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Decision making in essay form
Decision making in essay form
Decision making in essay form
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. I found the editing process to be very important. Steve May states that the writer who doesn’t revise their work is like “a builder who tries to build a cathedral…by tossing a few bricks, perhaps a fragment of a plan, out of the window of a moving van” (May 105). May is suggesting that throwing the first words or ideas down on paper won’t necessarily be the best ones. Writing is a decision-making process, a series of choices you have to make. The following is an unedited flash fiction passage from my portfolio:
‘A girl suddenly rushed towards us. I almost didn’t expect it. Her face appeared very bright red and wet, shiny streaks were visible under her puffy eyes. There were pieces of torn paper held tightly in her hands. I tried to avoid eye contact as she passed between me and my sister. Mary gave me an awkward look. I peered down at the white, crumpled envelope again. After two and a half months of waiting, it was time to read my results.’
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When we look at the sentence ‘A girl suddenly rushed towards us,’ there are ways of making it less wordy. The words ‘suddenly,’ and ‘rushed’ both express the same idea. Saying ‘sudden’ includes the idea of being rushed. A more succinct version of this sentence might be: ‘A girl rushed towards us.’ This is a complete edited version of the passage:
‘A girl rushed towards us. Her face appeared bright red and wet, shiny streaks under her puffy eyes. Pieces of torn paper were held tightly in her hands. I avoided eye contact as she passed. I peered at the envelope again. After two and a half months of waiting, it was time to read my
Jeannette Walls, American writer and journalist, in her memoir, The Glass Castle, shares her vividly stunning childhood growing up with her family. Due to her misguided and dysfunctional parents, Jeannette and her siblings had to suffer through poverty, negligence, and abuse. Jeannette Walls states, “Some people think my parents are absolute monsters and should’ve had their children taken away from them. Some think they were these great free-spirited creatures who had a lot of wisdom that a lot of parents today don’t [have].” Although a handful of individuals believe that the Walls’ parenting style was justified and has led to the sibling’s success, their children should have been taken away to be raised properly because their parents were unfit, and they experienced an immense amount of physical and sexual abuse and neglect throughout the process.
In this touching, non-fiction memoir by Jeanette Walls, The Glass Castle recounts the story of her vagabond upbringing in the 1960‘s. Walls notes her parents lack of conformity while also showing their unconditional love, in rather unconventional ways. While touching the bases of alcoholism, poverty and child neglect, the author still maintains the point of a passionate determination to preserve the alliance with her siblings through it all.
Jeannette Walls has lived a life that many of us probably never will, the life of a migrant. The majority of her developmental years were spent moving to new places, sometimes just picking up and skipping town overnight. Frugality was simply a way of life for the Walls. Their homes were not always in perfect condition but they continued with their lives. With a brazen alcoholic and chain-smoker of a father and a mother who is narcissistic and wishes her children were not born so that she could have been a successful artist, Jeannette did a better job of raising herself semi-autonomously than her parents did if they had tried. One thing that did not change through all that time was the love she had for her mother, father, brother and sisters. The message that I received from reading this memoir is that family has a strong bond that will stay strong in the face of adversity.
Dillard refers to the corpses of the moths beneath the spider web in her bathroom for the 16 years she had quit writing as if it was the death of her writing as the moths died to the spider.
While I was reading “shitty first draft” by, Anne Lamott I read a lot of good ideas on how to write well written papers. In my mind i’ve always thought that it was right to do a first draft because everything that you throw in there is just for your ideas not for everyone to see and that is exactly what anne lamott states in “shitty first drafts”. In my imagination I always figured that authors just sat down and already had in mind what they had to write but that is not true, most writers often just make a shitty draft so that they can organize their books etc. correctly. Lamott also stated that when she would write she would just write for example freewrite when you right without making and corrections, just writing the first thing that pops to your mind and it is possible that when you read it over you’ll get your perfect written work. When i read the title of Anne Lamott’s paper and read “shitty first draft” i was completely confused and now that i’ve read what she has to say and writing and who she is it makes me want to read one of her books, and while i read i 'm probably going to be
Carver’s the “Cathedral” to Hopper’s Ground Swell. The short story, “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver and the painting, Ground Swell by Edward Hopper, are similar in certain aspects, even though they take place in different settings. There is major conflict in each piece of art that creates confusion in the tone. The “Cathedral” is a first person story, but the narrator remains unnamed throughout the writing. This is a different point of view than the painting, which is first person, Ground Swell pictures individuals on a sailboat looking at a buoy floating in the ocean.
