Sunday, April 8, 2007

composing essays

As we were different essays to write about, I was able to compose my essays by taking several steps. First I would write down different topics that I would consider writing about. For example, for the personal essay wrote out ideas that I would like to share about my life through writing. Some of my possible topics were growing up living with my grandparents, my parents divorce and how it seperately effected me and each of my sisters, playing softball every summer until I was sixteen, and my sister's wedding. After I wrote all of my possible topics down I took the ones out that I thought I remembered the most about and would be able to convey through writing. I took those few choices and wrote down main topics that I would want to include in my essay. After that I just picked the topic that I wanted to write about the most.

I was able to choose my focus for my essays by thinking about what I wanted the reader to get out of my writing. After I decided what I wanted to outcome of my piece to be, I would just write the events that happened. When I wrote my personal essay I wanted people to understand the fact that I had so much fun growing up with my sisters, and that I missed those times. Every other section in my essay was about my sisters wedding, and then about growing up with my sisters. My overall feeling of the essay was for readers to understand that I am happy that things have turned out so well, but I also miss the old times. I was glad that I got the chance to write about this topic because I did have personal journal entries about my sisters wedding, and this was a way for me to expalin my feelings to other people. I wanted everyone who experianced the child's or siblings wedding to be able to relate to my feelings.

1 comment:

S. Chandler said...

This is good description of your invention process, but what about your revising process. That is when writing gets interesting! The wedding essay was not the essay that you revised - the memoir was - the one about learning to surf. So how did you brainstorm that one? How did you find your focus? How did you work on it as you revised? Do you have some of the same things to say that Pope said - about learning to listen to what the essay was saying? To let the essay show you what it was about?