Ok, so this week into next will be a few different posts. I have a couple interviews to put up. One is with Dr. Lea Graham and the other is with graduate student Keara Driscoll. This post, however, will be about WRITING SAMPLES! I used the previous week to go through my nonfiction samples and select a few to revise actively on this blog for people to see. Many were written last semester in my nonfiction workshop with Dr. Graham. I do have a longer, 15 page reckoning essay that I may send in with my applications, but for the purposes of this blog, the shorter pieces will be more helpful for everyone to take a look at.
One of my first recommendations is to GET FEEDBACK! I’m still considering applying in the fiction area as well, so I asked another professor, Dr. Anderson, who taught my play writing workshop, if he wouldn’t mind helping me out with that. However, I may wait until the spring to apply to a fiction program, after I take the Fiction workshop at Marist. Dr. Graham has already made really instructive comments about some of these pieces when I handed them in to be graded. So I already have some work that I can do. However, having feedback from my professors is what is most helpful and will be down the road.
Another recommendation, pick pieces you are CONFIDENT in! Even though they may need some revision work, pick pieces to work with that you are comfortable sending to a college. For example, you wouldn’t want to send in a piece filled with vulgarity and sexual content. But you may be able to tone it done or incorporate some of the really great, clean parts into another piece. Send your best writing. As Pat Taylor told me, the writing samples are extremely important. Sometimes picking pieces you feel strongly about help as well. Using work from creative writing classes is also a great idea because you can still talk to the teachers and get feedback.
One more recommendation, talk to other graduate students. I spoke with Caela about her writing samples and she even sent me the one that she sent with her application. Get a feel for what the schools are looking for. Be familiar with the programs you’re applying to. You want your writing to fit in where you’re going. Some programs have different focuses than others and you want to be at the right program.
My first writing sample will be posted under the link and I will also include Dr. Graham’s comments to me from last semester. In a week or so, I will hopefully be posting a revision of this essay. Or I may decide to keep it as is and begin working on another.
One final comment, writing samples vary from school to school. Some ask for 10-15 pages, others ask for 30. So be aware of how much you are able to send and how much you WANT to send.
Ok, so this essay was a solid A-. I worked relentlessly on it for a good month before I was satisfied enough to hand it in. As is evident by Dr. Graham’s comments, I can take it further. I’m actually glad I got a short break from it because I was able to take a step back and realize some things I didn’t before. I was too close to it.
“Addie,
A solid essay! But I think you know that as you worked hard enough on it. The images are consistent as are the narrative arcs. The reflection is also there, but needs to go deeper and make some connections and tell the reader "what you know now." What do you know and feel now about this name that you have insisted on over the years? That has been a disappointment to your grandmother (well, not the name but the sounds of the home language),that has been hurtful and confusing when the school formality met the home's casual or colloquial, when your friends have come up with intimate as well as public nicknames for you and when a beloved has changed what he's called you. How do you feel about it now after all of this?
There's a few things that I want to point out (as maybe they will help you in the final?):
1) Look at the opening lines of each of the paragraphs. How do they connect? Sometimes they do in a peripheral way, but sometimes they either sound repetitive or seem to just be written like "Point #2" in a scholarly essay (although, even scholarship has an art to it!) Still, try to think about how paragraphs can be linked by word, phrase or idea--even as they move into completely different territory. Which leads to my next point...
2) The reflection needed to be shown/go deeper. How is it you start with your grandmother's disappointment (and love) about who you are and end with the boyfriend's adoption of that name, ending with what you remember when he's not around? What's the connection for you? Intimacy? Exclusivity? Who do you let call you what? I think that was suggested but never really addressed. There's a self-protection, a lack of risk in one version (or more ) of this name, maybe? Ok, I realize these are difficult issues to take on so late in the semester, but maybe it will help you dig deeper in the reflection in your final essay. It's all there, Addie!”
A solid essay! But I think you know that as you worked hard enough on it. The images are consistent as are the narrative arcs. The reflection is also there, but needs to go deeper and make some connections and tell the reader "what you know now." What do you know and feel now about this name that you have insisted on over the years? That has been a disappointment to your grandmother (well, not the name but the sounds of the home language),that has been hurtful and confusing when the school formality met the home's casual or colloquial, when your friends have come up with intimate as well as public nicknames for you and when a beloved has changed what he's called you. How do you feel about it now after all of this?
There's a few things that I want to point out (as maybe they will help you in the final?):
1) Look at the opening lines of each of the paragraphs. How do they connect? Sometimes they do in a peripheral way, but sometimes they either sound repetitive or seem to just be written like "Point #2" in a scholarly essay (although, even scholarship has an art to it!) Still, try to think about how paragraphs can be linked by word, phrase or idea--even as they move into completely different territory. Which leads to my next point...
