The Finals final post! (until next semester)

Post your 4th Analysis Letter below. It will need to be posted on Thursday by midnight for you to receive credit for your work. Remember, this part is worth 20% of your grade, so make sure that you check and recheck your work before submitting.

But before we get to the nitty-gritty of this, here's some of the best advice I've received from the author Neil Gaiman about revising your draft:

The second draft is where the fun is. In a first draft, you get to explode. The objective (at least for me) is to get it down on paper, somehow. Battle through the laziness and the not-enough-time and the this-is-rubbish and everything else, and just get it written. Whatever it takes.

The second draft is where you go and gather together the fragments of the explosion and figure out what it is you did, and make it look like that was what you always meant to do. So you write it. Then you put it aside. Not for months, but perhaps for a week or so. Even a few days. Do other things. Then set aside some uninterrupted time to read, and pull it out, and pretend you have never read it before — clear it out of your head, and sit and read it. (I’d suggest you do this on a print-out, so you can scribble on it as you go. ) When you get to the end you should have a much better idea of what it was about than you did when you started. (I knew The Graveyard Book would be about a boy who lived in a graveyard when I started it. I didn’t know that it would be about how we make our families, though: that’s a theme that made itself apparent while the book was being written.)

And then, on the second and subsequent drafts, you do four things.

1. You fix the things that didn’t work as best you can (if you don’t like the climactic Rock City scene in American Gods, trust me, the first draft was so much worse).
2. You reinforce the themes, whether they were there from the beginning or whether they grew like Topsy on the way. You take out the stuff that undercuts those themes.
3. You worry about the title.
4. At some point in the revision process you will probably need to remind yourself that you could keep polishing it infinitely, that perfection is not an attribute of humankind, and really, shouldn’t you get on with the next thing now?...




Thank you for being in my class and for indulging in some of the more outrageous aspects of my Socratic method teaching. I appreciate those of you who went 24 hours without technology or mediated for 30 minutes. I appreciate those of you who stuck it out and decided, at the end of the day, to sign up for the next iteration of this class next week (* just remember not to sell back your "Little Brown Handbook" because we will need it next semester).

Your grades should be going up by next week, so please make sure you check them and e-mail me if you have any discrepancies. I will still have the same office hours, so if you would like to come by and pick up your last paper, please let me know ahead of time so I can have your work prepared.

I hope you all have a great summer and I wish you all well in your future writing endeavors.

Yours Truly,

Gary Ancheta
June 24, 2009
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Finals Information

Now we're at the home stretch. Make sure you're ready for Wednesday's class! Remember, if you don't have the following (or if you're LATE FOR CLASS), you will receive a FAILING GRADE for this class. It is imperative that you come on time and you come prepared...


You will need two manila envelopes for tomorrow's class.

In the first manila envelope, you will have all the stuff for your third paper:
1. Final Paper
2. Rough Draft
3. Peer Review Worksheet
3. Outline
4. Quizzes (3)
5. Optional: Articles with information highlighted

In the second manila envelope, you will need:
1. First Paper
2. Second Paper
3. Third Paper
4. Optional: Self Addressed Stamped Envelope

You will need for your final:
1. Pen/Pencil, Sheets of Paper
2. Your Little Brown Handbook
3. Snacks, water, etc.
4. Optional: A laptop

To prepare for this final, make sure you read over your work (all three papers) and you read Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. You don't need to cite the information or bring it to class, but you need to be at least familiar with the letters before you come into class on Wednesday.

Good Luck and I will see you Wednesday!
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