This homework has two parts. The first is a written response to the readings and the second is your first step of Major Project 1.
- The readings for Tuesday shift our focus from observation/analysis to the writing process. Read “Shitty First Drafts,” “Freewriting,” and the Introduction in the pack I gave you. Then, in your comment on this post, tell us which part of the reading resonated with you most and why. In your 250-word response, please include some reflection on how this part of the reading made you want to reconsider your own writing process.
- For Major Project 1, consider your options for a paper topic and make a decision. Here is a PDF of the paper assignment: Major Project 1. I strongly encourage you to explore the list of options that I emailed to you (and which I’m linking as a PDF download here: Major Assignment 1 List). If you want to write about a public space or museum exhibit, visit that site this weekend and take notes. If you want to write about a film that we didn’t watch in class, watch it and take notes. Whatever you choose, take plenty of notes on your observations of its rhetorical effects and your interpretations of its purpose, audience, and rhetorical effectiveness, especially regarding the ways your objects characterize the crisis. In an email to me, submit the following: (a) the name of the rhetorical object that you’ve selected, (b) a 200-word description of the artifact much like the descriptions you’ve been practicing in class with me, and (c) your notes on potential interpretations of the object’s rhetorics of crisis. Please include this in the body of the email. No attachments.
Brittany A Cevallos,
I resonated most with Shitty First Drafts by Anne Lamott because her current writing process is done in a step by step basis to ensure she’ll be satisfied with what she puts out which I consider the opposite of mine. “The first draft is the child’s draft”, letting the flow of ideas consume the writing process and spewing the emotions right off the bat. Writing with no restrictions and allowing yourself to endorse the low quality of the piece is completely foreign to me. I’ve let my writing process become so entrapped with the idea of being perfect from the get-go, never allowing the space I needed for my writing to better itself. Lamott had also faced the same issue I still face now by letting the panic set in thinking the work wasn’t enough without ever giving yourself the time to jot down the entangled information in your head and pulling the ideas apart. Her saying that the first draft is something “no one is going to see” was the realization I needed to understand to never put myself up to a standard at the very beginning because I can always “fix” my writing in the end. Lamott offered a solution to my reoccurring “this isn’t enough text”, “I didn’t explain myself like i wanted to”, “this could’ve been better”. By giving yourself that space to grow draft to draft, the quality of the work increases compared to that of allowing the “critics” in your head to continue in the first initial writing.
After reading both Anne Lamott and Peter Elbow’s methods I believe I resonate more with Anne Lamott because what she does is almost exactly what I do. Peter Elbow’s exercise method is not bad at all, however, it does not work well for me. When giving myself a time limit to just write, I blank out and the result isn’t pretty at all. I like to have time to be able to get my ideas out first, and then to re-read and fix my mistakes or even rewrite huge chunks. By default when I have used his method in the past, I fail to see how it can be furthered improved and instead I just edit. To me Anne Lamott’s method is effective and the better method for the fact that to me it makes me see what I need to fix. When I get all my ideas down on the first draft I always lay the groundwork first and then get to the details and editing. To me, it is more of an outline rather than a serious first draft. In this form you allow yourself to improve through the process of multiple drafts and more steadily reach your goal.
After reading “Shitty First Drafts” it made me want to improve my way of writing by writing more than I need to rather than struggling to find words and sentences to use. This way I can narrow my writing down to quality rather than filling in the spaces with junk.
After reading both articles “Shitty First Drafts” and “Freewriting” As well as the introduction to both articles, it made me re evaluate the way I write as a writer. One thing I really want to do is trust the process and not believe that my first draft should be my only draft. Take each paragraph and branch out with more ideas about the topic and make sure I know when you write my final draft that I fully expand my ideas. Whenever I need to write an essay or an extended response I usually rush my ideas and thoughts and don’t really try to expand my writing.For my next assignments I would like to “free write” for approximately 10-20 min and see what I can come up with and to see if I can fully expand my ideas and really see what ways I can write differently.I usually don’t let other people see my work because I am very closed off with my writing so seeing what other people’s views are can help bring new ideas into my writing and make me more open about the idea of someone editing my writing.After reading both articles “ Shitty First Drafts” and “Freewriting” and the introduction I have gained more tips and tools to being a better writer and considering new things for my essays and all my work.
