Suffering Less (10-15 min)

Does writing feel like suffering? How did Eickmeyer help you feel like you can suffer less as a writer? Review the chapter and your colleagues’ annotations for about 5 minutes. List as many things as you can think of that can help with suffering less as writers.

As a class, let’s start to list thing about how we can suffer less as writers:

• Time management: feels less overwhelming to spread it out
• Review instructions right away, make sure you understand, make sure keep with you during writing
• Try to find a good environment, where you are comfortable
• Write about something you are interested in, get information out
• Get an early start, even if small portion

Practice with Your Literacy Narrative and Reading Response 1

Review what you wrote in Reading Response 1. Some patterns I noticed: lots of connections to feeling like an outsider, to not quite fitting into categories (or being perceived as being one kind of identity by one group or another kind of identity by another group), finding connections to people in unlikely places, being a translator for your family and friends, learning how to fit into who you are (or a struggle to do so), among other things.

This kind of thing is the essence of a literacy narrative: how you came to understand yourself through specific cultural contexts.

As practice for the literacy narrative, try the following: return to this Google Doc from Monday, September 9 and choose one of the technologies that were brainstormed. Think of as many personal experiences and examples as you can about that technology and your history with it as you grew into the person you are today. Re-read the prompt on Brightspace for help here. Choose one example to write about on the same Google Doc.

You don’t have to use any of this for your half draft due on September 18. But I want you to get some practice breaking up parts of the prompt. One part is the literacy narrative element of thinking about who you are, of being “authentic” (or not). The second half is connecting to technology in some way. How can you connect your personal experience to these two things?

Finally: Did this feel like suffering? Why or why not?

Trying Out a Writing Session (45 min)

Let’s keep the writing going, but before we jump back in, let’s talk about process and practice again.

Last class we talked about developing a writing process and a writing practice. Here are some patterns I noticed…what do YOU notice among these patterns? Review and discuss with a partner.

Writing Process Patterns

Early-ish stages

• Think and research about topic
• Outline with bullet points
• Start drafting but in a way where it is more of an outline (e.g., main topics of different paragraphs with some notes)
• Analyze topics before starting
• Closely study the prompt for the assignment
• Annotate the prompt and do some initial writing in response
• Start with introduction
• Start in the middle of the essay
• Brainstorming by jotting down all the points you might talk about
• Jotting down small things even if they don’t seem important at first
• Start with introduction and conclusion first
• Try to think of an anecdote related to my topic
• Just start writing and get a lot of scattered thoughts down and tangents. Then review it to see what I want to write about to put it in a more coherent manner
• Think about the style I want to use
• Toward the end of brainstorming and outlining, I think about what examples I could use and where they could go
• I use either outlining OR start writing to get thoughts out. Either process works depending on what I’m doing.
• Create an agenda and to-do list for the paper
• Take lots of notes on phone and notebook
• Think about multiple possible topics and then review them to choose which one I’m most interested in

Middle-ish Stages

• Fill in draft/outline hybrid with writing of a full draft
• Write a partial outline and then start writing. Then as you write go back and modify outline and write more
• Procrastinate
• Write in one sitting
• Write about connections between different ideas in paper
• Ask for feedback and then implement feedback
• Find references to add from other sources after writing bulk of draft
• Think about what context readers would need and think about where that should go
• In an outline, write a few sentences for each item in the outline. Then go back and write

Later-ish stages

• Re-read to change things
• Read the essay backwards (i.e., start with the last sentence, then the second to last sentence, and then go backwards all the way to the first sentence). This helps focus on sentence-level changes to make rather than big picture things (argument, narrative)
• As last step, write introduction by reviewing what you wrote and letting that inform you what should go in introduction
• Re-read and make cuts for what I don’t need and expand parts that need more detail and information
• Review my draft first for ideas/big picture. Review it again for sentence-level stuff
• Ask a friend to read it to see if it makes sense

However…

Writing Practice Patterns

Location (some mentioned more than one thing):

• 12 people mentioned home (bedroom, on bed, desk in room, when alone at home, dorm,
• 6 people mentioned a library or school setting
• 3 people mentioned a coffee shop or restaurant

Sounds:

• 7 people mentioned silence
• 5 people mentioned music
• 4 people mentioned sounds of public spaces outdoors or non-restaurants indoors
• 1 person mentioned public space noise and music
• 1 person mentioned air conditioner
• 1 person mentioned low music and low sounds of talking

Time of day:

• 5 people said mid afternoon
• 4 people said late afternoon / early evening
• 3 people said early afternoon
• 3 people said late night
• 2 people said early part of night
• 1 person said mid morning
• 1 person said late morning
• 0 people said early morning–SLACKERS!

Who were you with?

• 13 people said they were alone
• 5 people said they were working with others who were also working
• 1 person said they were working with others who were doing non-work stuff

Snacks/drinks?

• 6 people said nothing or water
• 5 people said tea or coffee
• 10 people had food (lunch, pizza, nuts, chocolate, candy, trail mix, non-messy snacks, chips, milk and cookies

Objects/ritual comfort?

