(The) Writer's Mind: Notes on Writing Reflection Part 2
Instructions:
Beginning in the present, recount a recent event in which a strength showed up ALONG with some limitation (some "bite"), which will serve as a trigger for reflection. This may then provide the occasion for "traveling" to the past to search out the "cause." This will assist you in invoking the narrative present from which to engage in reflection ABOUT the past, and it will provide you with a "frame" for the entire essay. The aim of your reflection is to reveal some insight into the nature of identity (strengths borne of failures to be, do, or have), but using your unique set of experiences and possibilities as the ROOT of your reflection (the scenes you have written). Therefore, you must incorporate at least one scene from the past, if not two (the preadolescence and adolescence scenes) within the new essay. Also to be incorporated are the RESULTS the strengths have brought the character narrator in life since the "cause" narratives, and what costs/bites have come along with the strength? That will require you to uncover the strength's double-edged-ness: while it brings about success, it also bites back in some way. NOTE 1: exposition is inauthentic interpretation: think of Dr. Phil or Opra. Exposition provides us with ready-made ways of seeing the world common to all (being right, looking good, already knowing, and the overall mood of complacency). Bringing some authenticity to these ways of seeing the world turns exposition into reflection, especially when your source material includes scenes from your life that communicate emotionally with your addressee. NOTE 2: you are writing TO or addressing someone, though that doesn't mean you need to use "you" (please don't, and please avoid the present tense, unless you are doing some special narrative trick). What it does mean is that you are out to shift the mood of your addressee from one state to another concerning the nature of identity, that somehow this discussion you are having with them will make some difference in their lives. (keep in mind that I am not the addressee--I am evaluating your skill in addressing your addressee) NOTE 3: one "trick" to this is seeing and reflecting on how a strength is the purpose of a controlling value, and its limitation occurs when an opposing controlling value "sees" it as a context (in other words, as a failure). |