The part of the reading that resonated with me the most would have to be the line from Peter Elbow’s article “Freewriting” where it reads, “The habit of compulsive, premature editing doesn’t just make writing hard. It also makes writing dead”. Premature editing is something that I have and always will struggle with as a writer despite the fact that I’ve developed a strategy that suits me best. The point about the multiple “voices” in the writer’s head that automatically critiques their “mistakes” or “bad writing”, that Lamott and Elbow touched upon in their respective articles, which causes the writer to backtrack and try to rectify the mistakes is a situation I’m very familiar with. I have tried the free writing exercises that Elbow suggests in “Freewriting” to undo the “ingrained habit of editing” while trying to put ideas down on paper. I have also tried Lamott’s method in “Shitty First Drafts” where you write multiple first drafts and then piece the best parts of each draft together to create the final piece. My final verdict on these methods is that they are inefficient and ineffective, well at least they are for me. On one final note, one thing that I can take away from Elbow’s line in his article is to make sure that my writing doesn’t end up sounding “dead”.
Out of both readings assigned, I resonated the most with Peter Elbow’s “Freewriting”. His method is the one that is most similar to my writing process. I usually begin to write and try to keep writing, even though I might get stuck. I try to get all of my ideas out in the order that I think of them, making sure the sentence or idea makes sense before I write it down. I later look over my work, adding and taking away a couple of things. The reading made me reconsider my process because the writer urges against it. My method is extremely time consuming, and can be frustrating when trying to figure out how to get your ideas and points across. Freewriting allows the writer to successfully transfer ideas and phrases without forgetting them or getting overwhelmed with coming up with what to write. It’s also easier and less time consuming. This process doesn’t allow editing while writing, allowing ideas to flow freely with no limitation on language and thoughts. Only after getting all thoughts out, you can edit your work. This takes the pressure off the writer, making writing easier and not so intimidating. I will definitely try this method my next time writing.
After reading about the two different styles of practice writing, what resonates the most with me is that over the last two years in writing, I have been exposed to both of these styles. In my junior year, my teacher first started to have us use Peter Elbow’s strategy of “free writing”. This continued into my senior year, where we would have “free write fridays” in our class. When I am writing a paper, it takes me a couple of tries or “drafts” to get my ideal introduction paragraph. I like to generalize my ideas in my first one, and add to and change in order to improve it. In the first draft, I formulate the main talking points of the paper, leaving room for improvement. I follow the strategy set forth by Lamott, as I believe that taking different approaches to a similar task allows for me to create the best paragraph possible. To improve my writing, I will try to use Elbow’s strategy more. Even though I have been doing free writes, I have never reaped the benefits of it. I feel that even though it is not as structured in an organized manner , you are still able to work with developing your writing. This is where you can strengthen your writing and diversify your sentence structure and vocabulary; it allows you to be more experimental rather than the restrictive nature of a final draft. Using both methods is the most beneficial as you can add the flare of experimentation with taking different approaches to writing a paper.
Christian Boyle
I resonated with Shitty First Drafts by Anne Lamott when she talks about her Xing out her sentences and then rewriting them over and over. I do this almost every single time I try to write something, and I’ve never considered just allowing my first draft to not be any good. I spend hours on my first drafts trying to convey the ideas floating around in my head in an effective way, but I suppose it doesn’t have to be very effective, as long as I can understand what I meant. I’d never thought to write my first draft for myself and only worry about the way it would be read by others later in the writing process. For my next paper, I’ll try to use my first draft as more of a summary of my thoughts, rather than something that attempts to be perfect. I feel like writing in this way will make me feel similar to the way Lamott feels when she writes her first drafts. I think I’ll most likely spend the entire time criticizing and hating the things I write while simultaneously trying to keep myself from going back and making any big edits. Every time I’ve written a first draft and then slept on it to write the second another day, I’ve always found the second draft to be much easier than the first, so I’m intrigued by this tactic and whether or not I’ll find it effective.