• 2 people said comfortable chair
• 1 person said favorite pen
• 1 person said favorite albums playing
• 1 person said needs to be at a desk with dim lighting
• 1 person said using a pillow for their back to sit up straight on their bed

Distraction management

• 12 people said they kept their phone away / put it in another location / put it on Do Not Disturb / turned off their phone / scheduled phone-check breaks and did not look at phone until then
• 3 people said just focusing on getting it done so they can do other things (e.g., reward of playing video games)
• 3 people said music (meditative music and music via phone only)
• 2 people said they didn’t have ways to manage distractions
• 2 people said they found a way to get interested in the assignment so they were able to focus by figuring out what was interesting/motivating about doing the writing
• 2 people said used pomodoro technique or an app like “Flow” to assist
• 1 person mentioned going outside to refocus

Did you take breaks?

• 14 people said they took breaks (e.g., walking, stretching, pomodoro scheduled breaks, snacking, stopping when feeling overwhelmed, stopping when reaching milestone of assignment, phone, YouTube videos, push-ups)
• 5 people mentioned not taking breaks (e.g., worried about stopping momentum, short assignment)

Did you do any metacognitive work (e.g., reflection, planning)?

• 12 people said yes (e.g., journaling, taking notes about what to do in writing for future work on the paper, outlining, getting feedback, to-do list, goals, reflecting)
• 5 people said no

Reflections on what helps you best?

• 3 people said they are really motivated by writing alone with music and sounds
• 2 people said taking notes about how the writing is going and what to do next (and so on) was really helpful
• 1 person says they can write in any environment
• 1 person said pomodoro helps schedule in needed breaks
• 1 person said getting out of the house was really important
• 1 person said support from their family was helpful
• 1 person said having food really helps so they have something to look forward to and so they are not distracted by hunger
• 1 person said paying close attention to managing distractions was key
• 1 person said having a goal for themself helps get them motivated
• 1 person said being interested in the writing was key

Let’s do some writing

So, let’s try out a writing session. I’m going to pass out a form that I want you to fill out before you start and then after we end (I’ll give you a few minute warning). I’ll walk around as you are working to check in or answer questions.

Did this feel like suffering? Why or why not?

Writing Emails (20-30 min)

Emails help you do stuff, so it is a good thing to learn about now. Before emails, there were memos and letters. They exist still but are used less frequently. Letters would be longer and have a deeper approach to style than memos; memos would be shorter and more direct. Emails have properties of both.

You received the following email; how do you react?

***

SUBJECT: (no subject)

did you get what i sent yet. I gave it to you a while ago. Please let me know as soon as you can. Thanks

***

What are some of the good parts here? What could be improved?

Try to rewrite this email with the following information in mind:

This is a student emailing a professor. They asked the professor to write a letter of recommendation for an internship and the professor has not responded. It was a week ago when they sent that email so they are following up because the deadline for the letter is in one month on October 5 by 11:59pm.

How might you write it differently? Let’s workshop this? What do you think?

Let’s try writing emails.

When ready, send me an email asking me some kind of question. It can be about the class, it can be about your literacy narrative, it could be about the meaning of life, it could be about whatever you want to know as long as it is appropriate to ask! Send this email so you can get credit for participation today!

Email Strategies: I’m going to pick some emails to display and talk through so we can think about strategies.

Write emails as sandwiches!

1. Greeting / pleasantries (e.g., “I hope you are well”)
2. The Ask (i.e., what you want or need)
3. Gratitude / Sign-off (e.g., “thank you” and signing off with your name)

Finally, why write literacy narratives? What is the point of this kind of writing? What’s it do? What does it say about what one of the functions of writing can be? What is something like a literacy narrative vs. something like an email?

Did this feel like suffering? Why or why not?

Next Time

-Submit your Half Draft of your Literacy Narrative to Brightspace as a Microsoft Word document or PDF document by the start of class on Wednesday, September 18. AI survey if using AI program. This includes things like Grammarly, QuillBot, and ChatGPT, among others.

-Complete your weekly 10 minutes (or more!) of private writing by beginning of next class on September 18. Here again is the prompt: What’s something you don’t know how to do but would like to learn about? Why can’t you learn about it now? What’s getting your way? How can college help you learn more about it? Is it another language? Is it doing something physical like carpentry or boxing? Is it something artistic like poetry, sculpture, or DJing? Is it more about history? You have this time in college to learn. What do you care about? How can you cultivate it now and what might it be? Why? You don’t have to respond to all of these questions; they are just to help get you thinking about college as a time to learn things you really want to learn rather than only what you feel like you are “supposed to” learn.

-You need to schedule a time to meet with me if you have not done so yet! People who need to sign up: Fernando, Kaitlin, Natanael L, Kory, Azrin, Luciano, Yamini, Andre, Lyric, Wilson. Here again is the link: https://calendly.com/daniel-libertz/september-2024-conferences-eng-2100

-People I want to talk with after class: Fernando, Rachel, Lyric,