Writing Homework Help

For your first assignment you will be writing a personal essay.

We will be reading many examples of personal essays in class and learning to write about ourselves in our journals, so you should have plenty of inspiration to influence you as think about your topic. One suggestion I’d like to make is that you should not try to write a biography or tell your whole life’s story in this short essay. Instead, you should find a specific event or series of events, or topic, theme, belief, or idea that has informed your life in some way and write about that. I want to get you thinking like a writer of creative non-fiction. You will be writing non-fiction but you will learn to use the techniques of a fiction writer to develop voice, build scene, tension and narrative, as well as to personally connect with your audience and create a beautiful piece of art. 

This essay and the unit surrounding it should be a lot of fun for us. Don’t be afraid to be creative, be brave, bold, and analytical. Look within yourself or critically at your own life, even when it is painful or embarrassing – in fact, if something you are writing is making you uncomfortable, I encourage you to probe even deeper because it means you are probably onto something.