Week Three Reflection

This has been a thrilling and monumental last week. I feel that I finished my life-changing project with a resounding bang. Whenever I feel like I can't accomplish something, I can look back to this week and be reminded that I have the talent to do whatever I want. The first reason that this week has been so brilliant is perhaps the most obvious; I received a letter from one of our nation's most cherished writers, Donald Hall. That he personally responded to everything I said signifies that he must be interested in me. The thought of Donald Hall's interest in my thoughts will serve as a reminder to me that I have potential. The second reason this week has lifted my self-esteem is because of what I accomplished. I helped a teacher in the classroom with both general errands and specific tasks. I actually connected with a child and taught him about the deeper meaning of the poem. I hope that by showing him the benefits of my analysis, I taught him that literature often has deeper meaning and that it is rewarding to find this meaning. Perhaps this idea is a bit too optimistic, but his responses to what I said demonstrated that he understood, which means that I have the ability to convey knowledge to others and teach them. If, as I expect, I end up as an English teacher, I can think back to this moment as the first time I taught someone about the deeper meaning of a piece of literature, and I can draw confidence in my teaching from that memory. More importantly, however, my confidence in my writing has developed through this week. I began the week with much revision to do, and, since I am not skilled at revision, I felt despair. However, I managed to revise all of the essays to their full potential. Well, probably not their full potential, since a piece is never truly finished, but I did manage to substantially revise them when I thought that I could not. If I ever feel that I cannot bring a piece to near perfection, I can look back to this week and remember that I can complete successful revision. This week provided me with three moments that I can remember in the future to inspire confidence within me. I have finished a life-changing project with a resounding bang. Now, I can walk into my future life of teaching and writing knowing that I can accomplish whatever I set out to do.

The End

Today was my last day of sitting in the library working with these essays. A sad truth that brings with it a sigh of relief.

I began my last day by reading through the revisions that Mrs. Lemeris and I had made and applying them to my essays. I then went through the car essay and fixed it up, because it was a little more disorganized than the others.

Before I knew it, it was time to attend the first, last, and only class I would attend during senior project, the last session of Chamber Choir ever. I have been in the choir for all four years, so it was quite a poignant moment.

From there I went to lunch, where I met with Karin and we discussed my project. We started by planning how I could present my project on Wednesday. I decided that I would make a poster on which I could put information about the basis of my project as well as my letter to Donald Hall and my letter from him. Beneath the poster, I could have a bound copy of my essays that people would read while there if they wanted to. I would also have piles of the six essays, and I could tell people that they could take one.

After we discussed this, we talked about the project as a whole and what an accomplishment it was.

I then returned to my work. I copied and pasted all of the individual documents into one larger document, finally bringing the essays together. I made a table of contents. I then wrote the acknowledgement section at the end, which was frustrating because I wanted to thank many people but only wanted the section to be one page. The act of making this master document was like bringing the whole project together. It felt like an ending, which I suppose it was.

I still need to finish off the introduction this weekend, and I need to review the piece as a whole, but as far as I can see, I will be printing copies of the essays and of the book Monday.

I would talk about the nature of the book and what it has meant for me, but, if I wrote it correctly, the book will speak for itself.

I’m glad to have accomplished this.

Busy Day

Today I spent a lot of time in Mrs. Lemeris' classroom. It was good to get out of the library yet still be working on my project.

The first two hours of my day were spent in the library, however. I spent this time revising the library essay, mostly, as well as tidying up the playground and classroom essays, with which I feel comfortable. I believe these two are finished. Actually, no piece is really finished, but I mean as finished as it will be before the end of the project. I’m so glad to have two pieces behind me. I’ll be finishing the rest, which need only small tomorrow and this weekend.

