Update from Professor Bennion

Hello!

Well, Christmas break is over now.  Time to buckle down and sprint to the end.  My honors thesis is due January 16th, and I will defend it in March. Dr. Burton and I have agreed that I should have my eBook finished by the time of my defense.

For now, here is an email I received from Professor Bennion, my honors faculty mentor:

Sorry to take so long.  I had a lot to read as I left England.  This is about finished.  Most of my comments just deal with sentences and word clarity.  I think you should spend a few hours thinking about the ending.  It's good, but it can be better as you think about the trouble you've had since coming home.  I don't think you need to narrate it day by day, but how seriously you've been unseated is told instead of being evoked or enacted.  That's an exaggeration. but I think you could be even more precise and clear about how difficult it's been.  And if you have come to a tentative peace about it, you might make more clear how difficult that was.  The last essay is slightly too quick.  As I said earlier, I think it's good but that it can be better.  This certainly can be defended in January. 

I do also hope that you're feeling better.

Self Publishing Thoughts

As Professor Burton has pointed out to me, I need to be working on the digital component of my personal essay project while I am drafting.  This way, I can promote my eBook and connect with a perspective audience before they are even finished.

I'm trying to get more connected with the writing networks available online.  I attended an online chat session a few weeks ago and found some of their blogs which have been a fantastic starting point.  I came across the blog Literary Lab, kept by writers Domey Malasarn, Scott G.F. Bailey, and Michelle Davidson Argyle.  In this blog, I found a great post on self publishing that is frank and honest about some of the ins and outs of self-publishing.  Here are some points I learned that I need to focus on as I think about my eBook.

Price- The author of this post argues that you need to put just as much time and funding into the professional look and editing of your book.  She really emphasized making the cover captivating.  I've got some photographs, but I wonder if I should start looking at this more seriously, and sooner than i thought.

And off of that point, I was not planning on charging anything for this eBook.  To me it was more important to just get the information out there and promoting my first publication than to make any money.  This blog post also talked more specifically about how much it cost to make her first book and how much she made in the end.

If self publishing book is what I want to do in the future for a career, then this would be really important to learn sooner than later.

Revising and an Update

I am up to my head in personal essays needing serious, surgical, life-threatening revision.  I was hoping to get around to more of that this weekend, but after pumping out a new draft, "Snot and Stories" that looks at the Tibetan situation, my thoughts on America, etc, I was short on time.  I'm glad to have a new essay out, but I'm noticing a few themes I need to work on.

First, as Professor Bennion said, I need to work on being more objective in my essays.

Second, at Professor Burton's advice, I need to include a lot more setting detail.  India is sensory overload, and I need to portray that.  I want to.  I can see it quite clearly still.  I just have to go back and fill it all in.  Hopefully that brings it to life a bit better.

And third, at my own personal critique, I want to have a nicer form for my next essay.  I've been poking around in The Art of the Personal Essay, an anthology I reviewed here, trying to find a potential form I could imitate.  Reviewing the intro was also helpful.  It confirmed what I have already discovered.  Personal essay writing is downright vulnerable!  I keep coming back to Virginia Woolf.  Even though I know I'm never going to be as cool as her, and that her style just doesn't fit my voice as well as I'd always hoped it would, I want to try it for at least one.  Just to see...

Another large, overriding issue I need to work out is the honors requirements for a creative thesis.  I thought I was on top of it, but after checking out two previous students theses from the library (Emily Davis "To England and Back" and Elizabeth K.M. Busby "Life Expectant") I think I'm supposed to be working more on a fancy intro and abstract than on a more research looking paper.  Hmm...

Reading these theses was a great experience though.  Both were former students of my honors advisor, Professor Bennion.  I identified more with Emily's work and themes, but in each it was nice to see just what kind of subjects I can take up and play with in a personal essay.  It's also fun to turn the pages between the blue covers, knowing that if I finish this and do it well, maybe some kid in the future will do the same with my thesis someday. 

Feedback from Professor Bennion

Well, I now have four rough drafts of some personal essays to include in my upcoming eBook and honors thesis.  The first essay, a bus ride to McLeod, but also through my thoughts and motivations to travel; another essay on my disillusionment with Buddhism; one on the complex nature of charity; and another on making sense of marriage.  I've been working closely with Professor Burton and Professor Bennion on revisions, and so that is the goal of this week.

But I've learned something in the process.  Personal essays are hard.  Vulnerable, embarrassing at times, soul mining, and more.  All of the ethical questions I explored in Ghana regarding creative nonfiction are staring at me right in the face.  Yet, I have to be honest.  I have to be accurate if they are ever going to get off the ground.  This is a unique opportunity for me to revisit India in a way I never was able to with Ghana, to make sense of it and create something that others can read and understand something of what I have experienced in a way that is meaningful.  

