Journal Prompts for self-assessment
Journal Item 1
Things Famous Writers Have Said About Writing
Choose one or two of the quotations below and write at least a good paragraph explaining why you chose the quotation--e.g., in what way the quote reflects your own attitude toward (or experiences with) writing.
"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. --Red Smith
"I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it." --Toni Morrison
"We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little." --Anne Lamott
"We write to think--to be surprised by what appears on the page; to explore our world with language; to discover meaning that teaches us and that may be worth sharing with others." --Donald M. Murray
"I always wanted to write a book that ended with the word mayonnaise." --Richard Brautigan
"A good writer always works at the impossible." --John Steinbeck
" Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go." --E.L. Doctorow
"Writers are athletes of the psyche." --Lloyd Kropp
"You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer." --Margaret Atwood
"Writing is putting one's obsessions in order." --Jean Grenier
"I like to write when I feel spiteful; it's like having a good sneeze." --D. H. Lawrence
"Getting even is one reason for writing." --William Gass
"It has been said that writing comes more easily if you have something to say." --Sholem Asch
"I publish a piece in order to kill it, so that I won't have to fool around with it any longer." --William Glass
"I talk out the lines as I write." --Tennessee Williams
"I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation." --George Bernard Shaw
"You write a hit play the same way you write a flop." --William Saroyan
"Literature is simply the appropriate use of language." --Cyril Connolly
"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind." -- Rudyard Kipling
"Style is effectiveness of assertion." --George Bernard Shaw
"Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree." --Ezra Pound
"Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person--a real person you know, or an imagined person, and write to that one." --John Steinbeck
"I have no fans. You know what I got? Customers." --Mickey Spillane
"Sir, no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." --Samuel Johnson
"My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably." --George Bernard Shaw
"Poets are born, not paid." --Wilson Mizner
"Let's face it, writing is hell." --William Styron
"What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure." --Samuel Johnson
"Who casts to write a living line, must sweat." --Ben Jonson
"Easy reading is damned hard writing." --Nathaniel Hawthorne
"It is perfectly okay to write garbage--as long as you edit brilliantly." --C. J. Cherryh
"The one absolute requirement for me to write . . . is to be awake." --Isaac Asimov
"I love criticism so long as it's unqualified praise." --Noel Coward
"Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs." --John Osborne
"I have rewritten--often several times--every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers." --Vladmir Nabokov
"I write any sort of rubbish which will cover the main outlines of the story; then I can begin to see it." --Frank O'Connor
"Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least." –Horace
"When I'm near the end of [writing] the book, I sleep in the same room with it. Somehow the book doesn't leave you when you're asleep right next to it." --Joan Didion
And last but not least:
"Writing . . . keeps me from believing everything I read." --Gloria Steinem
(The quotations above are drawn primarily from two books: Shoptalk, by Donald M. Murray, and Writers on Writing, by Jon Winokur.)
Journal Item 2
Does Writing Make You Sweat?
What anxieties, concerns, or worries do you have about writing, especially about writing for college or on the job? Be specific. Where do those concerns come from?
If you do not have many concerns or worries about your writing abilities or the writing tasks you will face in college, where does your confidence in your writing abilities come from?
Journal Item 3
Preferred Writing Conditions
Write about your usual time/place/situation for doing homework and/or writing. Then do a homework assignment in a different manner (i.e. in pencil instead of on the computer or at a desk instead of on the floor). Were there any differences in the outcome? Explore your preferences and why they seem to work for you.
Journal Item 4
Control and the Writer
Most writers do their best work when they write about something they care about. How does this idea apply to your own writing?
How do you cope with situations where you do not have total control over the topic? Can you still “survive” as a student writer when you do not have an opportunity to choose the topic? What can you do to improve your odds of success in that situation?
