Welcome to Nonfiction Writing

Welcome to Nonfiction Writing! This blog will serve as the primary portal through which you will access and peruse one another's blogs. I will make all class materials available here for viewing or download, and I will post all in-class prompts and other activities.

The general Course Description and the first installment of the Syllabus (which takes us through the first essay) are available, as is this general overview of the Blog assignment. You can access the general guidelines for the Writer's Notebook here.

For Thursday, August 17's in-class writing, the following prompt was given:

Write about a time you realized that you loved something you thought you hated. Or a time you realized that you hated something you thought you loved.

For Friday, August 18's reading of "Split at the Root," by Adrienne Rich, you had a choice between two prompts:

Have you ever "flirted with identity"? How, and with what result? (See p. 645 of Rich for her reference to "flirting with identity.")

Have you ever felt, or do you feel, "split at the root"? How? And how have you or are you dealing with this, if at all? (And if not, reflect on that.)

For Monday, August 21 (Peter Selgin, "Confessions of a Left-Handed Man"), those of us who were not in the Path of Totality responded to the following prompt:

If you have a sibling: How has your relationship with your sibling (or siblings, or one particular sibling) affected your sense of your self and/or the shape of your life? Do you thing you define yourself in relation to or in contrast to your sibling(s), and if so, has that been more positive or negative, or a complicated mix of positive and negative? 

If you don't have a sibling: How has being an "only child" shaped your sense of yourself and/or the way others seem to see you? (And, possibly, how do you feel about the phrase "only child"?) In what ways do you like being the only kid in your family, and do you ever wish you had siblings?

And that pretty much brings us up to speed. Please note that since you didn't yet have the Writer's Notebook guidelines, you aren't required to answer these soon-to-be routine prompts for the Rich essay (Friday, 8/18). These prompts should become Standard Operating Procedure as the starting point for notebook entries, beginning with Monday's reading of the Selgin essay.