Week 2 Writing about Emotions and Feelings

I should like to suggest the following set of regular activities which should structure the Writing on the Edge workshops:

FIRST HOUR - 9am-10am/10am-11am - BBS, WWW and online communities

  1. Students arrive and switch on computers, and immediately check out the proposed activities on the WOE Home page. Students should check this week's work. Read the whole thing, try not to get started on any one exercise. 

  2. Obviously one of the most important things to do is to place your near-finished work on your own bulletin board so that other students may read and give you feedback. The easiest way is to copy and paste from Word, Claris Works or Simple Text.  Once you have placed your own work online, read and give comments to the very next person after you on the BBS list. Do this several times.

  3. Here are suggestions on how to give feedback
    for autobiographical narration and sensory impression (from last week).

    Click this link for more ideas on the peer review process (from Paula Schiller, 1997)

    Here is a piece of performance text to have a look at.

    NOTE: you cannot just copy/paste whole Word documents since you also transfer all the binary characters which Word uses for formatting. You need to just copy/paste TEXT characters. The easiest way is to Save As "Text Only With Line Breaks" which will eliminate any special formatting you have done.

  4. When you reply to someone make sure to do so on THEIR board, not yours!

  5. Try to explore some of the Writing links which are available from the WOE Home page. If you find something interesting then make sure to tell us, by posting to the WOE Board, or e-mailing me. We have not extensively studied all the available links here.

  6. Next week we shall be joining several writing communities online so we will need to check our e-mail and Usenet newsgroups in this time as well.

SECOND HOUR - 11am-12noon - groupwork

  1. Students then break up into work groups in order to read each others' work from the previous week. Each week you will be asked to review things a little differently.

    For Week 2, I want to look at the process by which you write your pieces.
    How do you start? Where do the ideas come from? How do you overcome writers' block?

    Please take short notes and summarise your group's ideas.

  2. The tutor will at some stage listen to the groups read aloud their work, and facilitate a constructive critique of each students' work.

THIRD HOUR - creative work due next week

  1. Each week I will give you material which focuses you on a certain kind of writing genre. You are then expected to start: Pre-writing by brainstorming and perhaps putting together a draft in class.

  2. For Week 2 the topic is Writing personally and emotionally. Handouts will be distributed in class.

    Your task is to write 500 word piece which describes a part of you, or an emotion you have felt (or both). The handout has suggestions, but they are only a guide. We want you to identify an essential part of your psyche and distil this in to 500 words. It could be mildly comic, or deadly serious or somewhere in between.

    What makes you tick? What is the most significant part of you? Re-tell an important experience. Describe a close friend. What makes you laugh or cry or get angry?