Writing

Revisit the writing activity from Writing Exercise #8 and the techniques on reflection discussed in the McClanahan essay.  i have attached my previous reflection essay. Write a two-page scene about your photo using the first-person point of view. As you craft your scene, do one of the following (from “Frelection”):  * Frame the experience differently. Cut the story into three sections, for instance, and frame it as a triptych. Crop the scene at a different place. Leave something out that you thought was essential.   *Try a different lens. If you’ve written all close-up scenes, snap on a wide-angle lens and pull back for the big view. If you’ve written all distanced summary, apply the close-up lens of scenic detail.   * Change the way you use time. Squeeze a lifetime into 60 seconds, or stretch 60 seconds into a day. Start your autobiography a year before you were born, or 2000 years before. But remember, reflection doesn’t always mean looking BACK. Try driving the time engine in a different direction. As the Queen in Alice in Wonderland said, “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.” Employ flashforward as well as flashback.   * Change the distance at which you are standing, in actual or psychic space. If enough time has not yet elapsed to give you distance on your subject, take the winemaker’s advice and serve no story before its time. But if you’ve waited too long, if the experience has cooled so much that it no longer matters to you, find a way to bring it emotionally closer.   * Apply a different light, especially if you are a character in your own story. It’s hard to see all sides of yourself when looking in a mirror—and thank God for small favors. But try shining the same light on yourself as you have on the other characters. On the other hand, if you’ve been too hard on yourself, lighten up. We’re all just characters in this drama, this photograph, this memory. The one reflected on the water. The one that, try as we might, we can never recapture but we can nevertheless transform.