Notes and Materials for Week 5

HW for Week 6

Your main task for next week is to write a first draft of your popular science article (see the previous chapter in the syllabus for the basic assignment guidelines). 

Before you start work on your draft, please read the short essay "Shitty First Drafts" by Anne Lamott. 

This is one my favorite essays on writing, and it's always popular with my writing students, probably because Lamott recommends a very different attitude toward writing than is often seen in teachers and students. I hope her irreverence and humor make you feel a bit more relaxed as you write your first draft. 

The draft you bring next week can be a "shitty first draft," in the sense that it doesn't have to be perfect. But please aim for your draft to be more or less complete - that is, not missing any major parts. It's better if you have lots of raw "material" to work with. Next week, you'll get feedback from your classmates, and then you'll have one more week after that to revise and turn in an "improved" first draft to IS for feedback from me.    

Please present your writing as you imagine it looking in its published form. In other words – feel free to include images, links, and whatever other multimedia elements you think would be appropriate and attractive.

DON’T include a cover page, your UČO, or any other “schoolwork”-type formatting things.

But please DO give your work a title or headline (since every published work would have one of these!), and don’t forget to put the author’s name (YOUR name) somewhere at the top (or bottom) of the article.

Please save your work in a Word-compatible file format (.doc) so that it’s easy for your classmates and teachers to share and comment on.

Please BRING a copy of your draft to the next class to share with your classmates. If you have it on a laptop or tablet, that’s great. Or you can also print out a hard copy and bring that. But please don’t bring a copy only on your phone – no one wants to read or work with your text on such a tiny screen.   

Remember - perfectionism is a great enemy of writers! So give yourself plenty of time to have fun, experiment, and take risks with your writing – and then, when it’s time to let it go, let it go…

OPTIONAL readings: 

Here are two additional handouts, "Quick Guide to Quotation" and "Managing Quotation and Attribution in a Popular Article," which might help you compose more sophisticated and professional sentences using quotations in your article:

See you soon!