NOTE: SORRY, I HAD TO CANCEL TODAY’S OFFICE HOURS DUE TO A MEETING CONFLICT!–Email any questions.

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Hi Class,

Thank you so much for attending the conferences. I hope that you found them helpful. If you were not able to attend your session, please send me an email, and we can set one up. And there’s always my office hours.

 

For Monday:

  1. Read the Unit 3 instructions carefully (Assignments menu tab)
  2. 20-minute freewriting session: Select between 2-4 questions from the Unit 3 Reflection Essay instructions that speak to you and what you have learned this semester. Then freewrite about these questions for a single 20-minute session. Try to spend several minutes on each question. Come to class on Monday prepared to read your freewrite. You may edit your freewrite as this will be direct fuel for the Reflection Essay.
  3. 5-minute freewriting session: Read the writing/revision quotes below and select your favorite one or two. Then freewrite on the quote(s) for 5 minutes. The result of this freewrite might be very useful for your Reflection Essay. In fact, I think it is a great idea to use a quote in your Reflection Essay. It might by helpful in either the intro or the conclusion. Be prepared to read your freewrite on Monday. Please edit or revise the freewrite as you see fit.
  4. OPTIONAL: If you want to get a head start revising your Intellectual Home essay (Unit 1) or your Annotated Bibliography (Unit 2), then you should look at the Revision Documentation Guides in the Readings menu tab. We will examine them on Monday.

 

Quotes on writing and revising:

1–Learn to enjoy this tidying process. I don’t like to write; I like to have written. But I love to rewrite. I especially like to cut: to press the DELETE key and see an unnecessary word or phrase or sentence vanish into the electricity. I like to replace a humdrum word with one that has more precision or color. I like to strengthen the transition between one sentence and another. I like to rephrase a drab sentence to give it a more pleasing rhythm or a more graceful musical line. With every small refinement I feel that I’m coming nearer to where I would like to arrive, and when I finally get there I know it was the rewriting, not the writing, that won the game.

—William Zinsser

 

The first draft is black and white. Editing gives the story color.

—Emma Hill

 

 A good editor doesn’t rewrite words, she rewires synapses.

–S. Kelley Harrell

 

Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear.

–Patricia Fuller

 

 There’s no page of prose in existence that its author can’t improve after it’s been in a drawer for a week. The same is true on the macro level – every time I finish a story or a book, I try to put it away and forget it for as long as I can. When I return, its problems are often so obvious and easy to fix that I’m amazed I ever struggled with them.

—Charles Finch

 

“I’ve found the best way to revise your own work is to pretend that somebody else wrote it and then to rip the living shit out of it.”

― Don Roff

 

“Nothing is ever so good that it can’t stand a little revision, and nothing is ever so impossible and broken down that a try at fixing it is out of the question.”

― Rebecca Solnit

 

 

Best,

Prof. Scanlan