Rough Draft:
Dear Danielle,
My first semester at Delco is going better than I thought it would. I enjoy all of my classes which I didn’t think would happen coming into college. Though one in particular definitely stands out from the rest and that would be my English Composition class. As you already know I have always dreaded writing because I am terrible at remembering all the little rules. But this class is different. We don’t do the conventional five paragraph essays or projects like in high school. My professor has a different way of approaching writing then I have ever experienced before.
The first few days of class after learning names and playing a few games we started to make websites. On these websites we would put all of the work we would be doing in class. I of course loved this because it lets me use my creativity and makes writing a little more interesting. We started writing in blog posts on our website each week. We would discuss what happened in class and what happened outside of class in each post. Personally this was very nice because we weren’t focusing on the grammar in what we were writing we were focusing on the substance. Doing this also gave me a way of talking about Colleen and what she is going through. It gave me a way to talk about what was happening without telling someone and feeling uncomfortable because I am upsetting them.
Other than just doing blog posts we also were given readings to go through each week. This is to help us focus on our reading process. We tried different ways of remembering what we read such as writing a summary next to each paragraph or drawing a picture next to a section. I am more of a visual learner so drawing the pictures helped me the most. I could probably still tell you what I read based on those pictures. We also looked at different types of writing through the readings we were given. In particular we focused mainly on showing and telling scenes. The reading that helped me understand this the most was Everyone Knew I Was Gay, Except My Brother We also did a blog post where we described two different scenes using showing and telling. Once everyone had a firm grasp on the difference between showing and telling we moved on to looking at each of our writing processes. We did this while we began writing our Creative Nonfiction Essay so we could grasp what we do that helps or hurts our writing. We had many readings about writing process but the one that stood out to me the most was 6 Ways To Be A Hemingway-Level Productive Badass. In this reading it talks about the different steps in which Hemingway took to write. These steps were all listed and explained through the reading. We also did a blog post which mirrored Hemingway. We described the different steps we took in writing the first draft of our Creative Nonfiction Essay and described what didn’t. Before I pictured writing as this big daunting task where I didn’t even know where to start. Doing this blog post and breaking my writing down into steps made writing seem a lot less difficult. It also helped me figure out that handwriting outlines really helps to get my mind ready to write. And of course since I did procrastinate on finishing my draft it was a nice reminder that doing so is not a very good idea.
For the creative nonfiction essay we could either take a moment from the past month and describe it or talk about the entire month. For the past month the biggest thing going on was Colleen’s treatment so that is what I chose to write about. All of my blog posts were about her so it wasn’t very difficult to remember things to talk about. The only trouble I was having was with is the theme. Is the theme just cancer or the journey she went through to get better? I was just writing about what happened so I wasn’t quite sure and still am not. This makes me nervous because my professor said the theme is the most important thing in your writing. Of course it is. So as of right now I believe the theme is Colleen’s journey and that’s what I’m sticking with!
I really do enjoy everything we have been doing in this class so far and am looking forward to seeing what we do with the rest of the semester. I like it so much that I will most likely go back and even fix things in my midterm because I like what I am writing about. It isn’t just some boring topic that isn’t really important to me, it’s about my life. I hope you are doing well at Penn State and hopefully I’ll get to see you soon!
Sincerely,
Michelle King
My first semester at Delco is going better than I thought it would. I enjoy all of my classes which I didn’t think would happen coming into college. Though one in particular definitely stands out from the rest and that would be my English Composition class. As you already know I have always dreaded writing because I am terrible at remembering all the little rules. But this class is different. We don’t do the conventional five paragraph essays or projects like in high school. My professor has a different way of approaching writing then I have ever experienced before.
The first few days of class after learning names and playing a few games we started to make websites. On these websites we would put all of the work we would be doing in class. I of course loved this because it lets me use my creativity and makes writing a little more interesting. We started writing in blog posts on our website each week. We would discuss what happened in class and what happened outside of class in each post. Personally this was very nice because we weren’t focusing on the grammar in what we were writing we were focusing on the substance. Doing this also gave me a way of talking about Colleen and what she is going through. It gave me a way to talk about what was happening without telling someone and feeling uncomfortable because I am upsetting them.
Other than just doing blog posts we also were given readings to go through each week. This is to help us focus on our reading process. We tried different ways of remembering what we read such as writing a summary next to each paragraph or drawing a picture next to a section. I am more of a visual learner so drawing the pictures helped me the most. I could probably still tell you what I read based on those pictures. We also looked at different types of writing through the readings we were given. In particular we focused mainly on showing and telling scenes. The reading that helped me understand this the most was Everyone Knew I Was Gay, Except My Brother We also did a blog post where we described two different scenes using showing and telling. Once everyone had a firm grasp on the difference between showing and telling we moved on to looking at each of our writing processes. We did this while we began writing our Creative Nonfiction Essay so we could grasp what we do that helps or hurts our writing. We had many readings about writing process but the one that stood out to me the most was 6 Ways To Be A Hemingway-Level Productive Badass. In this reading it talks about the different steps in which Hemingway took to write. These steps were all listed and explained through the reading. We also did a blog post which mirrored Hemingway. We described the different steps we took in writing the first draft of our Creative Nonfiction Essay and described what didn’t. Before I pictured writing as this big daunting task where I didn’t even know where to start. Doing this blog post and breaking my writing down into steps made writing seem a lot less difficult. It also helped me figure out that handwriting outlines really helps to get my mind ready to write. And of course since I did procrastinate on finishing my draft it was a nice reminder that doing so is not a very good idea.
For the creative nonfiction essay we could either take a moment from the past month and describe it or talk about the entire month. For the past month the biggest thing going on was Colleen’s treatment so that is what I chose to write about. All of my blog posts were about her so it wasn’t very difficult to remember things to talk about. The only trouble I was having was with is the theme. Is the theme just cancer or the journey she went through to get better? I was just writing about what happened so I wasn’t quite sure and still am not. This makes me nervous because my professor said the theme is the most important thing in your writing. Of course it is. So as of right now I believe the theme is Colleen’s journey and that’s what I’m sticking with!
I really do enjoy everything we have been doing in this class so far and am looking forward to seeing what we do with the rest of the semester. I like it so much that I will most likely go back and even fix things in my midterm because I like what I am writing about. It isn’t just some boring topic that isn’t really important to me, it’s about my life. I hope you are doing well at Penn State and hopefully I’ll get to see you soon!
Sincerely,
Michelle King