Hopefully, by the end of today (10.11) I will have conferenced with each of you. In this conference we talked over how you might go deeper/further with the material from your first draft, and we also spent some time talking about what you would do for your next draft. As stated in class - the plan is for you to write two drafts, then do some talking/reflecting to decide which one to revise. That means - this next draft is a NEW essay on a NEW topic. You worked some of opening up ideas at the beginning of class - and it sounded to me (and from looking at your blogs) like you are going to have some good material!
For journaling you wrote some family stories. Family stories - when told to a public audience or written in a journal - can be seen in a new light. All of a sudden the "insider" meaning they carry for the family tellings might sound a little different. As you told your stories - we sometimes suggested names for the "type" of story that they were -a blonde moment story, or a difficult (biting) child story, or a naughty but talented child story (the story about my father and the electricity), or a family identity story - and so on. These names connect your stories to "types" of stories told in other families = often for similar purposes and to accomplish similar ends in terms of defining the relationships within their group. When and how and to whom they are told often has to do with power relationships. These relationships (and the roles of stories) are things writers can notice -and turn into essays.
We spent the second half of class looking at some of the ways CNF writers use segmenting and sets of parallel or metaphorically connected story lines to develop a focus. I think the consensus was that the Cofer essay was a more pleasurable read for you - and maybe also that it illustrated more in terms of how to use segments. We spent some time looking at the different typographical cues she used to set off the different voices in her essay: italics for the film, regular print for the historical back story, inset paragraphs (no quotations though) for the voices of the individuals who were IN the flim. We noticed the movement between the film clips and the backstory - and how the two chronologies commented on each other.
We also talked about the metaphor of "silent dancing" = and how it connected to/set up the focus for the story. Just as the family in the film was dancing to music the present day viewers could not hear = weren't the family members in the backstory sections "dancing" to values and "traditions" that were from some place else and another time, and in many ways were "silent" = thought they still had the power to make the actors behaved in terms of their values. That works, doesn't it? Just as The Patch - was a metaphor for the consciousness in his father that McPhee was casting his story to - silent dancing was a metaphor for the powerful force of tradition to direct people's behaviors - even when the traditions are patterns from another place and time that no longer are "heard" in a new or changing context.
Good discussion of these two pieces. It is important to look at how these essays are built so that when you revise your writing - you can draw from the structures and ideas we see in this work.
For next week:
Read: Mike Daisey's report on the Apple factories in China, and NPR's retraction regarding their presentation of that report. These documents are available on NPR's web site at Mr.Daisey and the Apple Factory
Blog 6: More brainstorming for Essay 2.
In class you will brainstorm the draft you post on Blog 6 with your classmates. And we will use Mike Daisey's "creative" piece on sweatshops in China as a starting point for our discussion of "truth" in creative nonfiction.
See you next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment