Essay Instructions: This order is really two separate one-page assignments, here are the instructions: For the first page, use the following eight essential rules for good writing taken from Annie Dillard's "Notes for Young Writers" Introduction to In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction. For each, explain why its important, and see if you can come up with an example for each to illustrate your point.
-Learn grammar. Get a grammar book and read it two or three times a year.
-Check the spelling; proofread. Get someone else to proofread, too. Don't use passive verb constructions. You can rewrite any sentence. Don't misspell dialect. Let the syntax and words suggest the pronunciation.
-Learn punctuation; it is your little drum set, one of the few tools you have to signal the reader where the beats and emphases go.
-Don't use any extra words. A sentence is like a machine; it has a job to do. An extra word in a sentence is like a sock in a machine.
-Write for readers. Ask yourself how every sentence and every line will strike the reader.
-The more you read, the more you will write. The better the stuff you read, the better the stuff you will write.
-For fiction, poetry, or nonfiction, the more research you do, the more materials you will have to play with.
-The way to a reader's emotions is, oddly enough, through the senses. Always locate the reader in time and space- again
and again. Beginning writers rush in to feelings, to interior lives. Instead, stick to surface appearances; hit the five senses; give the history of the person and the place, and the look of the person and the place. Use first and last names. As you write, stick everything in a place and a time.
For the second page, I'm going to describe and upload (and send it to you via e-mail attachment) a photograph. Examine it closely, noticing details that others might miss. Which aspects of the photo fit your memory of the time or person? Which aspects don't fit your memory of the person or time? Some questions to consider and potentially raise while you write: What does the disparity between image and memory tell you about people and memory? About life? How does or did that understanding change over time? Dig deeply into the photo- describe it in sensory detail so that everyone can "see" it. Describe your memory in sensory detail so that everyone can "live" it... connect with the reader and evoke their appetites most of all. Use all of this information below that I am giving you, plus the picture that I am sending you to answer the above questions. The photograph is of me and my best friend Katy Jones. We have been best friends since we were four-years old, and we are both now twenty-three going on twenty-four next year in 2010. Katy and her family used to live right around the corner from us on St. Andrews Circle, my family lives on Indian Wells Circle. Katy and her family moved to Rockford, Illinois from Elgin, Illinois in 2005-2006. The picture was taken during Christmas either when we were in Kindergarten or First Grade (1991-1992). Over the past twenty years, our friendship has gone through numerous ups and downs; there were times where we grew apart, made new friends, and didn't even speak to each other due to some silly, trivial issues. In other words, looking back the things that we fought over in grade school, middle school, and high school seem childish and trivial now in comparison to the the problems that we are currently facing as adults/grown women. And even after all that, she is still my best friend to this day and will be my best friend for life. The picture basically tells the story of our twenty-year friendship; true friends nowadays are really hard to come by, best friends especially. If you have friends, then consider yourself lucky, if you have a best friend or multiple best friends, then that is truly something special.
