake with my family, but I got bored. And then I started to write about my first writing experiences, and I ended up finding the ballet theme. Then I got interested, because ballet is this weird hole in my life--I loved it so much and I wondered what it had to do with how I started writing. When I looked back at my life, I just thought that I wasn't interested in making any of it into an essay. Whether it was too personal or I kept making up details because I didn't remember much, nothing seemed to work. But I may just be in a slump. I have no idea.
The Nitty-Gritty: Yes, let's do 4 essays. And if it would be all right let's extend the class a bit so I can revise them, because I will be writing most of them "on the road": one in South Dakota, one in New York, and one in Boston (I think!?). I'm excited because it will be back to days of writing on notebooks and transcribing them, which I haven't done since high school.
My target audience would probably be: everyone. I want everyone to like what I read, everyone to be interested, and smart and dumb people to cling to each other when it gets to the scary parts. That sort of thing. Mostly I guess I just want to write something really good. And I know that I have to lower my expectations sometimes, because I can be a perfectionist (but that's what makes me get better, I always think). I guess I'm just freaking out. The story turned out all right, I think. It just seems like something that men would NOT be interested in reading about, but I really want men to like my writing. I don't just want to write something that women would like. I don't know why that is. It's not because I like men better, it's because I'm just interested in EVERYONE and I want to try and "get" the hard readers.
AMENDMENT:
First, I apologize for the weird tone of the above post. Some of it came off sounding really snide, and I didn't mean it to. I just get really myopic about my writing sometimes.
And now . . .
1. What, from the readings, did you learn to do or not do when crafting your own essay?
I learned a lot about writing in general--especially the kind of humor that I started to see in all of the excerpts I read. I really liked it and I wanted to be able to do that in my writing. I like how definitive the Shadowboxing book is--I didn't know that there were all of these categories! But I'd like to see a book that had the "feint" and terms that you gave me, in it. At the same time, I don't really think about structure until it's finished, and then I go back to the weak spots and try to figure out why they need editing. So I guess I need to pay more attention to structure from the beginning. I learned a lot from the excerpts because I analyzed the tone, style, etc. (just all of the elements) to see if I could explain how they "did it".
The Style book helped me to be more aware of "strong" nouns and verbs. I found it interesting to see how "flowery" language versus the more minimal style differ -- I swear, I don't know this stuff. I just go by instinct, but when I make a mistake, and can't understand why it doesn't work, then I'm completely lost. Some people seem to think I'm lying when I make mistakes -- for example, one professor was kind of shocked that I won the writing award, because I had just turned in a last-minute, hastily-written paper to her. She said she was "kind of surprised."
2. What stylistic techniques did you employ?
Probably the "Memoir" (though I'm not wholly sure) because, although I told it as a chronological story (sort of) I began the story by "looking back" on myself from the future. So the reader knew that I was writing this as a (semi)adult. I also kept dipping back in between sections and during sections to explain how I felt about it overall.
3. Anything else you choose to comment on: audience, challenges you faced, etc.
I would guess that my target audience for the personal essay would be young women, ages 13 to 30. But why can't guys read it? Wouldn't some guys be interested? When I write, I focus more on making it something that I would read--or that my "ideal reader" (I heard that term somewhere) would--which is to say, it's more singular than an audience. But I'm into classic sort of writing, like Flannery O'Connor, and I always want to write those kind of things. Stuff that manly men read, too :) I don't know where this need comes from. Maybe having 5 brothers?
Next, you said that you were curious as to why I found my personal piece to "not be as interesting as anything else I've written or read". I tried to write about going to the lake with my family, but I got bored. And then I started to write about my first writing experiences, and I ended up finding the ballet theme. Then I got interested, because ballet is this weird hole in my life--I loved it so much and I wondered what it had to do with how I started writing. When I looked back at my life, I just thought that I wasn't interested in making any of it into an essay. Whether it was too personal or I kept making up details because I didn't remember much, nothing seemed to work. But I may just be in a slump. I have no idea.
posted by jameskandy at 12:32 PM
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