WORKSHOPPING (sample letters to writers) ENGL489 Advanced Portfolio Workshop
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Need to be in touch with me?
LEE TORDA 310 Tillinghast Hall Bridgewater State University 508.531.2436 [email protected] www.leetorda.com |
Spring 2016 Office Hours: W 2:00-3:00 R 1:00-2:00 Fridays 11:00 to 12:00 (noon) and by appointment Need to make an appointment? Click here: https://goo.gl/3CqLfo |
Obie Wan--
Sometimes I have students in my writing classes who sit in class and never say a word. And they often do this because they imagine that they have a talent that can not be caged by a class with other undergraduates and me at the helm. And I will admit that I had pegged you as this student. But, reading your essay, you do have the talent to back up your silence and, further, your own reflection on your writing was heartening. You seem to want to get out of this experience what you can in terms of your writing. So all that’s good. I’m happy to be wrong in my assumptions there. I like this essay a lot and I’ve been thinking a lot about what you say at the end about this being a part of a longer piece. Perhaps you should think about writing more of this longer piece for this class. As a stand alone essay, I think that it has some parts really working for it. Your voice, for one. The truth of your experience for another. You have a great opening. I like it better than what you rewrote on the back. But there are parts that I feel like might be underdeveloped and parts that are more leisurely than I think the essay can stand if it is standing alone. Let me address those points. First, you may resist talking about combat in more concrete ways that you do, but you might. I read an inclass writing about you being an expert at surgeries that was very nice writing and might work here to identify the sort of vital/hateful experience of combat you talk about here. Secondly, your brother is in need of development. We only see him twice in the essay. We have no sense of what combat did to him—though it seems to have sent him in a different direction. And, most significant to me, when he shows back up at the end of the essay I feel like I forgot him. I’m unprepared for what you say there—which is that you won’t risk him. That’s a good point in an essay like this—a realization that there are things to fight for and things not to fight about. But we need to see how you care about this brother differently and more than the vital feeling of combat. Also, because this is a stand alone piece, I don’t think you can spend so much time describing the set up of the almost fight. It starts to feel a bit repetitive and I don’t know that you need it all. We get the point. You really are an excellent writer and an excellent albeit grumpy reader of all texts. I wish but do not require that you contributed some more of your good brain to class. I look forward to the revision.
Han--
I was supremely charmed by a lot of this essay. I think that it is at this precarious and exciting moment where it has several ways it can go, and I want to capitalize on that. It is setting up at this moment, and before it firms up completely, I have some questions that, I hope, will set you in one direction or another. My first question is connected to one of my favorite moments in the essay—your opening of the many summer camps you’ve attended. I would like to know why you went to so many summer camps. And I just don’t want to know because I want to know (though I do), I want to know because I think you can connect it to sort of what I think is your larger issue in the essay—wanting to sort of figure out who you can be in the world, to be something and be a something that people notice and like. Summer camps were like trying out hats. Also, I would very much push you to develop the bit you make of your name, Bligh, and Mutiny on the Bounty. That kind of intertextuality is very smart and rich, and, again, I think it can help you make this larger point of wanting to enjoy a particular kind of fame. I wondered about why you keep talking about remembering and about not being sure you can remember. It feels purposeful and like it connects to the essay you use it so much, but then it doesn’t really go anywhere. You might revise that out. In keeping with what I say earlier about wanting to enjoy a certain kind of fame, you might develop the mock trial court camp story some more. I like the idea of a 7 year old defense attorney in the tradition of those flamboyant lawyers like Johnny Cochran and the people that defended OJ. I think you can really play with that. I think the scene with the ripping off the paper reads too long and can be edited down a bit. And I think that you need to beef up a bit on your telling here—what it meant to be known as the boy who ruined the drawing wall. Your last two sentences are great, though, and, whatever you do, don’t change them. I love this essay. Love it. Can’t wait to see a revision.
Daisy--
There is a lot to like in this essay. You wonder about your motif of “I remember,” And I will admit that I don’t know that I thought it would work, but as I read I found it exactly right and appropriate. I feel like you’ve done a very good job of capturing this moment, this place, these people. I love a lot of the writing, a lot of the scenes. Seriously, really nice writing. I think that what is under developed is what happens near the end of the paper. You talk about being, essentially forced out of your house by the state and how everything has changed. But you rush through it and then we are at the end of the essay and it remains only a nostalgic look back and not commentary on anything else. I agree that you create this opening paragraph—which I like reading, by the way—that does not really match the rest of your paper. But I do think that there is more to this story than just a nice reminiscence. I think that there is something in this idea that it is important to remember so you can move on. I am intrigued by this idea and want to better understand it—I want you to write things that will allow me to puzzle through the idea and better understand it. So I think I’m asking you to theorize. Maybe it happens in an opening paragraph, but I don’t know that it has too. I think that if you develop a bit more the story of being forced to move—how that made everyone feel, that kind of loss. And then I think if you develop a place to talk about recovering from it—remembering in order to move on—how remembering the past helps us to create a future—I think you’ll have a really powerful essay on your hands. I look forward to the revision.
