9.24 Getting ready for Draft 1 & segmented essays

Getting reading to write Draft 1. Your stories in response to the writing prompt were great.  They all sounded like they could support a creative nonfiction piece that presents both a compelling experience and the relentless, reflective questioning that creates a thoughtful reflection on what that experience (or set of experiences) was "about."  As we think back on the CNF we have read so far, we might notice that most of the pieces don't make their points directly.  Rather, the dramatize events that cause us to feel the "aboutness" of the piece - which is often set up clearly (but in a way that only takes on its full meaning after reading the entire piece) => in the title.

You posted some brainstorming for your first draft, and after listening in on your discussions in your groups in class, it sounds like you are reading to get full version of the essay on the page. 

This draft is a place to:

• take risks in terms working with writing content and form that you might not feel "in control" of
• get all your ideas out there - even if they are not perfect, and even the ones that (for now) you aren't sure how they fit in
• stumble around looking for a focus
• write into your strengths, and use that writing to open up or lead you to places you are less sure of

Unless it is something you want to do or that you feel is important to your development as a writer - don't spend a lot of time crafting beautiful sentences.  This writing is about painting all over the canvas: roughing out the elements you will work with, exploring relationships, looking for images/stories to render vividly the overall picture you will paint.

So have fun and I am looking forward to reading your work!

Segmented essays.
You did great work coming up with a list of "what segments do" = how they work.  We had a pretty impressive list on the board which I erased without writing down, but if I remember correctly it included:
signal transitions
imply comparisons
set up a chronology (or other kinds of relationships)
tell the whole story/make the whole point
develop separate scenes/characters/ideas
build a novel overall structure (different from the more or less linear, cumulative structure of reading)

 As we noticed in reading the segmented essays discussed in class, each essay's organization was integral to its meaning => the way the essay was built was part of the essay's "aboutness."  In Teacher Training, only the title overtly states the focus on learning to be a good teacher.  The parallel experiences in the paired segments is what embodies that point in its fullness without any direct statement. Again, in Schwartz's piece, the scenes move from the US to Germany and back, and the attitudes of the author and her father move in different directions as they grapple with the shared experiences portrayed in each segment.  And Kahn's piece does many things within each segment - though in some sense each seems to come to an understated, not quite definitive resolution about organ transplants - as if each vignette is a whole story (with a conclusion) in itself.  She could have come to different conclusions (or conclusions that contradicted each other) - but in a way, these three seem to work together to make a single point supported by the implications of the title.

Looking at the three essays gave concrete illustrations of how segments can function.   These essays used segments in quite different ways with respect to how much & which parts of the story they told, the kinds of "points" they made with respect to the whole piece, their relationships to time, character, and scene - and so on.  You can mix and match, invent and re-arrange these functions as you work on revising your drafts. 

Segmenting and drafting
Sometimes, a draft will present itself in terms of the segmenting pattern you will eventually use for your essay - but not always or even often.  The form of the segmented essays we analyzed was artfully constructed, and you may not be ready to impose the form until after you are deep into the "aboutness" of your material.  On the other hand, because your feeling about how to segment/structure your essay can be part of what your essay is about, sometimes writing into a "structure" can facilitate the drafting process.  Yeah, I know, thanks a lot for the clear advice.  So if I try to give a little more direction here I'd say - if planning the form for your essay (choosing a structure - maybe even one of the named structures in the previous post) helps you get a lot of writing on the page = go for it.  If it gets you stuck = let it go and just write, and you can think about structuring after you conference and workshop and have a more clear idea what kind of segmenting pattern will allow you to convey your meanings through form as well as content.

For next week:
Read: McPhee, p. 128, "The Search for Marvin Gardens"
Blog 4: Draft 1