I went over to the school at 10:30 to help Mrs. Lemeris during her Reading classes. I feel like I was of good assistance with her first block. Her class is creating books of their own poetry. I remember when I did that. It was an interesting step into the past. One eighth-grader, named Mike, needed to write a poem based on another poem by Robert Frost about a colt who was afraid of the snow. He had to write a poem from the colt’s perspective. I read through the Frost poem with him, and we discussed why the colt might be afraid of the snow. Mike was a good listener, and I thought he had some cool ideas. I think I helped him develop those ideas. I hope so, anyway. During that first Reading class, I also hung poetry on the walls as examples for the kids.

During the next block, my tasks were more general because none of those kids needed assistance with their poetry. They were actually already finished with all writing and revision, and they were typing it up. So I cut paper for the kids who were binding their books and got things from the supplies closet.

Then it was 12:30, so I went back to school and ate lunch. Next I went to the library and got a little bit of revision done, tidying the revisions I had made in the library essay. Then it was back to the classroom, where Mrs. Lemeris and I did some amazing revision on my essays. I look forward to doing those revisions tomorrow, my last day spent entirely on revision.

The Library Revisted

Today was less productive than yesterday, but yesterday was glorious in every way, so that was to be expected. I finished the church essay, and I love the ending I gave it.

Mostly, I worked on the library essay, trying to narrow its focus.

I found it difficult to do this for all the same reasons I’ve had difficulty with revision throughout the writing process. The library essay is the essay I’m having the most trouble bringing to its full potential. Right now, it’s pretty good but very general. I think that it can be brilliant essay that examines my linguistic development and, unlike the other essays, my fear of growing up.

I know I’ve stopped putting excerpts in since I was finished with the rough drafts, but I’d like to include one in this entry so that you can see how the essay could embrace the ideas I just mentioned:

“Whereas in elementary school I had picked Moby Dick off the shelf specifically because it looked mature, I now chose novellas which were written for a reading level far lower than my own.

“In fifth grade, I had a fear of growing up. I had worked my way to a place where I had begun to understand myself through reading literature and seeing all the strange things language could express, and, as I peered into the deepness of the human mind, I realized that there may be knowledge in there that I would not want to own. I was afraid of what I might discover about myself, humanity, and the world. So I stuck with cheery children’s books, choosing to float on the surface of fathomless life until I realized that I had to dive in because I did not belong on the surface level; so I dove in.”

Language was my way of discovering the deep and complicated nature of the world, and I want to expand on my development from eagerness to hesitation to finally embracing the full mystery. I just hope that the essay realizes these qualities before Senior Project is over.

Donald Hall's Letter

Today was a glorious day indeed.

I started by doing the most specific of the revisions Mrs. Lemeris and I discussed yesterday for the playground, classroom, and car essays. Most of these were based on diction, syntax, and sometimes, as I am embarrassed to admit, mechanics. A lot of these revisions breezed by pretty quickly, although there were a few that confounded me. For example, there's a specific paragraph in the car essay that contains a lot of complex ideas and syntax, and it took me half an hour to fix it up. I was constantly switching words and phrases around in different ways. I plan on returning to it, because I'm still not sure that it's perfect.

After this, I added endings to the pieces that were lacking them, and I'm proud to say that all of the pieces but the church essay have endings. Finally adding a conclusion to these pieces after two weeks of obsessing over their main bodies was relieving, to say the least.

Afterward, I went through the playground essay and added to some parts where I hadn't quite finished my ideas. I love the way this essay has come out.

I plan on working more tonight. I want to read through every essay and figure out what's left to be done. While reading, I want to keep in mind that the entire piece should be focused on the development toward the end. I predict that the revision that's left will be mostly refocusing essays.

The best component of today was not in the work, however. I received a letter from none other than Donald Hall! I had written him one just before senior project started, a letter that sang his praises and then asked him questions about being a writer, but I had not sent it until Friday purely out of anxiety that it was not a perfect letter. But Mr. Hall responded with great interest in everything I had written; he responded to my praise (although he seemed bashful to do so), he responded to my story of my personal connection to his poem "Name of Horses," and he answered all of the questions I asked about the life of a writer.