Violet--
Violet you are a remarkably nice, kind soul. You love Disneyland! You work with kids! I never use exclamation points because, in part, I am grumpy, and, also, I don’t like it when punctuation carries the weight of emotion in a piece of writing, but your sheer enthusiasm for this place requires that I pull out all the stops and use those exclamations. I want to applaud you on your good reading the day the paper was due. More than any other person you really made an effort to improve the way the paper read. My concern for this paper remains the concern I had the first time I read it: it reads like a postcard about a trip to Disneyland. I don’t see what it is you want me to understand about this place—why is it magical? Why does it bring out the children in us? I’m going to tell you, I think this is a tough essay to write without sounding like a cliché or a greeting card, but that is your struggle. You’ve got to bring substance to this essay, a real issue or idea to grapple with. I don’t need a blow by blow of the trip, I need to understand the value of such a trip. I see a series of sentences in the opening paragraph that attempts, I think, to develop some of this, but they are the only place they are mentioned and they don’t do much to shape the essay. Further, one thing you still need to work on (though it is better in this draft), is that you have to stop saying something was cool or nice or interesting. You need to describe the scene, give us a reason to know without you saying that something was cook or nice or interesting. I have great faith in you Violet. I look forward to you meeting this challenge I’ve laid out for you in a revision. Go to it. I am rooting harder for you than Mickey Mouse himself would. No lie.
Juniper--
I really, really like this draft. I like a lot of your language and I like the general arc of the piece. In a revision, I would like to see you beef this up with some scenes, with a bit more explanation in places, and, most of all, a general understanding of why you returned to the guitar. You’ll note in the piece where I’m looking for you to develop your narrative more forcefully with a scene that can show me what you are here only telling me. Connected to this, there are some places in the text where you say some pretty intense or interesting stuff, but you really don’t do anything with it. I think it is important to your essay that you explore some of these meditations a little more deeply—that’s the idea behind writing essays (typically I write “develop” next to the section where I’d like to see more). One of your readers wrote about wanting to know more about your Uncle, and I am curious about that too. The way you position him in the essay, he seems important in why you returned to guitar and not just that he taught you guitar, and yet that connection is tenuous and not understood. So either he is or he isn’t important, but write him in such a way that we know and are not guessing. And that leads to my final point, which is that beyond wanting to feel calloused hands again, I’d like to have some sense of why you picked the guitar up again. What is the value of that in your life? I like the idea of noise within you—love it in fact—and I feel like if you develop that thematically in the paper, it will help make this piece more complete. I very much look forward to the revision.
Sometimes I have students in my writing classes who sit in class and never say a word. And they often do this because they imagine that they have a talent that can not be caged by a class with other undergraduates and me at the helm. And I will admit that I had pegged you as this student. But, reading your essay, you do have the talent to back up your silence and, further, your own reflection on your writing was heartening. You seem to want to get out of this experience what you can in terms of your writing. So all that’s good. I’m happy to be wrong in my assumptions there. I like this essay a lot and I’ve been thinking a lot about what you say at the end about this being a part of a longer piece. Perhaps you should think about writing more of this longer piece for this class. As a stand alone essay, I think that it has some parts really working for it. Your voice, for one. The truth of your experience for another. You have a great opening. I like it better than what you rewrote on the back. But there are parts that I feel like might be underdeveloped and parts that are more leisurely than I think the essay can stand if it is standing alone. Let me address those points. First, you may resist talking about combat in more concrete ways that you do, but you might. I read an inclass writing about you being an expert at surgeries that was very nice writing and might work here to identify the sort of vital/hateful experience of combat you talk about here. Secondly, your brother is in need of development. We only see him twice in the essay. We have no sense of what combat did to him—though it seems to have sent him in a different direction. And, most significant to me, when he shows back up at the end of the essay I feel like I forgot him. I’m unprepared for what you say there—which is that you won’t risk him. That’s a good point in an essay like this—a realization that there are things to fight for and things not to fight about. But we need to see how you care about this brother differently and more than the vital feeling of combat. Also, because this is a stand alone piece, I don’t think you can spend so much time describing the set up of the almost fight. It starts to feel a bit repetitive and I don’t know that you need it all. We get the point. You really are an excellent writer and an excellent albeit grumpy reader of all texts. I wish but do not require that you contributed some more of your good brain to class. I look forward to the revision.
