Update: Weeks 9 and 10, Mon, 10/26, to Fri, 11/06

Congratulations on completing Essay One! Now it’s time to begin Essay Two!

Your primary task over the next two weeks is to locate and read the text you’ll be writing about in Essay Two. I’ll hold individual conference at the end of next week (Wed, 11/04, through Fri, 11/06) to talk about your plans for writing, and your first full draft will due on Tues, 11/10 (two weeks from tomorrow.

Here’s a step-by-step list of upcoming work.

To Do

1. Tues, 10/27, 4:00 pm: Post comments on at least three essays posted by your classmates on Medium. Post your comments to this website. (Writing 12)
2. Thurs, 10/29, 4:00 pm: Email me bibliographic info for the text you will write your second essay about. (Writing 13)
3. Tues, 11/03: Vote!! (If you haven’t already done so by mail.)
4. Wed, 11/04, 10:00 am: Email me an update on your reading for your second essay. (Writing 14)
5. Wed, 11/04, Thurs, 11/05, Fri, 11/06: Meet on Zoom with me to talk about your plans for your second essay. (I will send out a Doodle poll later this afternoon. Please reply ASAP, and certainly by Fri, 10/30.)
6. Tues, 11/10, 4:00 pm: Post your first draft of Essay Two to your Workshop Group Folder on Google Drive.
7. Wed, 11/11, Thurs, 11/12, Fri, 11/13: Workshops of Essay Two, Draft One.

Writing 13: A Focus for Essay Two

Photo by Ed Robertson on Unsplash

Please read the assignment for Essay Two carefully. For this essay, you need to identify a book that Odell writes about in How to Do Nothing that you find interesting. (Several of you, for instance, in your first essay mentioned Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener or the writings of Diogenes.) What’s really important right now is that you identify the text you want to write about in your second essay, and begin reading it.

Your first draft of Essay Two is due on Tues, 11/10. While that may seem like you’ve still got some time, you need to do a fair amount of work during it. I thus want you to have obtained a copy of the book you will write about by next Thurs, 10/29. For Writing 13, all you need to do is to email me the bibliographic information for the text you want to write about. I’ll trust that you’ve obtained an actual copy, because you’d be really dumb not to have done so by then. Get the book! Start reading!

What sort of bibliographic info do you need to send me? All documentation systems are basically different ways of typing up the same bits of data:

• Author
• Title
• Publisher
• Date Published

Author and Title are pretty obvious, I think. Publisher and Date Published can be a little more complicated, because you need to identify the actual edition of the book you are using.

For example, let’s say that you plan to write about Walden by Henry David Thoreau. This is a book that Thoreau first published back in 1854, but that won’t be the copy you find at your local library or on Amazon. Instead you’re more likely to come across this paperback edition, published by CreateSpace in 2018. Your bibliographic info would thus look something like this:

• Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. CreateSpace, 2018.

Or maybe you’re reading an ebook version. That’s fine. You’d just write something like this instead:

• Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Arcturus Classics, 2020. Kindle edition.

I’m very curious to see what texts people decide to write about. Please email me or drop in on my Zoom Student Hours if you’d like talk abut some possibilities. Good luck!