Begin at the beginning

So how hard is iot to write an effective introduction, a good first paragraph. The answer, of course, is "It depends." For most of us, what it depends on is the muse -- is she sitting on my shoulder tonight? Will she be there at three in the morning when I'm desperate to complete this f-ing essay? Or it depends on happenstance: did something happen to me today that as luck would have it relates to my paper? (Like, did I happen to be behind some dude at the corner store who was talking to the Sri Lankan guy at the counter about economic prosperity in South Asia -- only to find out that he was the author of the book I'd been frantically scouring for some good quote to slip into my essay on the very same topic? Wow, what a piece of luck! Not.)
Fortunately, for the student of writing, there are some pretty good guidelines both for writing effective intros and avoiding the not-so-effective variety. You can access these at a number of online writing centers, UNC and Purdue being two good ones (http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/introductions.html; http://owl.english.purdue.edu/workshops/hypertext/ResearchW/writeintro.html)
Or you can study these sites and read enough essays and come up with a list like I have here:

1.Vivid Description – vivid description is the foundation for all effective writing, including introductions. Using clear, concrete details and active verbs, the writer can create an impression in the reader of a SCENE.

2.Anecdote – this is the bedrock of all effective introductions. Readers are often intrigued by the stories writers use to open their essays. These brief stories require some background and context from the writer to be clear and coherent. Avoid moving so fast that your reader gets lost. Most of the other effective intros involve using an anecdote to work effectively.

3.Mistaken Impression – a kind of anecdote in which the writer describes her initial impressions of a situation, only to have those impressions reversed by the end of the introduction.

4.Thought-Provoking Question – students often like to begin their essays with a question. Keep in mind, however, that your question should be specific. It will therefore probably need some background and context (see anecdote), and thus might need to come at the end of the paragraph. You might also try to avoid asking the yes/no question – for what will happen if the reader answers “no” to your great question: “Have you ever…?”

5.Puzzling Scenario – this is similar to the Mistaken Impression, but here the writer doesn’t necessarily reverse her position in the first paragraph. Instead, she often looks at a situation that seems to work contrary to the forces of logic with an eye to solving the puzzle in the essay.

Over the next few weeks, I'll try to write some introductions in which I use these strategies. And maybe I'll give you some good examples that I find in student work -- always careful to avoid using real names, dates, or places of course. Of course!

Remember that Thursday Sept. 21 is International Peace Day.

Peace,
CK

The List

OK. So here's my list of the things I carry.

The necessities:
1. sunglasses. I'm sensitive to light and tend to wear them even when it's not real bright. my wife calls these situations the "rock star" look.
2. hat, broad-brimmed. on my dermatologist's orders, I have a green hat that I think looks vaguely military, but is probably better described as a fishing hat. from spring thru fall I try not go out without it. When I was a teenager there was a rumor flying around that wearing a hat all the time would make you bald, but it hasn't had that effect on me. I think that rumor was started by parents and grandparents who didn't like their children wearing caps all day long, especially in the house.

The accessories:
1,2,3. spiral flip pad, black pen, handkerchief. Remnants of a brief spell at a military school in an earlier life, I feel discombobulated without them. I certainly didn't retain much of my military discipline, but ever since I can't stand writing with a blue pen, and you never know when you might need to jot something down -- let alone blow your nose.

The secrets:

I'm really working to cut down on these, and on a good day I am filled with awe and wonder at the beauty of the world around me. On bad days, I carry a sense of entitlement around my neck that turns into an ugly necklace of resentment. Right now the good days tend to far outnumber the bad, which has done wonders for that crick in my neck.

All right. those seem to be the important ones for now. my students have been coming up with all sorts of interesting things that they carry, which has the curious effect of lightening my load.

Little Details

So we're reading Tim O'Brien's story "The Things They Carried" in all my classes this week, and I really think it's a great story to get the semester started off. I like starting the semester with some work with specific, concrete details, and this story has some great examples.
So I'm going to do what I asked my students to do, and list off the examples of "things the soldiers carried" that I can remember without looking back at the story, along with a brief explanation for why I think I remember it.

1. Jimmy Cross' pebble. I think I remember this because of the description of the way he carries it in his mouth. O'Brien talks about the taste of salt, and the saliva that forms when JC pops it in. That was enough to make me identify with putting something in my own mouth.

2. the letters from Martha. This is the same thing. Maybe I have an oral thing going, but O'Brien mentions early that JC knows that Martha has licked the envelopes -- maybe he even licks them himself -- and that was such a powerful image for me that I could almost taste the envelope glue myself.

3. Kiowa's hatchet. Not for the object, but for O'Brien's detail that the hatchet was Kiowa's grandfather's distrust of the whiteman. I had to read that line a few times, and so I think the image of what the hatchet reprsented stuck with me.

4. the pantyhose. of course, this is an unusual image, but I think it stayed with me because I could imagine feeling the nylon on the soft skin of my own neck. I thought they might be hot in the jungle, but who cares? To have an intimate little piece of your girlfriend touching you when you might die. That would probably be OK.

All right. So those are the ones that stick with me off the top of my head. And what I notice about each one is that they stick with me primarily not becaue of the quirky nature of the detail, but because O'Brien gives us a little tidbit about the object's history or function.
So how does that apply to writing for college composition or creative writing classes? Well, when I ask students to make lists, or to include lots of DETAILS in their writing, I often get objects -- and often unusual ones -- that are flat, that have no depth and therefore no resonance. This is certainly understandable, for it takes a lot of practice to be able to include a little bit of history, a little bit of story to an object without overdoing it. So I think we should work on that -- providing a little bit of history without overmilking it. I'll start by posting my own list of the things I carry tomorrow.

Week 1 - A Lesson in Non-attachment

I've had a certaijn lesson this week as I've been trying to get ready for the semester to begin. I'm using new technology, new tools. And sometimes (I won't say often), I will have worked on something for some time, only to find when I try to post or upload it, that it doesn't work, or doesn't look the way I want it to, or is lost forever. Certainly this is frustrating, but I know that these incidents are all a part of every area of our lives, so I'll look for the lesson. In the Baghavad Gita Krishna tells Arjuna that what is important is action, not results. Thus what is important for me and my writing, for my students and their writing is the action, to write.This seems like a good lesson here during week one. Everything is new, the routines that we might have established over the summer are disrupted. But for the writer routines are important (I'm tempted to say critical). And so in this early part of the semester I'm going to stress my own routine -- getting to this blog on a regular basis, and setting aside a specific time which is dedicated to the blog.
So what does this have to do with non-attachment? Well, I was thinking about the lines -- the words -- that we lose, either because of technological glitches or editing (which is worse?). Are they a waste of time? Certainly not. They're all there, part of the action of writing, contributing to our development as writers. So write, and write regularly. The things that we lose are important. But let them go.

The week before

So this is the week before the semester, that time of the year when I try to get my brain refired up about composition issues. Not that they ever go away, but they definitely lie dormant for certain periods during the year.
So we're gonna use blogs this semester. Yeah you right. Keep coming back here for regular comments about issues we face in class; issues that we don't face in class but that are important; and then issues that we may never face. All right. CK