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Your first draft of Essay One is due next Tuesday. I describe your task—to take Odell’s approach in writing about something that matters to you—in the Essay One assignment. But let me say a few words here about what it means to write a “draft” of an essay—a version of a piece that you know you will go on to develop and revise.
A draft is an open and approximate version of the piece you want to write. It is not simply a set of notes, or an intro, or an outline, or ideas toward an essay. Rather, it is an attempt to write the actual thing, the piece itself, even while knowing that you are not quite yet in a position to write that thing, that you still have more work to do. An analogy might be to a sketch or study that an artist makes of a painting, or a demo that a musician makes of a song. The attempt in each case is to offer a sense of what the final version might look or sound like—even if all the details haven’t been worked out or filled in, and even if key parts of the piece are still open to change. I’m a little hesitant to use the metaphor of a rough draft, since I don’t mean to suggest something hastily or sloppily done, but in a sense that is what you want to do—to rough out your essay, put together an approximate version of it as a whole. The next step is to get feedback from readers. You’ll do this in this two steps.
The first step will be to talk about your work with me, one-on-one, for about 15 minutes. We’ll do this on Zoom, sometime between Tues, 9/29, and Fri, 10/02. This will be the moment when you get my sense of what is most promising about your piece, and what you need to work on next. (I won’t make separate written comments on your draft.)
There is an ambiguity to this moment. On the one hand, you need to bring a serious and considered draft to your conference with me. Otherwise you will fall behind in your work and waste your time and mine. On the other hand, you need to be open to making real changes to your writing. The paradox of drafting is that you have to work hard to get a piece right, while still being ready to add, rethink, and sometimes discard large parts of it. So you’ll want to come to your conference ready to think about how you may want to add to or change what you’ve written.
I’ll then ask you to use my feedback to write a second draft of your essay (due on Tues, 10/06). You’ll then discuss that version in a a writing workshop—a small group of writers who trade drafts and offer one another advice about their work in progress. (See the Workshops page for more details.) And then, I’ll ask you to produce a third and final draft of your essay, which will receive a letter grade. I will feel, at that point, that my standards for grading your work can be quite high.
In practical terms, for next Tuesday, I’d like you to aim for a draft that is at least 1,200 words long. Feel free to build on any of the pieces you’ve written for this course—it’s your work—but don’t just cut and paste, use those pieces as the start of a new essay. Don’t worry if you write more than 1,200 words, but anything less will put you behind in your work.
Compose your essay in Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Be professional. Come up with a good title. Document your sources. Proofread. Use this formula to name your document: “First-Name Initial-of-Last-Name E1D1”. For example, I would name my document: “Joe H E1D1”.
Deadlines
- Tues, 9/29: 4:00 pm: Email me a carefully edited first draft of your Essay One.
- Tues, 9/29, through, Fri, 10/02: Meet with me on Zoom for 15 minutes to get feedback on your draft.
I will post a Doodle poll for conferences sometime in the next few days. I will make sure I’ve read and thought about your piece before we talk about it. So if you’re confident that you can turn in your piece a bit early, on Monday, then sign up for a Tuesday conference. It will give you more time to prepare your second draft.
E110: Seminar in Composition 