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Homework answers / question archive / Crafting the Personal Essay, Chapter 22, "On Becoming an Excellent Rewriter" General posting guidelines this week: Please post a Primary Post in response to the discussion topic(s) below; as well as a thoughtful Reply to another person's post
General posting guidelines this week: Please post a Primary Post in response to the discussion topic(s) below; as well as a thoughtful Reply to another person's post. You may write your primary post and reply in either order. One post is due by Thursday, and one is due by Sunday. Each post is worth 10 points, for a total of 20 points.
To ensure a cordial style, please remember to greet your classmates and sign your name in your posts.
In Chapter 22, "On Becoming an Excellent Rewriter," Dinty Moore talks about the need for revising in a thorough way, where a goal is that "[n]othing remains in your essay [ . . . ] unless it serves the purpose of the essay that is taking shape on the page" (221). He recommends three approaches or modes of thinking about revising: The Child, The Adult, and The Parent (223-225).
After reading/reviewing the chapter, please respond to one of the following prompts:
Citing your source(s): Please include in your post at least one specific reference to Chapter 22. Please refer to the guidelines in Format for Citing Sources in Your Writings.
Best wishes for contributing to this discussion!
Sincerely,
Jennifer Love
Work Cited
Moore, Dinty W. Crafting the Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Nonfiction. Cincinnati: Writer's Digest Books, 2010.
In this particular chapter, Dinty goes into great detail about the rigorous process of revising a piece an individual has written. He talks about how "writers must work constantly to refine" what they wrote, be it "their word choice, sentence variety, paragraph structure, voice, persona," and so on (Moore, 219). The most important advice, in my opinion, that Dinty gives the reader is the notion that "vigorous revision...should come when your essay is beginning to reach some sense of cohesion" (Moore, 221). While revising one's work along the way is a good thing, spending too much time obsessing over a particular paragraph could potentially stall the story trying to develop into a cohesive narrative. Dinty goes on to break the revising process down in three ways, a process which he calls the "parent adult child theory" (Moore 223). For a writer, they should first move things around and "try...out ideas" no matter if they work or not (the child), before asking "why and mak[ing] logical choices" (the adult); finally, they can move on to listening that "often shaming or critical voice" that can help put the finishing touches on their work (the parent) (Moore 224, 223). All of these things, Dinty writes, "are gifts...to make...writing stronger" (Moore 225).
For me, I have employed several of the tips Dinty gives in this chapter to my own writing, particularly my novel. I usually start out with a very rough draft of the chapter I'm writing, scribbling out the basic outline of the chapter and just seeing how the narrative weaves itself until the end. Then, I go back and start to fill in more details, taking the time to restructure sentences and reshape certain paragraphs into a more coherent, flowing narrative. Finally, after that is all done, I read through it again to check for any spelling errors, oftentimes adding or deleting things that I realize do not fit within the chapter. I find this process very helpful, as it allows me to avoid getting writer's block (for the most part) and write a better story in the long run. Instead of lingering on the structure of the chapter first thing (which could "shut down the enterprise" of my writing "entirely"), I can set down a solid foundation and build the story up from there (Moore, 224).
Sincerely,
Janie Browning
Works Cited
Moore, Dinty W. Crafting the Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Nonfiction. Cincinnati: Writer's Digest Books, 2010.