Here are some sections of general advice that Dr. Bennion gave me this week that I found extremely helpful, particularly on how to be more objective in my writing of a personal essay:

Talking with Dr. Burton: Project Updates!

After talking with Dr. Burton, my faculty mentor for my field study project and overseer or my Digital Civilization course contract, I've learned a few things about where I am and where I need to go from here:

First, I need to draft, draft, draft my personal essays!  So far I have been able to do two, but I have a tentative date to be semi finished with them by December 1st so I can get on to the digital aspect of them and create my eBook.  I've been a terrible perfectionist lately, and Dr. Burton had to talk me off the ledge and let me know that I should be sending him stuff early on in the process.  Personal essays are just so vulnerable, and I think that it is scary!  I'm overcoming that though.  It should be a good exercise in general to stop editing like mad, especially if I am going in the wrong direction.

I also learned that as I am drafting these essays, I need to be thinking about audience and basically market my essays- sell my product before it is finished. 

To do this I need to first, believe it is possible, and second, figure out how to do it.

Email from Professor Burton: Some Direction on July 22, 2011

Here is another email from my field study faculty mentor giving me more direction for my project.

Rachel:

I'm somewhere in the middle of Illinois driving home right now. This morning, stopping at a tiny town in Indiana for gas, the store smelled of curry and I guessed the family of Indians behind the counter were from Gujarat. "Are you speaking Gujarati?" I asked. Stunned, they said yes.

India stays with you.

I've read all your recent blog posts, and I am very happy with how you have been writing and processing things. The visit from Ashley sounded very timely, and I second her advice about drafting. You seem nervous about this, and I don't want you to fall prey to this idea that you need months to process things first. Think of it this way: There are some things you can write or draft only while in the field, only while your legs are bunched up in that sari or you are wondering whether that bottle of water you bought had its seal broken. There is an authenticity to "in situ" composing. The press of time you feel in the field can be a great benefit to someone like you who has too many threads to weave.

Email from Professor Burton: Checking in July 3, 2011

This is part of an email response from my field study faculty mentor, Dr Burton, on connecting and the importance of social discovery.

Rachel:

When will you all be headed to Amritsar?

Are you finding other creative writers abroad? Not just in India? And I do want to encourage you to diversify your means of social discovery, particularly by thinking in terms of "marketing" your experience. If you haven't already, review my post on Social Discovery (http://digitalcivilization.blogspot.com/2010/11/social-discovery.html). And as you can, browse my recent students' blog posts relating to that from Spring (especially the ones where they commented on finding people to invite to our webinar or to read our eBook). I know this seems like I'm beating a dead horse, but if there is anything I would change in my teaching it would be accelerating this and expanding it. Social discovery is both finding and telling, so keep it up and keep me posted. Tried reaching out to various educators?

Check in again soon.

Dr. Burton

(From a church parking lot in Culpeper, Virginia)

Sent from my iPad

Email from Professor Burton: Checking in June 29, 2011

Here is the last update I have received from my field study faculty mentor, Dr. Burton.  Apart from working on my honors thesis prospectus, this is what we have been talking about:

Rachel:

I've read all of your posts, even if I haven't commented much. I'm on
the road extensively during the next four weeks. Today and tomorrow,
Chicago.

First, kudos on making so many efforts to connect. I wrote a post about connecting yesterday, based in part on my reflections of what
you have been doing (and other recent students). You know I'm figuring
out the connect thing right beside you.

Honors Prospectus Advice from Dr. Burton

After sending Professor Bennion and Professor Burton a copy of my second prospectus draft I received this email back.  It also comments on where I need to improve in the connecting part of this project.

Rachel:

I haven't spoken with John, but I do think some kind of combo of creative nonfiction and blog is possible, and your proposal is getting there, but there are some clarifications needed. Since you are at the end of week four right now, you should probably press ahead as you've proposed in your methods and schedule. I'm happy to see the increased frequency of your blogging and to read the character sketches you've done so far, so press on regardless of proposal issues.

On methodology, since you are taking an anthropological approach and bringing in Geertz, it would seem you really must problematize your methods and modes of representation. You need to define and call into question the legitimacy and authenticity of traditional creative writing, writing that draws upon (exploits?) a population and potentially misrepresents it. In your case, I would expect this to bring in the relationship between the travel essays and the blog (does the latter help address the problems of the former, or merely deepen the distance from the storytellers?). These are all questions you are up for, especially following your Ghana focus.