Drafting Project #1

So far, you have begun drafting by writing some answers to our brainstorming questions about your education experiences and goals–or if you haven’t, go do that right now!

Then, since your answers aren’t yet a narrative or even a draft of a narrative, start cutting, reshaping, and revising your answers to a narrative into a draft. Add more. Cut more. Repeat.

We have lots of models of education narratives, and you can choose which to use as models! Here is a list of all of our readings for Project #1:

• Mike Bunn, “How to read like a Writer”
• José Olivarez, “Maybe I Could Save Myself By Writing”
• Anne Lamott, “Shitty First Drafts”
• Katherine Peach, “Marc Murphy Talks Chopped And How A Dyslexia Diagnosis Changed His Life – Exclusive Interview“–focus on the sections from “The real reason Marc Murphy became a chef” through “Marc Murphy reveals chefs don’t have it easy”
• Michael Caton, “Architecture Needs a Culture Shift“
• Ksenya Samarskaya, “Nontsikelelo Mutiti on Interrogating the Euro-centric Design Canon.”
• Frederick Douglass, “Chapter 7” from the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
• Malcolm X, “Learning to Read”Plato, The Republic, Book VII (“Allegory of the Cave”
• Toni Morrison, “The Reader as Artist”
• Jacqueline Woodson, “What Reading Slowly Taught Me About Writing”

Think about what your purpose is. Maybe it’s one of these:

• a success story
• a cautionary tale
• a tracing of a multipart journey
• a call to action
• something less than a call to action, but that identifies a larger issue.

Keep working on this draft. Aim to grow it to 1000 words, without padding or unnecessary repetition. Don’t be discouraged if you’re not yet at 1000 words. Remember that you need to include details, and you have great models in the narratives listed above if you need some guidance.

I recommend working on your draft in a Google Doc that you can share with me or with your classmates for peer review. In a comment below, paste in a link to your draft in Google Docs (please make sure the settings allow me and classmates to read and comment in it. We don’t need editor permissions). If you don’t want to work in Google Docs, please reach out to me so we can find a useful alternative.

Please also feel free to use the comments to add thoughts, ideas, encouragement to classmates, etc–in other words, let these comments also be an asynchronous shared space for you to help each other get your work done, like we talked about in class this week!

Please post your link by Monday morning, 10/4, so that there’s time to read your draft before class on Tuesday, 10/5.