Revision
Fri, Apr 10
Revision isn't just fixing your commas and checking your citations; it's a complicated, multi-step process that involves thinking about structure, flow, diction, cohesion, argument, narrative, and audience. How do you get started?
The first thing you need to do is see your work with fresh eyes. When speaking, listening, and reading, we tend to experience language as a continuous, synesthetic stream of sound, text, and image. When we are at least reflective and most immersed, it is almost like hallucinating a waking dream. But to think critically about text — especially when we’re editing our own work — or when we hit a creative impasse — we need to slow down, focus, and break ourselves out of our hypnotic stupor. We need to make our language strange again.
Do This:
Draft of Final Paper due May 8: 3000–5000 word nonfiction research paper/creative nonfiction oriented toward the general reader, on some specific aspect of climate change. Must incorporate research. Addressing in some respect the ideas of “nature,” the “human,” faith or norms, and “integral ecology.” Creative responses utilizing literary techniques are encouraged.