Here are a collection of ideas for prompts to get you writing (or drawing or doodling or list-making). We will do some of these in class, but feel free to look over and try some of them on your own. Once you pick a prompt, give yourself ten minutes or so and try to do some freewriting. For another prompt maybe try to make a list of details. If you haven’t done clustering before, try that out. If there are other topics that you’re itching to write about, go right ahead.

* Click here for a short essay by Sherry Simpson in Brevity that gives a little exercise that invites you to think/write about what you are an expert at; remember to consider things you mastered as a child. (The Craft essays in Brevity might also give you some inspiration, as might a general browse through their current or past issues.)
* Write about something that you collect: a general class of things which you have found, made, or purchased specimens of (CDs or DVDs, ticket stubs, notes from friends, rocks, baseball cards, teacups, shoes, shades of lipstick, books, photographs, autographs, friends on facebook, whatever). You might write about a few of yr favorites, how and why you started collecting these things, how you judge whether or not to add something to yr collection, how you store yr collection, what all of this reveals about who you are.
* evocative object (in the practical version: useful tool): Think about the objects you have values and tools you have used in your life. (My show-and-tell examples may have included my slide rule, my block plane, and my great-grandmother’s pastry wheel.) Consider the activities you do that require or produce objects: gardening, cooking, sewing, and other household activities, carpentry and auto repair, hobbies and sports of various sorts. Make a list or do some free-writing. Pick an object that tugs at you, catches your interest. It may not be the most important object in your life, but somehow it opens a window on some event or person or theme that seems worth thinking and writing about. Collect some details about the object. Pull it out of the drawer or garage (or wherever you keep it) and look it over. Describe it. Where did it come from? How did you learn to use it? What person do you associate with it? What events? Can you remember something that happened in which it played a featured role? How has your use or appreciation of it changed and evolved over time?

* transitional scene: List times in your life of transition, change, times of endings and beginnings. This may be in term of where you live, work, or go to school, or changes in family relationships or social connections, some deliberate change of image/identity, some recognition of psychological issue or disability or abuse problem. Rewind the reality film of your life to find one scene that best captures this time of transition. Try to restrict yourself to one relatively short period of time (a few hours maybe or even shorter). Try to imagine yourself back to that scene, and write about what you see, hear, what the place looks like, what other people (if any) are there and what they do/say.
*

significant person: Write about someone who has influenced your life in some important way. (I suggest that you stay away from writing about romantic relationships unless you have some fresh perspective or interesting twist beyond the usual.) Show this person in action. Let us see and hear him/her. Focus more on making the person come to life on the page, rather than going on and on in the abstract about how you feel about him/her. You might want to respnd to these more specific prompts:

1. describe this person’s physical appearance (including clothing, way of moving);
2. describe this person’s most significant personal space (what details reveal things about this person’s character?);
3. what lessons have you learned from this person (not necessarily positive), or how has he/she shaped who you are or were?;
4. list five character traits of this person and an example of evidence (something he/she said or did) for each;
5. listen to the sound of this person’s voice in your head and write down what he/she is saying;
6. in the reality show of this person’s life, what clip of film would best capture who this person is

Here are some shorter ones adapted from Natalie Goldberg’s recent book Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir:

* Pick a color (or a smell or taste or texture or sound), and list memories connected to that sensory image.
* Write about a time when you washed the dishes or performed another household chore.
* Write about the end of a relationship (not necessarily a romantic breakup).
* Write about doughnuts or ice cream or pancakes or peanuts.
* What would be the theme song of your life? Why?
* List the things you can’t live without. The things you can’t forgive. The things you can’t forget.
* Write about two places (or people or things) that pull you in different directions.
* What did you learn from your father (or mother or grandparent–pick a relative)? Remember hat not all lessons are positive, and some are learned by example not instruction.

The site This I Believe contains many thousands of essays written by people to explain how they came to believe certain things (some important and some, at least at first glance, not so important). The browse by theme section gives a good way to find some ideas you might be interested in. Spend a little time reading some essays and jot down any ideas you get for your own essays. Pick one and write for ten minutes.

NOTE: For morning class, this is due Tues. 2/2 and for afternoon class Thursday 2/4.

Please print out and read the following two short personal essays:

• “Killing Chickens” by Meredith Hall (To get a more readable copy, once you get to that page, click on the link to the right where you can download the pdf file);
• “The Uses of Muscle” by Scott Russell Sanders

Read with a pen, marking any of the following sorts of things that you notice:

• any particularly sharp images or details that catch yr attention
• any resonant lines (that is, lines that seem especially important, that focus the piece in some way)
• any word choices (specific nouns, concrete adjs., vivid active verbs) you admire
• any other “writerly moves” (clever transitions, for example) that you notice

BRING YOUR MARKED UP COPIES OF THE ESSAYS TO CLASS!!!

