Final Portfolio Information April 25, 2007

Final Portfolio: Due in class on Wednesday, May 3^rd. 

Congratulations on 15 weeks worth of reading, writing, thinking, drafting, and sharing.  Your final portfolio is the collected body of your best work this semester.  Here are the necessary components: 

Final Portfolio·         Self-reflection letter: Describe your process of arriving at the finished project.  Where did you begin? What surprised you? What did you discover about yourself and your writing? What specific challenges or dilemmas did you face? How did you choose to resolve these? What models were particularly inspiring for you and why? What questions remain?  If you had more time, what else would you like to do with this project? (2-3 pps) 

·         Final Autobiographical project(s): 10-15 pages of your finest polished prose. See below for a list of the qualities we expect to find in well-crafted autobiographical writing. 

·         Drafting: Include all the writing that went into this final project: drafts, freewrites, in-class exercises, blog posts, random notes.·         Five best blog posts and your rationale for why. 

Qualities we expect in the Final Autobiographical project:

• A strong sense of the writer’s voice and presence
• Description: vivid images and scenes that enable readers to “see”
• Awareness of tone and voice/ Honesty and humor
• Background information
• Conscious control over time—knowing when to slow down and when to speed up
• Reflection and insight: Moments where the writer ponders, muses, and makes meaning
• Developed characters—a sense of a self-in –relation to other people. (For example, providing a brief physical sketch of the people you’re writing about; including direct quotes, dialogue, and conversation)
• Attention to language and craft
• Attention to other points of view
• Use of comparisons—metaphors and similes
• Intertextuality—direct reference to other texts, writers, and/or stories that illuminate your own
• Creative use of investigation and research

 

Necessary Details:TitlePage numbersWorks Cited page or Works ConsultedProofread and spell-checked 

Options:Images and/or graphicsAcknowledgments or prologue 

Final Portfolio: Pick up on Monday, May 7^th at 10:00.

Monday’s draft April 18, 2007

5 page draft due Monday, April 23rd (bring 1 copy for a letter-writing workshop.) 

The purpose of this draft is to begin to build upon your previous drafts and disparate freewrites. This draft should have a strong sense of voice, character(s) and place/setting. Omit or leave out your opinions and judgments. Let your writing lead readers to draw their own conclusions.  This draft should be a rich extension and amplification of your previous long draft. Use your in-class writing and the marginal notations and questions from your previous draft. In some cases, you’ll be “cracking open” a section and going in deeper. In other cases, you’ll be slashing and burning unnecessary language in order to reveal the heart of the scene or image. In other words, lots of new language. Piece it together the best you can, knowing that we’ll continue to think about order, shape, and movement. You might experiment with: 

• Using white space between sections
• Writing a title for the different pieces

 

Necessary components of draft:1) A question, dilemma, tension, issue, or idea that the writer is thinking through, wrestling with. 

2) Strong and specific scenes that locate the reader immediately in terms of place, time, action, and purpose. 

3) Investigate in order to teach your reader (and yourself) about something connected to your topic that you didn’t know.  Consider the amazing treasure trove of Google. 

4) Connect to other texts:

• Intertextuality—use of another text in order to make a connection or commentary about yourself. See Ondaatje’s use of Jane Austen’s Persuasion on p. 22 or his connection to all the famous Englishmen driven crazy in the heat on pages 79-83. Or Terry Tempest William’s use of Mary Oliver’s poem to frame her text.

 

5) One simile or comparisonBoth Ondaatje and Williams use similes a lot—they evoke strong images, they surprise, they avoid clichéd associations. Check out Williams’ imagery of the dead swan on page 121. “Abandoned like a dead lover…” 

7) Alternative point of view: either use third person to write about yourself or imagine the inner world of someone you’re writing about. 

Key Components in final project:

• Title
• Quotes and epigraphs
• Chapters or sections
• Intertextuality—reference to a book, story, text that connects to your story.
• Images: photographs, maps, etc.
• Words from others—interviews, quotes, stories, etc.
• Works sited or works consulted page/ credits?

Reading Refuge April 16, 2007

Let’s read up to (and including) page 190 for Wednesday’s class.   You have a draft due on Monday (I’ll post the information here after class), so we’ll plan to finish Refuge for Wednesday, April 25th.

Blog reminder April 10, 2007

Just a reminder that your blog post this week isto post a snippet or fragment from one of the many free-writing prompts we’ve experimented with. That’s it.  Just post something cool you’ve been doing–it might be in your draft or it might not be.

A quick note before I forget April 10, 2007

There is no final exam in Eng 251! Your final portfolios, however,are due on the last day of class (Wednesday, May 2).  Our exam period is scheduled for 8-10:30 on Monday, May 7th. We are obligated to meet during this time, so let’s plan to meet at 10:00 so that I can give back portfolios.  If you have questions or concerns, ask me tomorrow in class.

Happy Refuge reading!

Negotiating Reading in Refuge April 4, 2007

Okay, so we agreed that we’ll read the first 60 pages of Terry Tempest Williams’ Refuge (or the logical end of the chapter).  Post a reading response too and be sure to check out our class blogs to get a sense of who is saying what!

And no class Monday! 

More writing prompts inspired by Ondaatje April 2, 2007

Writing prompts straight from Ondaatje:

 

• I love…Write a sentence that is one long paragraph listing specific and (maybe) unrelated things. Read the first paragraph on page 133.