I was surprised at how his life and mine are both similar and different. For example, he says that he does not keep a journal regularly, although he likes the idea, but uses his letter-writing as a form of journal writing. I, too, like the idea of journals but have trouble sticking to them, and I love to keep my letters as records of my personal development. However, while I have had trouble with writing multiple drafts of my essays, he says that he never creates less than forty drafts of a piece and has even made two hundred for a few poems! When I spoke about this with Kris, he pointed out that that is especially amazing because he is such a prolific writer.

I found out all sorts of wonderful things about his life through his life, and I actually got to communicate with one of our nation's greatest writers, and he actually took interest in what I had to say!

One of his final messages was in response to my request for general tips for young writers:

"Tips: Read the old poets! The 17th century is the best for poetry. I have moved from one infatuation to another, which has been my education. Take a look at the poetry of Thomas Hardy some time. My other tip is excessive revision, but I think that the number of revisions, in my case, has grown exponentially as I have gotten older. Probably I wrote poems in my twenties when I used only ten drafts or so."

At least there's hope for me!

Thanks so much to Laurie for providing me with his address!

A glorious day indeed!

This entry definitely contains the greatest amount of exclamation points I have used in any blog entry thus far!

Monday

I wrote this entry for yesterday but forgot to post it. Here it is now:

Today, I achieved two major accomplishments.

First, I added a lot of content to the playground essay. It is currently my largest essay at 11 pages, and I still haven't finished the ending. When I discovered this, I was confused, because the classroom essay, which discusses a subject much more important to my development, was only six pages. I thought I had done something wrong.

My second accomplishment was that I brought both of the essays, as well as the car essay, to my sponsor Mrs. Lemeris this afternoon. I felt like there was a huge amount of progress made with specific factors of my writing like diction and syntax. I also felt like she gave me some important ideas to consider when approaching revision. The most important of these is that these essays are supposed to chronicle my development into the person I am now, so I need to show where this process led, because that's the whole point of the essay. I need to refocus the essays so that they lead to the end result and so that the rest of the essay reflects the ending throughout. The ending can't just be where the piece stops; it needs to be an answer to the rest of the piece.

Interestingly enough, Mrs. Lemeris also said that the classroom essay was the essay that was closest to achieving this goal, and I personally think that the playground essay, after I have added an ending, will be just as focused as the classroom essay. The pieces I was worried about are the ones that are the most finished. This goes to show that length does nothing to indicate quality and has little significance. The classroom essay can be more important than the playground essay even if the playground essay is longer. I need to just make a piece as long as it needs to be.

Week Two Reflection

This week, my objective switched from writing the rough drafts of my essays to revising them. While tuning into one’s creativity on command and writing an original piece is challenging, a different set of challenges meets someone whose goal is to revise and edit a piece of writing. Writing the rough drafts gave me no direction while I was writing, which was intimidating because there were so many paths I could take. It was like trying to go fishing in the vast ocean of language. At the same time, though, it was a more free process than revising the rough drafts. Revision required me to fit my corrections and expansions into the context of the rest of the piece. It was like fishing in a river. While I didn’t have so many words and ideas to worry about, it also meant that my selection was narrowed, and I had to do it carefully or else the words didn’t fit in with the rest of the essay. Sometimes, I would find myself growing impatient with how much time it took to edit a simple sentence so that it made sense with everything else. I felt less productive because I wasn’t producing as much material as I was in the previous week. It was frustrating to tailor my creativity to something that already existed. Revising isn’t something I do often. Editing and readjustment I perform a lot on my pieces, but I like to get all the writing for a piece done immediately so that I don’t need to try to produce writing for the same piece later. I need to learn that to create a larger and more perfect piece, I need to be able to return to it and add to it. This week has taught me about the patience that will be required of me if I want to become a real writer. I can’t just do the fun, easy, creative writing; the slower and more difficult process of revision needs to happen as well if I want my writing to be as good as it can be.