Uncovering the Story in a World You Inhabit
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instruction2.docx1
UWP 101: Fall 2016
Prof. Liz Constable
TAKE-AWAY POINTS FROM YOUR DISCUSSION OF REBECCA SOLNIT, GLORIA ANZALDÚA AND LOUISE DESALVO
Here are some “take-away” points about what we can learn about successful and effective writing from the three writers you presented and we all discussed yesterday in class. I’m summarizing some points you made, and adding a little more explanation sometimes. Just a brief overview for you.
Rebecca Solnit’s Take-Away Points
1. Maintain a balanced and fair-minded writing persona especially when you’re writing prompted by a strong negative feeling, e.g., ANGER!
Notice that since she’s writing from a feeling of anger and outrage, she is also very careful to create a balanced writing persona so that we trust her as a reliable narrator, and not an irrational person with a grudge against men. Her credibility as a writer rests on this balanced writing persona. See page 2, where she writes, “Here, let me just say that my life is sprinkled with lovely men, with a long succession of editors who have, since I was young, listened to and encouraged and published me.”
2. Use language that appeals to our SENSES: sight, touch, sound, smell, taste.
Notice that just as Anzaldúa does, Solnit sometimes uses language that draws on the BODY and that helps us VISUALIZE an idea. See page 4, where she looks back on the moment when a pompous man becomes speechless, and she writes, “I like incidents of that sort, when forces that are usually so sneaky and hard to point out slither out of the grass and are as obvious as, say, an anaconda that’s eaten a cow or an elephant turd on the carpet.” Now, we know that she could simply have written that it was satisfying to see this man’s pomposity exposed. BUT, how much more effective it is to make us SEE it as “an elephant turd on the carpet”
3. If you’re going to discuss the meanings of a concept or idea (justice, equity, friendship), lead in with concrete examples before you present the abstract concept.
Notice that Solnit’s main theme---credibility and the misogynist tendency to discredit women’s voices---is introduced through her story-telling about an incident. This helps us, as readers, to relate to the more abstract topic she will later address.
Gloria Anzaldúa’s Take-Away Points
1. Use the ideas and concepts you’re writing about and “translate” them into the way you write
Notice that Anzaldúa’s starting point for her writing is her borderlands experience, growing up between the US and Mexico, between Spanish and English, among other differences. She writes in both languages, and the form of her essay embodies the ideas she’s discussing: living and writing in between cultures.
2. Describe explicitly how you understand your role as writer, especially if you are adopting a role that your readers may not be familiar with.
Notice how Anzaldúa re-defines her role as a writer in very interesting ways. “I like to think of [my stories] as performances and not as inert and “dead” objects [ . . .] the work has an identiy; it is a “who” or a “what” and contains the presences of persons . . .” (page 67). Now, you may not be defining yourself as a writer whose identity is communal, and whose writing is a living act as Anzaldúa does. BUT, take a lesson from her very explicit introduction of her take on her role as a writer. Think about how you will define your role in specific writing tasks.
3. Write with language that allows readers to VISUALIZE, FEEL, TOUCH, TASTE, SMELL, and HEAR your writing.
Anzaldúa gives us extraordinary examples of the power of writing that uses the five senses to convey her ideas and feelings. Read the way she writes about her own writing: “It is a rebellious, willful entity, a precocious girl-child forced to grow up too quickly, rough, unyielding, with pieces of feather sticking out her and there, fur, twigs, clay.” We can SEE this ungainly child, and it helps us picture the messy process of writing because she visualizes this for us.
4. The “bones” or the overall shape and architecture of your writing may only emerge close to the end of the writing process. i.e., outlines often come last, after writing, not before!
Although many of us are accustomed to thinking that we “ought” to plan our writing with an outline or a skeleton of our writing, Anzaldua reminds us that since the process of writing entails thinking, often the “bones” or the skeleton of our final draft will emerge only as we write. As she writes, “The problem is that the bones often do not exist prior to the flesh, but are shaped after a vague and broad shadow of its form is discerned, or uncovered during beginning, middle and final stages of the writing” (66)
Louise DeSalvo’s Take-Away Points
1. Vary sentence length, and create rhythm in your writing to communicate the “feelings” that you’re writing about.
As you discussed, DeSalvo writes out of rage and pain, rage at her father, and in the early sections of the essay, her sentence structures convey the rage she feels because she uses choppy, short, staccato sentences. We end up “feeling” her despair and rage; as you commented, her sentences generate an anxiety in us readers. Think about ways you can vary sentence structure to convey mood, feelings, atmosphere in your own writing.
2. Use creative ways of organizing your writing: repetition with variation.