In addition, browsing through Brevity would be a great way to get a sense of the enormous variety of subjects covered in personal essays and also an appreciation for just how much a writer can convey in 750 words (the maximum length of the essays published there). Note that there’s a link on the left of Brevity homepage to past issues.

Finally, a bit of inspiration from an interview with Meredith Hall:

Actually, I think a couple things are going on. One is there are moments in my life, not large events so much as very distinct moments, that tug at my memory and tug at my desire to put all the pieces of the puzzle together and understand. But, mostly, as a writer they catch my attention. I know they’re big moments; I know they’re moments that are waiting to be exploded into a larger understanding, and I can’t do that in my head so I end up doing it on paper. But I’m very aware that they hold some potential for a discovery beyond the moment itself.[...]

So I think probably all of them, those obsessive images, I suspect, for each of us, are about difficulties in our lives. They get hazy in our memory of happiness or times we are at peace in our lives. And these images are jarring to us because we’re not yet at peace with them. I think writing is a way, in part, to come to terms with them.

If you missed the in-class “classmate snaphot” exercise and assignment, here’s the original version. (If you didn’t get a chance to interview a classmate, please adapt the assignment to write a paragraph descriptive snapshot about yourself.)

Classmate snapshot (original version). Pick a representative moment in yr life, a tiny slice no more than a minute or two that captures some aspect of yr life or personality that you’d like to share. Maybe you were driving through Dunkin Donuts this morning for yr daily French vanilla iced coffee, singing along to whoever-it-is on yr car stereo, as you drove up to the window momentarily embarrassed at the mound of crumpled McDonald’s bags on the floor of yr car. Maybe you were sitting on yr new overstuffed couch at 2 am, watching Casablanca for the thirty-eighth time, with a tub of pistachio ice cream on yr lap. Maybe you were standing at the kitchen stove trying to cook, with yr two-year-old clinging to yr knees and yr preschoolers tearing lettuce at the kitchen table. (Contrary to my own obsessions, food need not be involved.) Maybe you were at work. What were you doing? Who else was there? What do yr surroundings look like? Or maybe you’re involved in one of yr many hobbies. Imagine this moment as a snapshot (or a very short clip of film).

Now pair up with another student. Introduce yourselves. Each of you must interview the other, asking about his/her snapshot moment. If the snapshot is not clear in yr mind, ask questions to sharpen the picture. Take notes. Remember the tools of the fiction writer: setting, character, action, dialogue (a line or two can “snap” a character into life). For homework, write one paragraph that gives the reader this snapshot of yr classmate in words. (If you get home and find that yr paragraph is thin and skimpy, make something up.) Then post your paragraph as a comment below.

Sorry not to have gotten this up earlier! (I got sidetracked filling out a couple of FAFSA forms, which wiped my brain clear.)

Your assignment for Thursday’s class is to write a short writer’s autobiography (emphasis on writer, not where you were born and how many dozen cats you have).

Here’s a description from a previous semester: Please write 1 page or so (or more, if you’re on a roll) that explains something about your history as a reader and/or writer. (Traditionally these are referred to as literacy narratives.) You may approach this in any way you like, focusing on a single pivotal experience or a series of experiences as your literacy has developed, or perhaps on a person or several people important in fostering (or obstructing) your progress. You might describe the three or four most important pieces of writing you’ve done over the past few years (or your lifetime as a writer). Or you may want to consider where you are as a writer/reader starting out your college career and what you hope to accomplish in this lass. Here’s an example from my blog that talks about my history as a reader. I’d prefer to have these typed, but hand-written is acceptable. They can be hard copy you turn in during class or you may email to me if you don’t have a printer.

Here are some sample arguments that argue against convention, as Essay 5 asks you to do:

“Better to give nothing”

“Distracting Miss Daisy”

“Learning from slums”

For each article, write down (on paper to turn in) the following:

• the conventional view that the author questions/challenges (one sentence)
• the main claim made by the author, in one sentence (you can copy out thesis statement if you find one)
• the main reasons/evidence used to support that claim (bullet-pointed list)

Just a reminder: text wrestling essays were due at the end of this week (Thursday for afternoon classes; Friday for morning classes). Even if you are not quite finished, turn these in to avoid any more substantial late penalties. (I will grade and you can revise if you’re not happy with grade.)

“Essay” 4 (annotation project) is due by Wed. before Thanksgiving at midnight via email (or hand in paper copy at last class or in my mailbox). I’ve been very disappointed at how slow most of you have been to get going with this research project; I had hoped to see Works Cited page plus a para. or two from everyone by the end of this past week. If you manage to get this much done sometime this weekend or Monday, please feel free to send to e via email or post on yr blog (and send me email letting me know you’ve added a post).

We still have one more essay to do after Thanksgiving. I will post assignment this weekend, and we’ll talk about it next week.