Journal Item 5
Asking for Help
Write about an occasion when you were hesitant (or maybe just plain afraid) to ask for help with a situation or problem that frustrated you. This might be a school-related problem or not. (Think especially about concepts or skills you were working at understanding in school, things you struggled with learning.) Why did you not want to ask for help? What was the risk? How did this situation turn out?
Journal Item 6
Share and Share Alike?
How do you feel about sharing your writing with other people? Why is doing that easy or difficult for you? What concerns or hopes do you have when you share your writing with other people?
Journal Item 7
Feedback
How important is it to you that you get honest feedback on your writing? How important is it that you get detailed feedback? Why are those things important to you? (Or why are they not important to you, if that’s the case?) How do you feel when giving feedback to others?
Journal Item 8
Audience
Think about the first draft you wrote of your most recent paper. Who were you writing to? After you received feedback on the paper, did the audience change? Who were you writing to in the subsequent drafts? What does that audience need to know about the topic? What does that audience already know that you will not need to tell them? How does that audience feel about the topic? In what ways will this help you to revise for the next draft?
Journal Item 9
Revision
What did you find yourself doing the most when you revised your draft: adding, deleting, moving, rewording? What did your peers and your instructor say that your draft needed? Do you feel like you were able to change that element of your paper? What was the easiest part of improving this draft? What was the hardest part?
Journal Item 10
The Director's Commentary
If you rent or own DVDs, maybe you've listened to the DVD’s audio commentary track, in which a director (or a screenwriter, actor, or film critic) discusses some of the more interesting aspects of the film. In effect, the commentator ends up reflecting on some of the choices that the creators made in the film.
You're going to do the same thing, essentially, with part of your essay. Select a relatively brief passage from one of your papers (maybe 150-250 words long) and offer your reflections on some of the choicesyou made as the creator of that passage. In other words, dig into your own thought process and figure out why you included that detail, or why you deleted a thought that previously was part of this passage, or why you worded this sentence the way you did. (For instance: What were you trying to accomplish with that detail or example or word choice? What concerns did you have -- or do you now have, perhaps -- about this choice or that choice which you made in the passage? How were you hoping readers would react to this question that you explored in this passage, or to this anecdote which you offered?) The more detail you go into in your reflection, the better. Writers grow when they think deeply about the choices they make in their writing.
Journal Item 11
Influence of Peer Reviews and Conferences
What influence do peer reviews and conferences have on your essays? What provides the best feedback for you? How do you sift through all the advice to know what you need to do? Or how do you manage the lack of meaningful feedback (if that has happened to you)? When is the best time to use peer review and which format works best for you, and why?
Journal Item 12
Time and Effort
How much time and effort have you been putting into this writing class? What part of this class takes the most time? What do you think an appropriate amount of time and effort would look likefor the best possible success in this class? Which part of class should you spend more time on? Is there anything you are spending too much time doing?
Journal Item 13
Audience Part II
What audience do you usually write to (teacher, classmates, yourself, a thoroughly generic all-encompassing audience)? Is it always the same or does it vary sometimes? If so, when? What role do you think audience should play in your writing process?
Journal Item 14
Focus of Comments from Readers
What have the comments on your papers from the instructor and peer review all focused on? Is there something that you have struggled with on all of the papers or has it changed from paper to paper? What have you done to improve upon this area (or these areas)?
Journal Item 15
End of the Semester Reflection
Write about the papers you’ve worked on for this class. Which was the hardest and why? What kind of time and effort went into each one? Would you do anything differently now?
Journal Item 16
Personal vs. Impersonal
Do you prefer personal styles of papers or impersonal? How do you deal with the one you do not prefer? What are your strengths in the one you prefer? How will this influence what you do for the next paper assignment?
Journal Item 17
Weaknesses and Improvements
What are your major weaknesses as a writer or a student and how will you work to improve them? How does this class help? What will you do to continue building up those traits after you leave the class?
Journal Item 18
Strengths
What do you think are your writing strengths? How do you make sure to utilize your strengths? Do you think these strengths are significant enough for you to pass to the next class? Why or why not?