After reading “Shitty First Drafts,” and “Freewriting”, I felt comfort in knowing that having difficulty in writing papers is a human thing and not a Sarah thing. “Shitty First Drafts,” by Anne Lamott, resonated with me the most. “Freewriting” by Peter Elbow, had a different practice writing method which entailed writing for a certain period of time without ever stopping. Although I do think this is an interesting method that may work for others, it does not work well for me. The idea of being obligated to write without stopping for a fixed amount of time gives me anxiety and would lead me to only acquire one thought: “Don’t stop writing. 9 minutes left. 8 minutes and 50 seconds left…etc.” On the other hand, Anne Lamott’s practice writing method is a shitty first draft that she describes as a “Child’s Draft”. The purpose of writing shitty first drafts is to be able to pour all your thoughts out and afterwards be able to look back on what you have written for a sense of direction. When I am given a long written assignment, my mind goes completely blank. I know the destination that I want to reach, but I have no idea where to begin. I usually try to take a deep breath, and write long bullet points and random paragraphs of what ideas I may have in whichever order I originally think they should be in. This allows me to then be able to write in the correct format using my “shitty” first draft as my google maps.
Hasibul Bhuiyan
After reading “Shitty First Drafts” and “Freewriting”, what resonated with me most was when Anne Lamott talks about the voices and chatter that we hear before we begin to write. Anne is referencing the many distractions in our heads that tells us to do something that we find interesting instead of writing. This is something that I go through whenever I am about to write something. Growing up in a world where technology has become a crucial part of everyday life, it’s very easy for me to get distracted. If I sit down somewhere to write, voices would start swimming in my head, asking me to perform other tasks. They may tell me to go eat something, play video games, check my phone every 5 minutes, watch a movie/video, etc. Basically anything other than writing the assignment. It’s because I find those other activities more fun and entertaining than writing itself. My mind would start wandering and I would lose focus on the objective and ultimately procrastinate. This is something that I will have to deal with for the rest of my life. Fortunately, upon reading the two texts, I’ve found a couple ways on how I can cope with this problem and it made me reconsider how I normally approached my writing process. I think Anne’s idea of pretending that the voices are mice and them locking them up is a great way to start. Closing my eyes and getting rid of each distraction bit by bit will help me clear my mind and focus better on my writing. I will also adapt Peter’s way, which is to write without stopping or thinking. I’ve always worried about grammar, spelling, and if the writing makes sense. Instead, it’s better for me to reread and fix my work after I’ve finished writing. As Peter said, no one will read the first draft, so there’s nothing to worry about.
