Literature and the Individual:

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Your first task this year is to introduce yourself to the class in writing, using a term and definition you find and connect with in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. You’ll describe a specific moment (not a day, or even an hour, but a snapshot in time) when you personally experienced the feeling the definition describes. This snapshot should demonstrate something important about who you believe you are as an individual.You should not, however, state this explicitly. Ultimately, your writing will be focused, full of detail, and about 2 pages long. Here’s how you’ll get to that point:

  1. Thursday and Friday, September 3 & 4: You’ll work on computers to browse through the dictionary online and take notes in your notebooks on the definitions that interest you and how or why. As you finish brainstorming some ideas, you may even begin writing a rough draft.
  1. Tuesday, September 8 & Thursday, September 10: You’ll have time on computers to write a polished rough draft. This means that you should both write the piece in its entirety and edit it thoroughly; your polished rough draft is complete when you feel comfortable submitting your writing as-is for a grade.
  1. Friday, September 11: Submit your writing to the assignment inbox in google (this is where we will examine them- you must submit here for credit). Bring a printed copy of your polished rough draft to class for peer review (yes, this means you’ll be sharing your work with a classmate).
  1. Saturday, September 12- Wednesday, September 16: Work on your own to make more meaningful revisions to your writing. We’ll be starting our study of The Body by Stephen King in class.
  1. Thursday, September 17: Your final draft is due. You will also need to submit the hard copy of your rough draft and the feedback you received from your peer reviewer.

You’ll be graded on the content of your writing (did you include lots of descriptive detail? did you stay focused on the moment? have you correctly used the “term” and its definition? does it show the reader something important about you without directly stating this quality?) as well as how you express that content (word choice, sentence structure, grammar, vocabulary and conventions). This assignment, in all its parts, will be worth 50 points toward your first semester grade, broken down as follows:

brainstorming/initial notes: 5 pointspeer review feedback: 10 points

polished rough draft: 20 pointsfinal product: 15 points