Advanced Writing Journal Post 1

Planning My Literary Narrative--Trudging Inside

Most people talk about themselves constantly--just overhear any random conversation at a coffee house, cafeteria, or phone conversation. Drawing from our own life experiences and knowledge, we meander through the world communicating our desires, our ideas and sometimes our advice, prompted or not.

Few people can write about themselves. Somewhere in the neural transfer process from brain to fingers, most people short out, loose major amounts of information, and in some people, the communication altogether cuts and repairs must be made. If you sit down to write and suddenly realize you have nothing to say, you are not alone. Even published authors and professional writers fear writing. When most sit down to their lonely computers, nothing immediately comes out, and that moment of hesitation invites the negative voices to raise up from within.

This fear will always live, but there are ways to combat it and help your neurons fire 100% from brain to fingers--the foremost of which is PLANNING.

Bleeding
I don't remember which famous author said this, but he described writing as sitting down to his typewriter and bleeding. True, really, especially when the subject is YOU and not some objective third-party. Bleeding is much easier if one plans the whole process out before one begins writing.
I usually start with 1.) Figuring out what I want to write about.
This is USUALLY the toughest part of the whole writing process. In this case, for my literary narrative, I'm choosing to write about the first time I attempted to write a creative short story. I know--I'm writing a story about writing a story...but I think it shows a lot of different types of literacy, and talking about writing is something I'm already familiar with doing. Plus, you know, my major is Literature, so it's related to my field. Much of my essay deals with the planning and developing of my short story, so stay tuned.

Planning Based on your Topic
Normally, I'm writing research papers, and to plan that, I like to do those trees or clusters of Word Association. Something like "In writing an essay about these two books, I could write about..." And then I'd jot down Social Issues, for example, which will make me think of Racism, so I'll write that down. Another social issue is Poverty, so I'll write that down. Government. Class Divisions. I'll write down a few others. and then I'll see what interests me most, and what I can make the best case for and write that essay. Sometimes I'll write an essay I don't actually believe for fun. I once tried to write an essay on Julius Caesar by Shakespeare that claimed Antony was behind the entire murder plot. My teacher ultimately nixed it, but it would have been an interesting paper for which to gather evidence.

For this paper, I planned by jotting down some things that have happened in my life, my major life decisions (college major, marriage) and saw where I could fit the most into the different types of literacy. I nearly wrote about my job as a waiter. If you've ever been one, you know they have a language all their own. I nearly wrote about the first thing I noticed about my husband (his impeccable grammar--don't judge me!) But I decided on writing. Hopefully I can inspire my other classmates to not feel so alone and nervous when they fear writing.

First Lines
Next to figuring out what I want to write about, the hardest part of writing is the first line. I will write a line only to scratch it out and start with the first line again, sometimes taking up two pages worth of scratched out first lines. The first line, for me, sets the tone of the entire work and must draw the reader in and want to read the second sentence. For this assignment, I wrote three versions of the same first sentence. That's after discarding over eight other first sentences. Once I find a first line, it's usually easy to write the rest. Sometimes I have to fight for every sentence. Sometimes it takes an hour to write a paragraph.

When writing anything, I don't plan much more than that. I'm not really an outline person, or a person who pulls quotes and fills in between them. I'm a reviser. (Look at my moniker: wordshifter. It's a nod to revising.)

My blog entry for revising would be twice as long as this one. But of course, I will always help anyone who wants to learn planning or revision. The Writing Center on campus is AMAZING for helping you plan out your essay. Here's their link:
http://www.uhcl.edu/portal/page/portal/WC

and they also have a handout for Planning an Essay:
http://prtl.uhcl.edu/portal/page/portal/WC/Files/TIPSHEET_PLANNING


Happy Writing and Planning!

--Alicia