Writing 9: Commenting on Drafts

Allen Ginsberg, typescript of “Howl”, 1954

By this point you should know what Workshop Group you are in and when it will meet. You should also have posted the second draft of your essay to the shared folder on Google Drive for your Workshop Group.

You have two more tasks to complete before participating in your workshop.

• Your first task is to read the drafts your classmates have posted and to write comments on them. Please follow the instructions at Commenting on Drafts.
• Your second task is to read the comments your group members have made on your draft, and to prepare a short list of questions you would like to ask the group about your piece. I will also ask you to select a 500-word section of your piece you’d like to read aloud at your workshop and get more feedback to. See Holding a Writing Workshop for more details.

Because each of you as a writer needs to read and think about the responses you get to your draft before the workshop, it is very important that readers post their comments by 10:00 am the day of the workshop. It will be even better if you can post them the evening before.

After your workshop, I will ask you to email me a memo in which you summarize the responses you got to your draft and outline your plans for revising it once more (this time for a letter grade). I will provide more details about this memo in the assignment for Writing 10.

Overview, Week 6, 10/05–09

This is the most important week of the course so far.

Your second draft of your first essay (Writing 8) is due Tuesday, 10/05, at 4:00 pm. This should be a version of your piece that feels pretty close to the one you plan to submit for a letter grade.

You need to post your E1D2 to the shared folder for your Workshop Group on Google Drive. (If you are not in a Workshop Group, you’ve got a problem; contact me.) You’ll then get written comments on your draft from the other members of your group. I’ll also ask you to write comments on their drafts. This work will count as Writing 9. You’ll then participate in a workshop on Zoom in which you’ll have the chance to talk about your work with your classmates.

I’ll then ask you to email me a Post-Workshop Memo (Writing 10), which will be due next week, on Tues, 10/12. I’ll reply in writing to that memo.

In other words, you’ll be getting a lot of responses to your writing over the next week. Take good advantage of it!

To Do This Week

• Tues, 10/06, 4:00 pm: Post the second draft of your first essay (Writing 8) to your Group Folder.
• Tues, 10/06 to Thurs, 10/08: Comment on the essays posted by the other members of your group (Writing 9). Follow the guidelines on Commenting on Drafts.
• Wed, 10/07, to Fri, 10/09: Participate in your Zoom Writing Workshop. Follow the guidelines on Holding a Writing Workshop.
• Tues, 10/12, 4:00 pm: Email me your Post-Workshop Memo (Writing 10). You’ll probably find it useful to compose this memo soon after your workshop. You can send it to me anytime before the deadline, and I’ll reply to you as soon as I can.

Writing 7: First Draft of Essay One

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

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.