prompt for monday 28 january

For Monday, your only homework is to select a topic for your own Personal Essay. You can use the writings you have done for this class over the past two weeks, including

• the room from your childhood
• your collection of items for your writerly roles
• the experience of stereotyping
• the object you brought to class
• the list of potential topics,

...or something entirely different you've thought about outside of class. If you have trouble thinking of topics, you can use some of the activities on pp. 110-114 for ideas. Also, remember the suggestions we discussed from the textbook about what makes an effective topic.

Once you've chosen a topic, you'll compose a blog posting reflecting on your choice of topic. In it, please cover the following:

• what your topic is
• how you came to decide on that topic
• what questions do you have about the topic that you expect to work through in your writing (or, what do you want to understand about this topic that you don't fully understand now?) - remember that you don't need to have a perfectly neat 'thesis' at this stage in the process

Keep in mind that blog posts are expected to be written in paragraph form but can have a casual, conversational tone. These are more for you as a writer to practice writing and to learn to discover what you think by writing.

We'll begin to brainstorm and start drafting on Monday. Have a great weekend!