Her eyes were blue with age. Her skin had a pattern of its own of numberless branching wrinkles and as though a whole little tree stood in the middle of her forehead, but a golden color ran underneath, and the two knobs of her checks were illuminated by a yellow burning under the dark. Under the red rag her hair came down on her neck in the frailest of ringlets, still black, and with an odor like copper.
Nor did she look in the blue bag. Instead she rummaged in her purse. In her hand appeared two bills. "You really and truly, earned this," she said handing them over. "Thank you for all your help, my pet." Rosaura felt her arms stiffen, stick close to her body, and then she noticed her mother 's hand on her shoulder. Instinctively she pressed herself against her mother 's body. That was all. Except her eyes. Rosaura 's eyes had a cold, clear look that fixed itself on Senora Ines 's face. Senora Ines, motionless, stood there with her hand outstretched. As if she didn 't dare draw it back. As if the slightest change might shatter an infinitely delicate
In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls was no stranger to constantly moving and uprooting her entire life to move to different locations on the whim of her parents. Rex was the instigator in an all too common tactic that was a large reason for her tumultuous life. Three simple words from him forced the family to stop everything and pack up to move somewhere else. “We better skedaddle” was phrase that Jeannette knew too well in her early childhood. I was no stranger to people doing the skedaddle, but it wasn’t myself that was doing the infamous skedaddle, it was my father(s). It’s hard for me to call them all fathers, as most of them aren’t anything to me, but it’s the best description at the moment. One must understand that my mother has terrible
In the beginning of the story, the narrator feels very uncomfortable knowing that he will
Analyzing Raymond Carver’s short story, “Cathedral,” his writing is considered to be minimalistic, and the story contains themes of prejudice and religion. Since Hemingway was an influence on Carver, minimalism has shown up in his work as well. As for the themes, Carver uses his characters to come to overcome a prejudice of blindness and end with an epiphany through religion while drawing a cathedral hand over hand.
In the beginning of English 101 I was what you call a novice writer a person who only wrote what they felt was required. However, certain techniques that I learned in English 101 made me realize that writing was not about filling requirements; it’s about speaking out, exploring and proving a point. “Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” (Trimble, 17) In John Trimble’s quote he tries to point out that writing is something that you grow with and learn as you go along. I believe this growth was achieved with a technique that was introduced to me by my professor called repetitive revision. What I found out was that revision of your essays helps in recognizing your mistakes and enhances the flow of your essays. By providing me...
According to Donald M. Murray in The Makers Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts “A piece of writing is never finished”. Before this class, I didn’t really revise my essays
Similar to my “one and done” mentality, my lack of revision on my writing pieces is because of meer laziness. Revision is in fact very important because it offers you the chance to look at your writing pieces from a critical perspective. It allows you to analyze all of your points and change anything that needs to be changed for the better. In Shitty First Drafts, I like how Anne Lamott describes this process as dental work. She says, “check every tooth, to see if it 's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy”. This sums up revision in an very alternative and pictorial way. Lamott and Shirley Rose would see eye to eye in the subject of revision because in All Writers Have More To Learn, Rose discusses what I conveyed to be a form of revising called Externalization. Rose states that Externalization allows the writer to see how clearly it reads, what it is conveying, and if it can be improved in any way. In conversation I feel Kathleen Yancey would introduce a similar yet interesting outlook on revising to Rose and Lamott because in Learning to Write Effectively Requires Different Kinds of Practice, Time and Effort, Yancey illustrates revision in the form of seeing if what you wrote was what you thought you were writing and the question of if it will fit with the perception of the audience. I thought that this was a pretty interesting outlook for Yancey to develop in the context of
Mary Oliver, a transcendentalist thinker, brilliantly conveys her ideals of individualism to the reader through the story of a single cricket. As she conveys her message, she also inspires the reader. The theme of her poem, Song of the Builders, emphasizes the significance of individualism —all through the use of one cricket. Mary Oliver uses symbolism and juxtaposition to show how everyone’s individuality can contribute to the world.