By Katie Allison and Star Harris
Reading for class:
Our week started with Tuesday’s class getting canceled because of the weather conditions; however, we still had to read! (hopefully, that’s not a surprise to anyone) In chapter 3 of Changing Writing, it begins by telling you to take a look at your writing space. Yes, writing is supposed to be messy, but your writing space should have no distractions. The book provides images of two completely different areas, one showing a clean, organized desk, and the other a pile of papers and stuff everywhere. Personally, I need a clean space to focus, and I showed that in our assignment. The exercise was to take a photo, or sketch your writing space and label all of your necessary items. Also, to describe why you chose that space and why it works for you.
Following this, the book introduces Korrina and her assignment where she has to show children how advertisements impact their lives. They use this as an example of how to get started writing. The next topic is “ideas and how to have them,” and they reference Korrina’s process throughout this subject. One of the ideas they talk about is; making a PACT chart to organize your writing. We have learned how to make a PACT chart and how to use it in the previous chapters. This is a good starting point because it makes you think about all the necessary information before you start writing. Some of the other ideas are to go over the assignment instructions, read over your notes for the topic, discuss your thoughts with other people, use events that happened in your past, research your topic, and brainstorm.
The last writing process subject in this chapter is “moving ideas to a draft”. They advise creating a mind map and/or an outline. These steps are crucial to getting all of the ideas you just came up with organized. Creating a draft is a significant part of the writing process because your first copy is not the best copy. An excerpt from Anne Lamott’s book is included at the end of the chapter. This text is called “Shitty First Drafts.” (Dr. C’s favorite title) So many writers struggle with this problem. For us, now that we are starting to write essays, it is nice to know even if our rough draft is very, truly rough, we should not get discouraged and instead, just keep trying.
Class summary:
Although we didn’t get to attend class on Tuesday, we were able to catch up on a lot in our Thursday class. For our daily grade, we chose our social justice issue, why we decided on that particular one, and jotted down some main points to focus on with that issue. (Which is a great brainstorming technique btw)
We then pulled out our homework assignment assigned to us the week prior, so we could visualize where great minds come up with great ideas! We looked at some examples of a workspace, provided by a student, where you could see they had a single space to think and focus. They even had their scrunchies right by their side. Are scrunchies out of style…? We also looked at a sketch from another student of a spacious couch and total workload. Dr. C warned us that it was very easy to get distracted while you are working, because who doesn’t love a slice of pizza after you’ve worked so hard on that first sentence. You deserve a nice break. (Just kidding) In chapter 3 of our text CW, it discusses writing space, so we want to think about if there are any problems or things that are working. We thought of some ways to minimize distraction, like eating and using the restroom before getting started. Listening to music is also a great way!
After getting our writing spaces figured out, we read about our “Shitty first drafts.” It’s not uncommon that someone is so excited to get done with an essay, they just turn the assignment not really finished. Like it says in the book “everybody struggles to start to get writing.” We want to make sure that we thoroughly review our first draft before turning it in. A simple way to start is to just put your name, date, and as Dr. C recommends, a couple of Xs for the title. I mean at least it’s something right? Make sure you read the assignment multiple times and highlight as needed.
Now that you got that done, we went over ways to brainstorm so that you wouldn’t be caught in writer’s block. Such strategies included simply going on the internet for examples, writing a list of what you care about (looking at a focal point), having a conversation, and bullet pointing. The book suggests you free write (kind of like the free write from this morning. You can go into a free write and take a phrase and perform a loop, meaning you take that good idea and start the next free write with it. Dr.C said another useful technique is the good ole web. Simply put your main focus in the middle and subtopics extending from it and key points for those. Can’t go wrong with the web.
At the end of class, we went over useful ways to store your essay in google docs, Dropbox (Dr.C’s method), or just email it to yourself. It’s always good to have a copy. We closed out with a simple structure for outlining your essay and how to structure your body paragraphs. Make sure you have a good thesis statement (an argument, or “this is what we should do”).
*IMPORTANT* essay is due 9/24 , MLA FORMAT, 12 FONT, and ERROR FREE(DUE ON ICOLLEGE)