Welcome to our first class. Today is one of the most important days of
our course because today is the day where we're going to start thinking about
ourselves as writers.
And I write letters of recommendation for students and I write notes to my
children's teachers and I write emails to friends and texts to friends.
So today, we're going to look at our histories as writers, and then write a
brief essay introducing ourselves as writers to your colleagues and to me.
I am a writer. I would like you to write a brief essay of
around 300 words in which you introduce yourself as a writer to your classmates
and me.
How would you describe yourself as a
writer? What are some of your most memorable
experiences with writing?
Please draw on your experiences with
writing and refer directly to some of these as you introduce yourself as a
writer.
This assignment is really important
because it helps you reflect on your writing, and when you reflect on your
writing you are able to make more deliberate choices about your writing.
Also, introducing yourself as a writer to your classmates and to me will help
cultivate conversations about writing with one another.
I'm really interested and excited to see what kinds of writing experiences you've
had and how they differ across different ages and people and places that we live
and experiences that we've had.
Since we are all writers, we also want to
approach writing projects not only by thinking about what the purpose is, which
we just talked about, but also about how we should approach a project.
And so for this, we're going to do a timeline in order to generate ideas for
how you're going to write your 300 word essay.
So please find something to write on and something to write with, and draw a
horizontal line like this.
And on this timeline, I'm going to ask you to spend ten minutes writing down
everything you can think about in your history as a writer.
Both school-based experiences, personal experiences, moments that were positive,
moments that were very disappointing for you.
Perhaps times when writing accomplishes something for you, where it got you some
kind of benefit in your life, or where it maybe harmed you in some way.
You can include any kind, or maybe it got you into a little bit of trouble of some
kind, so everything that you can think about with your history as a writer.
So one of my earliest memories, I'm going to, you're going to see that I'm not a
person who can draw.
Is I went to camp and I had ice cream scented stationery and I wrote letters
back to my family while I was at camp, and I very much remember that.
And she criticized my handwriting, which, maybe you're criticizing my handwriting
now too because I really don't have that good of handwriting,
but anyways I felt
like writing was all about handwriting and she kind of decreased my enthusiasm for
writing.
And I worked so hard on it, and I loved it.
And then my teacher responded to it and just wrote, just wrote bravo on the top.
And I had spent like 10 hours, and I was, it was good, I got an A and it was bravo,
but you know, something, I wanted a little more, I felt like.
For many years I think I worked more alone on writing projects and now I'm
deliberating seeking out people to write with, and that's been new and different
and fun for me, and I also spend a lot of time writing in relation to my children,
so my kids.
I write notes to their teachers, I write
texts to parents to arrange times for them to get together, so I'd, I write a lot.
So now we're on a blank screen again, because it's time for you to take ten
minutes to write your timeline.
Again, think about all the various vast
experiences you have with writing, and do spend a full ten minutes so you can give
yourself time to think about all of your experiences.
If you don't have very much on your
timeline, go ahead and spend a little bit more time thinking about what you can add
to your timeline.
The next phase of our approach to writing
your essay is going to be to work with your timeline to decide which aspects you
want to draw on and which you want to leave for another occasion.
Probably with a 300 word essay you can't write about every aspect of you as a
writer, so your going to think about how you can organize that information.