 

• I remember…Experiment with very specific things. Try for one line or at the most, a paragraph. Begin each section with “I remember…” Think about providing just the skeletal structure of the memory, not all the explanatory stuff. (Read page 174 and 175 for examples.)

 

• Write about a famous story about you (as a baby, child, teen-ager, worker, etc) that others get a kick out of telling. (Read page137.)

 

• Write one paragraph that tells the story “straight”—as in “Just the facts, Ma’am.” Now skip a line or two and write a second paragraph that tells the same story but now attempts to get inside the characters. Ground your flight of fancy in the real facts, but let yourself imagine the details of the scenery, the possible conversations, and the emotional consequences of the story.  Read the train tunnel story on page 149 and the second telling of it on page 149-150.

• There is a story about (___________) I cannot come to terms with.

Write about an event or story that you can’t understand, explain, or resolve. It might be a story that leaves you uncomfortable, unsure, or unhappy. Read page 181-182.

 

• It is important to understand…. (Read Ondaatje’s explanation of the tradition of the Visitor’s Book at the resthouses on page 151).

 

• A paragraph that conveys the “now” of you writing in the present tense. Let this paragraph be your glance backwards, pondering the stories you’ve been exploring, the ideas you’ve been writing about. Read page 136:

 

“Now, and here, Canadian February, I write this…”

 

Now, and here, Albanian April, I write this….

The Thoughtful and the Forgetful April 2, 2007

By the way, I’ve just been browsing your blogs and am impressed by your readerly insights. Even more…I’m impressed by your abilities to read like writers. Nice work.

And to the forgetful few…don’t abandon your blog!

Draft for Wednesday’s class! April 2, 2007

5 page draft due Wednesday, April 4^th (bring 3 copies) 

The purpose of this draft is to begin to put together the disparate fragments, freewrites, exercises, and (possibly) your one-pager into something more cohesive. This draft should have a strong sense of voice, character(s) and place/setting. Omit or leave out your opinions and judgments. Let your writing lead readers to draw their own conclusions.  This draft should be a rich extension of your main project and incorporate a lot (if not all) of our in-class writing. In other words, lots of new language. Piece it together the best you can, knowing that we’ll continue to think about order, shape, and movement. You might experiment with: 

• Using white space between sections
• Writing a title for the different pieces

 

Necessary components of draft:1) A question, dilemma, tension, issue, or idea that the writer is thinking through, wrestling with. 

2)) Strong and specific visual images (Remember Ondaatje’s use of the dream image from page   27 of the human pyramid.) 

3) An element of Investigation:·         Research to find the history of something central to what you’re writing about. A specific place or location? A local group? A pastime? An object? (See p. 74). 

• Historical/cultural research: Find out what the news headlines, popular songs, movies, etc. were during a specific moment. Establish the cultural, historical context (See Ondaatje’s chapter “Honeymoon” on p. 37-38.)

 

• Interview someone connected to your topic. Include direct quotes and stories.  (see bottom of page 25 and all of page 36).

 

• Describe with specific detail the lifestyle of the times without inserting your own opinions or judgments (see Ondaatje’s chapter called “Historical Relations” on p. 39-41.) How did people spend their time? Who were the main characters? What do people tell stories about? What’s remembered and talked about?

 

Optional components of this draft:4) Connecting to other texts:

• Intertextuality—use of another text in order to make a connection or commentary about yourself. See Ondaatje’s use of Jane Austen’s Persuasion on p. 22 or his connection to all the famous Englishmen driven crazy in the heat on pages 79-83

 

5) One simile or comparison 

6) Use of present tense 

7) Alternative point of view: either use third person to write about yourself or imagine the inner world of someone you’re writing about.

Writing Prompts inspired by Ondaatje April 2, 2007

In-class individual writing: Choose 4 to experiment with 

1. Write a paragraph (or so) in the third person using s/he as Ondaatje does on p. 17. Describe yourself doing something important or being somewhere central to your own writing project. Take the stance of an objective observer and describe what you see.

 

1. Read Ondaatje’s analysis of the word “
   Asia” on p. 22.  Make a list of specific words central to your own topic. Choose one that seems important and write about it. What does the word look like? Sound like? Evoke or suggest? What are the associations others might have with this word?

 

1. Tell one story that you think is essential to understanding a person you’re writing about. The story should speak volumes about their character, life, and personality without added commentary or explanation from you.  (Check out the family story about Lalla’s fake breast in “The War Between Men and Women” (42-43) or the blasting of snakes with shotguns in “Kegalle (ii)” (98-99.))

 

1. Identify general characteristics of the relatives/family/people you’re writing about:  “Most Ondaatjes liked liquor, sometimes to excess. Most of them were hot tempered—though they blamed diabetes for this whenever possible. And most were genetically attracted to a family called Prins and had to be talked out of marriage…” (57). Consider the desires, needs, vices, ambitions, failures, & personality traits. You might want to try starting with the prompt:  It seems that most of (your relatives/family/clients/customers/patients/)…….

 

1. Dedicate a list poem to someone you’re writing about and use similes (like or as) to make a series of specific (and not so positive) comparisons like Ondaatje does on p.76-77. Your voice sounds like…

 

1. Brainstorm a list of possible chapter headings or section titles for your project. Let your list be personal, associative, and specific. Think about what you’ve already written, but also about what you haven’t yet written. (Check out Ondaatje’s Contents on pp. 11-13).