I resonate from Shitty First Drafts by Anne Lamott, because I was never a good writer. There are usually two types of people, people that excel in arts, writing and English and on the other hand people that excel at math and science. I am a math type of guy from the beginning. My drafts are always shitty first drafts. When I was growing up, we were taught to brainstorm before the first draft. Now that we are older we don’t brain storm at all we go to the first draft straight up. The brain storming was there just for you to throw ideas in the board even if they were good or not. The shitty fist drafts are basically the same thing at this point. Put down all the things you have in your head on this piece of paper so later you can just work off of what you wrote originally and take out the stuff you need at all. Also when Im writing, I usually don’t like taking breaks. Sometimes I loose my trail of thought then can’t think about what to write for the next few minutes or so. I do this even for the second draft sometimes, I just keep writing not minding grammatical errors just to put words down so I don’t loose my train of thoughts. A good way to start of writing even before the shitty draft is to put everything you are thinking about into bullet points and even coming back to later and adding more things to that list will help you tremendously
Ka Lye Chan
As someone who overthinks a lot of the time, I resonated very much with “Shitty First Drafts” and “Freewriting”. When Anne Lamott said, “What I’ve learned to do … is to quite the voices in my head”, I felt that. I always think about what I’m going to write about, I do everything besides from actually writing it out. Then I start to overthink what I’m going to write, and it complicates my thoughts, so I end up writing a little, overthinking, getting stuck, overthinking, writing a little, getting stuck, and the cycle continues. I think a part of it is that in my mind, it isn’t just a first draft, it’s a bad writing piece no matter how many times I’ve reviewed it, so I try to “get it right” on the first try and try not to look back. This behavior is not productive, but I feel like this with my art pieces, and many other things because there are so many things that can still be approved upon that it’ll never be near perfect. It is interesting to see other people’s writing process and adapt it in order to improve on my own writing pieces. I think I will start taking their advice and just freely write for a while without any intrusion of second thought first and then review it after instead of reviewing while writing, but I don’t think it will come easily. I can start this practice daily for ten minutes with writing about anything and practice this on my writing assignments.
I resonate with Anne Lamott the most. She talks about how coming up with a final piece is not an easy job. She says how the final draft will have many crazy parts. She gives the best example of how a character wants to so say, “Well, so what, Mr.Poopy Pants?”. Lamott points out that even though the first draft may have parts that you might not want others to see, it is still a very effective approach because in all those ideas there might be a lot of small portions that you may want to include in ur main piece. I also find it less stressful to start off with a brainstorm, in which all the good and bad ideas are in front of you. This ultimately sets up a list for me where I could cut out or choose certain things I like instead of coming up with all the good ideas at once, which is impossible for the most part. The part that I have chosen to keep I could develop into senthesized ideas which can support my paper. I also like how Lamott gives the idea of constant writing and review. For instance when she talks about going to the restaurant and writing everything interesting one of her friends said and then reviewing those notes the next day. I like how Lamott explains that feeling panic from time to time is alright. She would do other activities like talk to friends or eat a meal and go back to writing. This is applicable to my situation because I have plenty of time to write a paper. I feel like I can effectively brainstorm and have the time to come back and keep revisiting and revising.
Randolph Harrison
I resonated most with the Shitty First Draft article because it showed me a different way to approach writing a first draft. When I wrote first drafts in high school, it was more serious process. I usually tried very hard to make the first draft as good as possible, so the writing process would be easier later on. It is pretty exhausting doing it this way, especially when I struggled with how I should begin and continue an essay. The process in this article is just writing down whatever comes to mind that is related to the subject. The purpose of doing this is to just put something down, whether it’s good or not. There is not a lot of thinking to this process, which contrasts with my own experience of drafting papers in high school. In my own personal opinion, while I think this way of writing might help someone, I still think writing a first draft with more substance, no matter how long it would take, will help me more in the writing process. A first draft usually will take me a few hours to create, and it helps me have a solid groundwork for the final draft so I don’t have to do much work for it. Something like the process in the article is what I might do during the note taking process/research portion of an essay. However, for a creative writing project, I might use this way of writing, since it would be less formal and unrestricted compared to a school assignment.
Jacob Kapustin
“Shitty First Drafts” was an article that gives an interesting perspective on writers block. Writers block, when the writer is having difficulty expressing words on paper, is a dilemma that many writers, including myself, experience quite often. The author brings up personal anecdotes where he himself had struggled with writers block, he said many silly stories of how he attempted to cure his writers block. Eventually he brings up a great remedy, that may have coined the title, “Shitty First Drafts.” Many of us had written Drafts in highschool and College, but not all of us have written Drafts when we were unable to put together the first sentence even. He discusses a strategy were you write a poorly written first draft, even when you are having trouble piecing together a thesis statement. Writing a “shitty” first draft, even if illiterate to a third party, forces your brains creative gears to kick in. His strategy reminds me of when one is having trouble making a decision, and they start jotting ideas onto a piece of paper. The objective is the same, to ignite a creative force in your brain that will ultimately help you complete the goal in mind. His suggestion really portrays a great philosophy of giving it your all in writing situations as well as other situations in life. You might be having a difficult time, but if you give it a genuine try, from there, things can only get better. The author provided us with a great strategy, which I am looking forward to implementing.
