Summing up thoughts on CNF

Tonight we talked through definitions of CNF in light of the book's introduction + the craft essays - and ended with a discussion of what CNF is "good for" => what it is retorically suited to "do."

Good talk! I think we pulled together most of the main ideas of the course>

For Wednesday:

Blog: Post your handout for the Rhetorical Analysis of a Publication Venue. The handout should have suitable links so you can "illustrate" your talk with the pages/essays/information as it is presented on the publication's web site.

In class you will report to your classmates what you have found out about your publication venue. Your discussion should give your classmates a clear idea of the kinds of CNF pieces your venue is looking for - and what the requirements are for publishing work with their journal.

See you Wednesday.

Journal Listing

Poets and Writers has a search engine for literary magazines. This should make finding a home for your writing much easier.

Reflective Writing

During class tonight you started on the reflective writing for the entry page for your portfolio (the prompt is posted), and I caught up on conferences for Draft 4.

We discussed revising Essay 3/4, and decided that you had gone the distance writing "eye" essays, and that rather than requiring you to write a polished "eye" essay, you can revise Essay 3/4 in a form that best represents the ideas/representations you want to convey.

For Monday:

Blog 22: Post a draft for the reflective writing

Read: Craft essays of your choice

In class on Monday we will talk over the craft essays you have been reading + the reflective writing & do some group work on the publication venue project.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Revised Essay 1 or 2, and Class Monday

Check out the two earlier posts for information on the conference schedule, groups & selections for the Rhetorical Analysis of a Publication Venue assignment.

For class Monday, turn in the revised version of Essay 1 or 2. Send this essay as an attachment to the ENG4017 email. Your essay should include a title that suggests, sets up or resonates with the focus of your essay. You should also include the name of the venue where you might consider sending this essay and a short indication of how it "fits" with the audience for that publication. This information will help me in providing feedback for your essay. I will be assessing both how well your essay fits the criteria for the assignment (the "I" essay assignment) and your perspective on where your writing fits within the world of publication.

In class, we will talk about the reflective writing you will post on the first page of your portfolio. This assignment is meant to set you up to think about who you are as a writer, your strengths, weaknesses & "fit" with respect to CNF, and your plans for your writing future. The assignment will ask you to use work for this class - your journal, your drafts, your blog & your response to assigned readings - as evidence for the claims in your essay.

Blog 21: describe the audience you envision for your work. List some journals that have an audience interested in your work? How does your work "fit"?

Conferences for Essay 4

I will read Essay 4 over the weekend and make notes and you have signed up for conferences on Monday and Tuesday in terms of the following schedule.

Monday:

2:30 Elizabeth

3:30 Josh

4:10 Marilyn

4:30 Nashira

4:50 Marjorie

5:00 Hamilton

5:10 Robyn

5:30 Ashley

7:15 Fran

7:35 Casey

Tuesday

4:00 Michael

2:30 Erin

Chelsea, Eric, and Yasmin - please be in touch. Also - we are going to need to do some shuffling around the 5:00 appt on Monday since it ended up double booked. We'll see how it goes.

Rhetorical Analysis of Publication Venues

Groups for the Rhetorical Analysis project are as follows:

Ashley, Elizabeth, Fran, Robyn

Nashira, Marjorie, Marilyn, Michael

Hamilton, Josh, Erin, Casey

Chelsea, Yasmin, Eric

Your group will be the people who you keep in touch with and use as a sounding board as you develop your project. Although you will present together in that you will all sit up at the front at the same time, each of you will give an individual presentation. The purpose of setting you up in groups was to create a designated set of colleagues to confer with - not to require you to create one coherent project.

The tentative list of publications you will check out as possible venues for your work is as follows:

Literal Latte Elizabeth
Brevity Josh
Literary Mama Robyn
Teacher's Voice Marilyn
Blackbird Erin
Hunger Mountain Casey
Crazy Horse Marjorie
Upstreet Hamilton
North American Review Eric
Narrative Fran
Word Riot Ashley
American Scholar Michael
JMWW Nashira
Drunken Boat Yasmin

Finish Essay 4

In class tonight you set up your online portfolios - and you talked in groups about Essay 4.

For Wednesday:
Provide comments to individuals in your group.

Blog 20: Post Essay 4

Check out the online portfolio and bring anything you can't figure out to class on Monday, Nov. 22.

In class we will go over the rhetorical analysis for publication venues project (posted at right under writing assignments).

Create an online portfolio

I've set up a template for the final portfolio .

Tonight in class, we will discuss how you might use your portfolio & you will begin to set up your portfolio.

Some other writers who have online portfolios (well, sort of)include:

John McPhee

Annie Dillard

Susanna Rich

Thomas Lynch

Narrative descriptions + Working on Essay 4

Tonight we spent some time writing & sharing descriptive writing that not only sets a scene - but also tells a story or implies an idea.

Here is another sample of what I was trying to get at.

I'm standing in the middle of the old bridge crossing the slow stream where it joins Dilner's Pond. Duckweed and spatterdock grow close to the banks, but surface beneath me is undimpled except for a few water striders. The water is very still. It is near midday and the sun is almost overhead. The surface is like a fierce brown mirror and the heat and light bound back from it almost as if they could cast my shadow across the wooden planks if the angler were right. I lean over the railing and suddenly I see fish, 10, maybe 20, made visible by my shadow. I watch them hang there, still except for the flicker of their fins,barely distinguishable against the muddy bottom. Then just as I begin to count them, my face comes into focus and they disappear.

