Writer's Workshop Assignment - RD of Paragraphs 1-3 Due Wednesday!

Ryan Adams_Gold
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Step #1:

In the intro paragraph, reflect on a past experience that taught you something about the world around you. Take a moment and brainstorm a few memories.

Step # 2:

In the first paragraph, reveal your INITIAL reaction to an event, conversation, experience, etc. through the use of an informal anecdote. Refer to the section of Hornby's essay below for further clarification.
OH, MY SWEET CAROLINA by Ryan Adams: AN ESSAY BY NICK HORNBY

“A long time ago, when I was still teaching English to foreign students in a London language school, I gave private conversation lessons to an unhappy man who called himself Edward, even though that wasn't his name. Edward was an African living in Rome, where he was a foreign correspondent for his home-town newspaper, and he was unhappy because he was going through a divorce. But he was lucid in his unhappiness: he talked with regret, of course, but also with insight, and enormous intelligence, and his melancholy took him off to all sorts of interesting conversational places — places I never normally got to visit in the normal run of things. I remember the concentration our talks required, and the stillness and intensity they engendered; I knew that he was in pain, but when our fifty minutes were over I felt invigorated and inspired. When it was time for him to return to Rome, he asked me to go and stay with him, and I accepted the invitation.”

Step #3:

In the next section of your essay, continue by making either a contradiction to your initial observation OR further explaining your initial reaction on a deeper level. In this section, it's important to finish reporting your personal response to your experience, but do not offer analysis of the situation. Refer to the section of Hornby's essay below for further clarification:

“But when I got there, a few weeks later, he wasn't unhappy any more. He was revelling in his status as a single man, a status that, apparently, required very little self-reflection or intelligence: on the night I arrived, I found that he'd fixed us up with a couple of call-girls. I copped out, in my prissy English way, but he disappeared for forty-eight hours (leaving me with sole use of a beautiful apartment in the centre of Rome); when he came back, he told me he was engaged

Step #4:

Ok, the third section of the essay is crucial. The first sentence of your third section is the thesis statement – when you look back at the experience described in the first two paragraphs, what is your epiphany? In Hornby's essay, he reflects on his time with Edward and how Edward changes but what he truly realizes is larger than his experience with Edward - he realizes that "some people are at their best when they're miserable". Model this section of the essay by first producing a strong, active statement, like Hornby did - remember, less is more. Keep it simple - a statement - DO NOT USE "I think"!! BE STRONG!

Step #5:

To continue the 3rd paragraph, use an outside source to support your thesis – this could be a song, a scene from a film, a poem, a memory, a personal experience, a moment in a book, a quote, etc. Remember DON’T retell the story of the outside source, just use it to support your thesis statement like Hornby does below:

“Some people are at their best when they're miserable. Ryan Adams's beautiful Heartbreaker album is, I suspect, the product of a great deal of pain, and "Oh My Sweet Carolina" is its perfect, still centre, its faint heartbeat, a song so quiet that you don't want to breathe throughout its duration. (It helps that Adams got Emmylou Harris, the best harmony vocalist in the history of pop music, to sing with him on it.) On Adams's next album, Gold, he seems to have cheered up, and though that's good news for him, it's bad news for me, just as it was when Edward stopped being miserable. His upbeat songs are fine, but they sound a lot like other people's upbeat songs (you can hear the cheeriest incarnations of the Stones, Dylan and Van Morrison all over Gold); his blues gave him distinction.

Step 6:

Finally, you need to come to a conclusion about what it all means to you - this is your "Jerry Springer Final Thought". Tell the reader what you think about not revealing what could potentially be useful information, what harboring guilt can do to a person’s life, how you think excessive pride and ambition is actually a worthy quality, how bitterness toward others is actually the worst form of subjectivity. Do that and then wrap up the section with your “final thought”. See Hornby’s conclusion below:

“What rights do we have here? Are we entitled to ask other people to be unhappy for our benefit? After all, there are loads of us, and only one of them. And how can you be happy, really, if you are only ordinary in your happiness, but extraordinary in your grief? Is it really worth it? It sounds harsh, I know, but if you are currently romantically involved with someone with a real talent — especially a talent for songwriting — then do us all a favour and dump them. There might be a Heartbreaker — or a Blood On The Tracks or a Layla — in it for all of us. Thanks.”