I resonate most with the final line in the introduction of Seth Groves. He mentions the class ” as an opportunity to work out your writing muscle-one that helps you communicate with friends or coworkers…articulate feeling” to me that represents the whole idea of getting better at writing; to deliver thoughts in a better more “articulate” manner. When i first began to write I had no idea how to effectively create messages in my writing and deliver ideas in a coherent manner. I would write and later stumble upon an amalgamation of thoughts which scattered my central idea from my readers brain. More times then not I’d have classmates tell me my writing was detailed and decent but the message unclear. For this reason, I strongly understand the want to articulate feeling in writing as its one of my weak points. Another point he made that stood out to me was “we practice and develop our skills at writing itself”,like any skill writing has its steps.As for my writing process, after reading this introduction I am convinced that writing is meant to be messy and a tool that can affect change. The process cannot be a product but a process; I’ll enjoy the process of writing and culminating ideas rather than focusing on the product/end result.
1) “How to Survive a Plague”
2) The film “How to Survive a Plague” uses a variety of cinematographic techniques and elements throughout the film to convey its message, or agenda. One example of such would be the use of archival footages as well as images of the time containing subjects such as the AIDS afflicted, the political, and social factors that played a large role at the time. Within these archival footages, are more rhetorical symbols such as the horn, the ashes, and the casket. Another thing that are within these archival footages are statistics and graphic aids/mediums. The film also includes various personal anecdotal accounts and interviews during the ACT UP movement and a couple of years after.
3) Notes:
-Closer look into powerful scenes within the film ( capital hill march/demonstration and how it ties into the funeral parade/protest)
-Closer look at rhetorical objects/symbols included in the film (ashes of the dead, propaganda posters, props, etc)
-Juxtaposition of narratives within the film and how they contribute towards the overall themes, rhetoric, and other ideas the film is trying to convey.
In the first paragraph, there was a couple of sentences that stuck out to me the most: “Writing is a lifelong activity, performed in lots of different places, not limited to class essays. And it’s really a process- a messy one at that- of exploring, planning, drafting and revising. It’s recursive- that is, writers repeating drafting cycles.” I always considered writing to be a process solely attached to academic responsibilities, and sometimes as a pastime. I have been writing my entire life, and I hardly recall moments that I took the time to revise my writing or create several drafts without being forced to. This part of the reading describes, in my opinion, exactly why it is essential to actually plan and eventually revise your writing. When I have a major assignment due, I just think about getting it done. I do not do outlines, drafts, nor do I revise my writing. That’s because I always viewed it as something that had to get done at certain moments, for certain deadlines. I never really saw it as something as a process that I essentially go through every day.
After reading “Shitty First Drafts” and “Freewriting” the part of the reading I resonated with most was Peter Elbow’s article “Freewriting” because throughout my 10+ years of education almost every single one of my english teachers used this method of teaching to improve my writing skills. Just like in every other class we take in school, practice makes perfect. The more you write, the easier it’ll be and the better you’ll be at it. It will feel more natural to sit down and write a paper if you have prior practice of writing. Personally when I write a paper, I generate a couple of “drafts” to get my ideal essay. In “Shitty First Drafts” Anne Lamott says that it takes multiple drafts to complete an essay. Writing an essay in one sitting will produce a much worse essay than if you were to work on multiple drafts and spend period increments of time working on it.