Wednesday, September 24

In class we talked about "Alive" and "Westbury Place" and paid attention to how both of these essays derived their power from making there readers feel as if they were "there." With Drummond we felt the fear, peered over our own shoulders, and went back to the places and times when we were afraid. With Danticat we were inside a reflective process, remembering, noticing again (her experience and ours - as Matt pointed out) and seeing our experiences - present and past- differently.

You then looked at the criteria for your first writing project - and we talked about the overall plan for your work for this term. As you can see as you look through the calendar - you develop your writing through a series of drafts and you will be sharing these drafts (and revising them) through your blog and classroom workshops. The first draft for this project is due October 6.

For your Blog 6, I've asked you to go back through the CNF essays you've read so far (starting with "Out There," "On Keeping a Notebook," and "Superman & me" up through "Decent" & "Crossing the Border") and rank them according to how they meet the criteria for this assignment. The purpose of this writing is for you to do some thinking about form and focus - what your essay will need to look like in order to meet the particular rhetorical demands of this assignment. Check the calendar for the specific demands of this post. I will not be writing back to you about your blogs this weekend. My next response to blogs will be for posts 4- 7. And yes - I have a loop in the numbers for the blogs. It seems no matter how carefully I proofread I always mess up the blog numbering. . .

In class Monday, 9/29, you will spend some dedicated time finding your subject(s) through going back through your journal. You will work on techniques for "mining" a journal and hopefully it will be useful for you even if you've already picked a focus for the present essay (I am assuming you will be writing other essays - and maybe something you discover in your journal will work for a later project).

The readings for Monday are "Decent" (posted) and Thiel's "Crossing the border" (in your book).

I really enjoyed the family stories. There is something tremendously important about the "culture" we create as families - through telling about our shared experiences. Reflecting on these stories will tell you something about yourself - but writing about them can help all of use make a little more sense of who we are and how we share who we are with others.

Have a great weekend and see you on Monday.