Han--
I was supremely charmed by a lot of this essay. I think that it is at this precarious and exciting moment where it has several ways it can go, and I want to capitalize on that. It is setting up at this moment, and before it firms up completely, I have some questions that, I hope, will set you in one direction or another. My first question is connected to one of my favorite moments in the essay—your opening of the many summer camps you’ve attended. I would like to know why you went to so many summer camps. And I just don’t want to know because I want to know (though I do), I want to know because I think you can connect it to sort of what I think is your larger issue in the essay—wanting to sort of figure out who you can be in the world, to be something and be a something that people notice and like. Summer camps were like trying out hats. Also, I would very much push you to develop the bit you make of your name, Bligh, and Mutiny on the Bounty. That kind of intertextuality is very smart and rich, and, again, I think it can help you make this larger point of wanting to enjoy a particular kind of fame. I wondered about why you keep talking about remembering and about not being sure you can remember. It feels purposeful and like it connects to the essay you use it so much, but then it doesn’t really go anywhere. You might revise that out. In keeping with what I say earlier about wanting to enjoy a certain kind of fame, you might develop the mock trial court camp story some more. I like the idea of a 7 year old defense attorney in the tradition of those flamboyant lawyers like Johnny Cochran and the people that defended OJ. I think you can really play with that. I think the scene with the ripping off the paper reads too long and can be edited down a bit. And I think that you need to beef up a bit on your telling here—what it meant to be known as the boy who ruined the drawing wall. Your last two sentences are great, though, and, whatever you do, don’t change them. I love this essay. Love it. Can’t wait to see a revision.
Daisy--
There is a lot to like in this essay. You wonder about your motif of “I remember,” And I will admit that I don’t know that I thought it would work, but as I read I found it exactly right and appropriate. I feel like you’ve done a very good job of capturing this moment, this place, these people. I love a lot of the writing, a lot of the scenes. Seriously, really nice writing. I think that what is under developed is what happens near the end of the paper. You talk about being, essentially forced out of your house by the state and how everything has changed. But you rush through it and then we are at the end of the essay and it remains only a nostalgic look back and not commentary on anything else. I agree that you create this opening paragraph—which I like reading, by the way—that does not really match the rest of your paper. But I do think that there is more to this story than just a nice reminiscence. I think that there is something in this idea that it is important to remember so you can move on. I am intrigued by this idea and want to better understand it—I want you to write things that will allow me to puzzle through the idea and better understand it. So I think I’m asking you to theorize. Maybe it happens in an opening paragraph, but I don’t know that it has too. I think that if you develop a bit more the story of being forced to move—how that made everyone feel, that kind of loss. And then I think if you develop a place to talk about recovering from it—remembering in order to move on—how remembering the past helps us to create a future—I think you’ll have a really powerful essay on your hands. I look forward to the revision.
Violet--
Violet you are a remarkably nice, kind soul. You love Disneyland! You work with kids! I never use exclamation points because, in part, I am grumpy, and, also, I don’t like it when punctuation carries the weight of emotion in a piece of writing, but your sheer enthusiasm for this place requires that I pull out all the stops and use those exclamations. I want to applaud you on your good reading the day the paper was due. More than any other person you really made an effort to improve the way the paper read. My concern for this paper remains the concern I had the first time I read it: it reads like a postcard about a trip to Disneyland. I don’t see what it is you want me to understand about this place—why is it magical? Why does it bring out the children in us? I’m going to tell you, I think this is a tough essay to write without sounding like a cliché or a greeting card, but that is your struggle. You’ve got to bring substance to this essay, a real issue or idea to grapple with. I don’t need a blow by blow of the trip, I need to understand the value of such a trip. I see a series of sentences in the opening paragraph that attempts, I think, to develop some of this, but they are the only place they are mentioned and they don’t do much to shape the essay. Further, one thing you still need to work on (though it is better in this draft), is that you have to stop saying something was cool or nice or interesting. You need to describe the scene, give us a reason to know without you saying that something was cook or nice or interesting. I have great faith in you Violet. I look forward to you meeting this challenge I’ve laid out for you in a revision. Go to it. I am rooting harder for you than Mickey Mouse himself would. No lie.
Juniper--
I really, really like this draft. I like a lot of your language and I like the general arc of the piece. In a revision, I would like to see you beef this up with some scenes, with a bit more explanation in places, and, most of all, a general understanding of why you returned to the guitar. You’ll note in the piece where I’m looking for you to develop your narrative more forcefully with a scene that can show me what you are here only telling me. Connected to this, there are some places in the text where you say some pretty intense or interesting stuff, but you really don’t do anything with it. I think it is important to your essay that you explore some of these meditations a little more deeply—that’s the idea behind writing essays (typically I write “develop” next to the section where I’d like to see more). One of your readers wrote about wanting to know more about your Uncle, and I am curious about that too. The way you position him in the essay, he seems important in why you returned to guitar and not just that he taught you guitar, and yet that connection is tenuous and not understood. So either he is or he isn’t important, but write him in such a way that we know and are not guessing. And that leads to my final point, which is that beyond wanting to feel calloused hands again, I’d like to have some sense of why you picked the guitar up again. What is the value of that in your life? I like the idea of noise within you—love it in fact—and I feel like if you develop that thematically in the paper, it will help make this piece more complete. I very much look forward to the revision.