The description makes a point about an idea - but does not state the idea directly.

You then worked in groups to get/give some feedback on Essay 3, and to work on Essay 4. At this point I have conferenced with all of you (except Josh - I've read the essay and will get back to you soon) and it sounds like you are in good shape.

For Monday:
Blog 19: Post whatever writing you have for Essay 4

In class on Monday you have some time to work in groups on your essays, and you will work on setting up a portfolio using google sites. I will give you a template (what you need to post for this class), but ultimately this site might serve as a tool for you to showcase or circulate your writing.

To build this site you will need a gmail account. If you don't have a gmail account - it would help to set one up before coming to class.

Have a great weekend and see you Monday.

Description

Tonight we wrote descriptions of places at Kean (or not). When we read them aloud, we noticed which features of the writing tipped us off to where we were, which kinds of writing held our interest, and how combinations of description and assessment/metaphor worked together to draw in the reader (though I confess I got so taken up with what you wrote I forgot to do the teacherly/analytic part of drawing your attention to how the pieces worked - so I'm hoping you did some of that for yourself.

You also signed up for conferences on Essay 3, and spent some time talking over your essays in small groups.

Wednesday is again going to be "workshoppy" - so remember your groups - and you will work with them again. I will also be available in class Wednesday for conferences - and we will do a little more exploration of some of the writerly moves you can make with description.

The journal prompt for Wednesday will be to write a description that tells a story through detailed elaboration on the detail of a person, place or thing, or some combination. Some examples from class writing by previous CNF students include:

The sun is shining. I walk up through the green and flowery dunes to see the oceans waves are big, clean and peeling perfectly right off the pier.

The beach is uncrowded except for a couple other surfers. Tucked away behind mansions in a little shore town that nobody really knows about besides the rich inhabitants of these estates from that are never even at these palatial homes with the exception of a few summers out of the summer. The ocean a clear greenish color. A secluded paradise in New Jersey, all to myself and my friends behind the tall, vacant summer homes of commuters from new york. I park my car and get changed in front of a huge house that must cost millions of dollars. There are no cars in the drive way. I see workers mowing lawns but no people living in the yards. I grab my surfboard run onto the beach, passing a sign that reads "cation unprotected beach, no lifeguards, no swimming."

Blog 18: whatever writing you need to work with for class on Wednesday

A sample of the kind of descriptive narrative practiced by Robbe-Grillet.

Writing an essay with an "agenda"

Brett Lott's definition of CNF indicates that writing with an agenda is not really what the genre is about; rather - he emphasized the persisted questioning and the importance of entering multiple perspectives. At the same time - a number of CNF essays we've read so far (Final Cut, Marvin Gardens, The Patch, Invisible Man) in our text have definitely made forceful points - though they did so indirectly. Tonight's class was about examining the strategies these essays use to argue an agenda (and there is no doubt that many CNF essays do exactly that) without degenerating into a rant - or assaulting their reader's sensibilities.

You listed issues you could write an "agenda" essay about, wrote from the other perspective (to explore both sides), and then wrote a section/paragraph that would set up/introduce the issue without polarizing the discussion. The strategies you used to set up your subject material were the focus of the class discussion. Although you used different strategies in terms of content - the stance toward the material was descriptive, "objective" and often in the third person. You described persons, places or things, scenes, processes, actions/interactions, and so on - but always in the even, contained voice of the observer who renders the details - the complex, dynamic circumstances - that define the issue. These approaches can engage both the reader and the writer in genuine contemplation of the material at hand - which is the object of CNF.

Blog 17: Essay 3

In class Monday you will work in groups on giving/receiving feedback on your work. You will also have the opportunity to sign up for conferences.

I hope to have some time to give you some blog feedback over the weekend that might support you in working through your draft.

Marvin Gardens and Journal mining

You spent the first part of class reading through your journals and looking for patterns in your entries. These patterns might be in terms of content (always about "success" stories, or always about certain people, places or things), or they might be in terms of themes (injustice, love, discovery of self), or they might be related to your relationship to the material (nostalgic, distanced, analytic. . .), or in the outcome (always told with a positive spin or with a "lesson") - or in the lesson they teach.

You then wrote a list of topics you would never write about - and did a similar kind of classification. Were there patterns in the kinds of things you would never write about? What were they?

We then (briefly) wondered if there were any connections between patterns in the lists and anecdotes in your journal - and the list of things you would never write about.

This is only one strategy for mining a journal. Reading and re-reading your entries in light of your changing experience should generate plenty of others. The idea is to see your experience - and your self - in the light of the new reader become in the time between writing and reading - again and again.

We then talked about John McPhee's "Search for Marvin Gardens." We talked about the "facts" McPhee included - and gradually figured out the "message" - or one message - he set us up to read into those facts. We thought about why he might write his essay in the form he wrote it - the audience he was writing to - and how that strategy (engaging the reader in "solving" the essay as opposed to simply reading it) might be useful to you as a writer.

You spent the rest of class working in small groups to zero in on your topic & develop a line of thought - a focus - for essay 3.

For Wednesday:

Read: Gawande, 245.

Blog 16: Post any writing you have for essay 3 with requests for comments