Documentation

According to Writing in the Works, attributing sources gives writing credibility. (I’m currently hyper-aware of the fact that I’m paraphrasing, and it’s giving me anxiety.) When you consult other resources in your research, they must receive credit; if they do not you are plagiarizing. The punishments for plagiarism are really, really scary. I’ll be reading this chapter very closely.

How to avoid plagiarism: take careful notes, use quotation marks, write down citation. Reading this is giving me flashbacks of high school research papers and those dreaded bibliography notecards. 

“The ethics of research demand absolute honesty in reporting information from your sources” (Blau and Burak 504). This means that along with avoiding plagiarism, you must also make sure your quotations are completely accurate.

To document or not to document? Quotations, yes. Intellectual property, yes. Music, yes. General knowledge, no. Historical facts, commonly accepted opinions, information found in many reference sources, and commonly known proverbs all fit under umbrella. 

Once you’ve done your research, you must decide how to write about it. Too little citations and your work isn’t credible; too many and you’ve done no original thinking. The key is to find the balance using the three ways of using information: quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing. All are ways to incorporate research into your writing, and all need citations. When in doubt, cite.

 

Chapter 9: Writing a Report

Journalism is literature in a hurry.

This one will be a challenge for me. Material wise it’s a bit easier, I suppose: it does not require the soul searching and time spent lying awake thinking I had to do in order to come up with the subject of my memoir. For the news story I’ll have to find a lecture or event–that I’m interested in but not involved with–but I’m actually kind of excited about this. The problem will be writing about it. Where the memoir was more free, news writing has a specific voice. I’ve been told I have a pretty distinct writing style, and have been instructed to rein it in a bit for the few pieces of formal writing I’ve done–research papers, newspaper features here and there. I tend to be wordy and write long sentences. Not quite the clear and concise writing necessary for an effective news story. Objectivity is also uncharted territory for me; I’ll have to focus on this in my revisions, I’m sure. In the social media section he book suggests I “think about how you would draw the attention of people in a crowded bar if you had to shout out a single sentence.” I like this idea.

I’ll definitely be reading more news stories to get used to this voice. I just changed my homepage to the New York Times website. Does osmosis work?

Chapter 2: The Writer’s Process

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

I was dreading that. This quote reminds me of a poem I once read that called inspiration “an elusive mistress”. I’m not sure why, but it stuck with me. Reading it I thought, how awful for creative people! How horrible to have to wait around to be struck with an idea and to be depressed and feel like a failure if you’re not inspired. The poet is no helpless victim, however; at the end, she writes, “those who live and die by the strike of her match . . . kick her to the curb.” Basically, screw inspiration and put in the work. Cue the writer’s process.

So this chapter is talking about the writing process, in no specific terms. It manifests itself differently for everyone, and as I read I’m trying to figure out what mine is, or if I even have one. I suppose I do–it tends to be more recursive than linear, without prerequisites other than a cup of coffee. I’m also finding out that brainstorming is not something I do consciously, and maybe should. I’m gonna give these freewriting and clustering things a try I think. Listing I’m well familiar with, but my outlines usually end up being scratched out and rearranged and disregarded. Of course I brainstorm; I just don’t see it as a separate step. With ideas floating around in my head (and sometimes scribbled in my notebook or on napkins or on my hand), I tend to like to sit in front of a blank document and just go. This may not be the best approach, I realize, but it works for me.

So then we have the research path. Although I don’t need to do research per se to write a memoir, which I’ll be doing very soon if I can force myself not to rely on inspiration (which tends to hit at midnight the night before a due date, thanks a lot), I have been spending some time soul searching since it was assigned. I just tried out the question and answer research tactic, and it surprised me. To every question I asked–what gave you a change of heart? What was a discovery, a decision, a disappointment?–the answer was the same. Every single one. It was something I hadn’t even considered writing about for my memoir, but now I see it’s the clearest option and probably the best one.

I hadn’t considered it before because I didn’t see it as a story or a life-changing moment; but it is the thing that has caused the most personal growth and the most change in my life. It’s not a single event, and there’s not much logical progression to it; I worried that it wasn’t quite a story. But reading this chapter has given me ideas on how to write it as one. With the right structure and rhetorical devices (I’ll probably be leaning on narration, description, and cause/effect most heavily), I think I can make it a good one.

Chapter 6: Writing a Narrative~Memoirs

Say that again? I have to write a memoir? Who am I to write a memoir? Aren’t those for, you know, important people? People who have accomplished things? Or are ahead of me in the life experience department by miles? Stop. Calm down. Read the chapter.

 Oh. I think I may have had a misunderstanding of what exactly a memoir is–I had been envisioning those books on the bestseller shelves of Barnes & Noble with close-ups of public figures’ somber faces and dark bold print shouting from the covers. As I read, it’s looking less and less like I’m going to have to write a tell-all novel about my entire life. The chapter tells me a memoir is a true event or series of related events told like a story, involving “a change of mind or heart, a discovery, a confirmation or contradiction of a belief, a disappointment or decision.” I’ve had those! Lots of them! Options start running through my head; moments–proud, sad, traumatic, seemingly insignificant–are swirling around. Pause. Write some down so I don’t forget them. Figure out which ones are important later. 

Next there’s an example. It’s called All Washed Up. This author isn’t talking about losing a presidential election or winning a Nobel Prize or surviving the apocalypse. She’s simply talking about a work experience which gave her a wake up call, and about being eighteen and naïve, and she has something important to say, something a student sitting in a coffee shop blogging for her Com class can understand and relate to. I guess I am capable of writing one of these…

I wish I could write with style like the fired waitress, with heartbreaking brevity like Hemingway, with beautiful imagery like the girl in the cold. I wish I could tell poignant stories with my illustrations like Marjane Satrapi, or humbly convey emotions of as daunting an experience as having to serve as a juror on a murder trial. I wish I could make readers laugh with “dark humor” like David Sedaris’. I probably can’t.

But what I can do is build a story about a significant experience I’ve had using the formula I’ve been taught since English class in grade school (intro-rising action-climax-resolution), weave in familiar vocab terms like voice and tone and theme, and, with my newfound understanding of them (like when to show and when to tell), make it mean something, both for me and for readers.

 Last page. Revision checklist. Worry about that later.

 Here goes.