Here are summaries by yr colleagues:

Sam

Amanda (please post yr summary on blog!)

Kevin

I’d say that this was one of the hardest articles because, although it’s relatively short, it is packed with information (and maybe information that’s unfamiliar to many of you). The first thing to do is identify his main purpose/claim: what does he say about agriculture? He seems critical of it, from its beginnings 10,000 years ago right up until farming practices today. What are his reasons?

Look at the main parts of the article. First he talks about the food chain, and how plants with chlorophyll are the only living things that can convert he sun’s energy into usable form. He then talks about the development of agriculture from its beginnings, though the spread of grains from cradles of civilization westward, to the Green Revolution in the 1960s and modern-day agriculture. Think about the title–how is oil involved in all this? Finally he talks about politics and ethics of eating. (You fill in the details–not all of them, just the structure of his reasoning.)

As for a response, think about how convincing he is. What are the implications of what he is saying? What is your own view of how we should eat? In your history classes here at BCC or in high school, what did you learn about agriculture and the beginning of civilization? Most views are that the development of agriculture is what allowed people to settle down so that civilization could develop; Manning does not seem to agree. Can you reconcile these views, or do you agree with one or the other?

Here are summaries done by yr colleagues:

• Kristen
• Samantha
• Cecily
• Manny
• Melissa

As I wrote on many of yr papers, I think this is not primarily a personal essay about Ehrenreich’s own experience but rather a sharp critique about the “pink ribbon” culture of breast cancer (why is it precisely that she has such disdain for this sentimentality?) . She writes about the the impersonality of many medical professionals, the corporate connection, the complicated role feminists have played in breast cancer battles, the not-so-reliable diagnostic methods the toxic treatments that don’t provide a cure, the cult of the survivor and how it demeans those who have died from cancer. There is an awful lot of material here of general importance beyond what happened to Ehrenreich herself. Again, as I suggested many times in class, try to jot down the most important info you find here and figure out a way to group them together into paragraphs that make sense, remembering to use topic sentences that establish main ideas and help reader see the structure of yr summary. It’s a real challenge with this one, I think. (You may go a bit over the 400-500 word guideline if you feel it’s necessary in order to cover all the main points.)

Responses may be personal certainly, or you may want to challenge Ehrenreich’s claims by emphasizing the importance of positive thinking in dealing with illness (or other difficulties in life). I was interested in how she used humor and other tonal elements to make her sharp critiques more acceptable (maybe) to a resistant audience. Feel free to add comments here, or to carry on a discussion about what you understood the article to be about.

Here are links to summaries by other students:

• Samantha
• Jared
• Tonya
• Melinda
• Sara

Most of you did a pretty good job of picking out at least some of the main ideas here (though not everyone identified what Rosen’s main claim seems to be–what is the main claim or question she raises about cell phone use? Look at the usual place for thesis statements: at the end of the beginning section of article). What many of you need to do, though, is to group these details into paragraphs that make sense (for example, the reasons people cite for using cell phones; the psychological effects of cell phones; the negative effects of cell phones). Your grouping may not be identical to this, but you should have three or four or five “chunks” of info to make up 3, 4, or 5 paragraphs. Remember to use topic sentences to help yr reader see the organization of yr summary. Try to keep yr writing concise (avoiding repetition and unnecessary detail), so that you can pack in as much content as possible.

Responses should be fairly easy here. You may write about yr own experiences using cell phones, or write a “mini-ethnography” about what you observe about the cell phone use of others (that would be my choice–I’ve been paying lots of attention to cell phone use, even in the classes I teach, which is a level of discourtesy I find stunning). You may want to evaluate her argument, or propose some solution or rebuttal to the problems she identifies. (To what extent is this a generational thing, with only the older generation raising these out-of-touch objections?)

Here are links to the summaries written by yr colleagues:

• Gene
• Lauren
• Lindsay
• Kaylin

This was one of the more difficult articles because, although the content is fairly accessible, there are a lot of words here, making it somewhat unwieldy to summarize. Many people seemed to overemphasize the Julia Child info, which made it difficult to include the full range of other ideas Pollan includes. Also, many people seemed to have difficulty in controlling and organizing their summaries, so that they read more like lists of individual details. In revision focus on identifying the chunks of information in the text, which should be reflected in yr paragraphing. For example, if  I were writing the summary, I might include the following paras: a contrast of Julia child and modern-day Food Network shows; the causes of decline in cooking in the home; the reasons people find food shows appealing; the anthropology of cooking (man as “cooking animal); and the effects of decrease in cooking. This is not the only way to organize info, but you need some such structure to control ideas so that yr reader can easily follow.

Response should be fairly straightforward with this one, I’d think. The most obvious way to respond would be to talk about yr own cooking issues, or maybe to write about food shows…You might also evaluate Pollan’s argument, or challenge or extend it.