2) The reflection needed to be shown/go deeper. How is it you start with your grandmother's disappointment (and love) about who you are and end with the boyfriend's adoption of that name, ending with what you remember when he's not around? What's the connection for you? Intimacy? Exclusivity? Who do you let call you what? I think that was suggested but never really addressed. There's a self-protection, a lack of risk in one version (or more ) of this name, maybe? Ok, I realize these are difficult issues to take on so late in the semester, but maybe it will help you dig deeper in the reflection in your final essay. It's all there, Addie!”
So, thank you Dr. G! These comments are the starting point for the writing sample process.
"The Name Game" by Addie
“Come stai, Bella?”queried Nonna in flawless Italian as I bound into her kitchen on a spring afternoon. My white Keds squeaked on the tile and the faint smells of garlic and tomato sauce lingered. She called me “Bella”. Come over here, Bella. Bella, Bella, Bella. She called me her “beautiful Bella”. She never stopped. Her lips always forming the “b” sound, then flowing through the “ella”. I could never say it the way she did.
She’d always be stationed at the kitchen table, her Nebulizer perched in her hands, ready for use. “Che ore sono?”she’d ask the next time. I looked at her blankly, stared at the faded pink plastic table cloth that still had breakfast crumbs scattered around the edges. My mind went into overdrive, pressure in my eardrums thudding with my heavy heartbeat. Nothing stuck from lessons. My tongue poised at the roof of my mouth, throat tight. Pugnaciously, I shrugged my shoulders and said, “2 o’clock”, denying her the musical, flowing Italian that I should have known. She would shake her head before the room succumbed to the loud, thrumming sound of her Nebulizer. Smoke billowed from the end and disappeared in the cavernous kitchen. I think Nonna’s hopes of a fluent, ethnic granddaughter dissipated as well.
My mother seemed to have suffered from a bout of indecisiveness. She named me Adriana but told everyone my name was Addie, for short. I go by Addie. The teachers at St. John grammar school constantly docked me points on tests because I didn’t write out, in cursive, “Adriana DiFrancesco”. Each test handed back included a nauseatingly red “-5”. I tearfully explained, “But my name is Addie”. From behind oversized gold-rimmed glasses, my teacher retorted, “Go home and have your mother pull out your birth certificate.” Until 8th grade, my papers always bore the garish, smudged, erasable blue ink heading of “Adriana”. In college, I anticipate “Adriana” during roll call. “You can call me ‘Addie’,” I quickly interject, watching her make a note next to my name.
Rachel calls me “Adaline”. She sang it down the cramped yellow and green Holy Cross hallways when everyone else just called me “runner girl”. She bellowed it out the car window when she saw me running on Oronoke Road. She calls it from Florida State, through the phone lines. Our secret names for each other, Rachel Irene and Adaline. We decided one dreary, damp fall day that these names fit us. We lay on my bed, heads hanging off the side, enjoying the rushing roar of blood to the head, as the tips of our hair brush the nubby, mauve carpet.
“I’m only going to call you ‘Adriana’ from now on!” he laughed at me from his car window, winking with a wicked grin as he sped off, spewing dirt in my direction. I watched the fading license plate to his scratched green Subaru wagon as it turned the corner. My lips twisted into a smile as I remembered his mouth pressed to mine just moments before. Right before Dad shuffled to the screen door in the garage to glare with tired eyes. That hard, fast, sneaky goodnight kiss. He could call me whatever he wanted. I was powerless around him.
First, he called me “Bu”. Not as in, “Oh hey, boo”, the way a typical boyfriend would say lovingly to his girlfriend. No. He called me “Bu” because of the Malibu, my ski boat. “Addie-bu, I love you.” I angrily told him that “Bu” is childish. It was never the same after that late night October phone call. I said “things just weren’t working out” and “we’re too young for a long distance relationship”. Yet, I secretly wished to hear “Bu” one more time as the winter months dragged on. Two years of confusing summer touches, fights. Finally, the quiet hand squeeze and smile that began the next three years. We still never call each other by our real names.
The other day, he started calling me “Bella”. No reason. He’s drunk. From 350 miles north, he says he misses me. More than ever. Wishes he was with me. The glowing green numbers on my alarm clock inform me that it is 3 a.m. I sigh into the phone, assuming this new name is the result of too many Bud Lights.
“You’re my Bella,” he whispers.
Shocked, I ask where he heard that name before. No answer. He tells me I’m his beautiful Bella. Bella, Bella, Bella. I drive to Otis Reservoir a week later. He waits for me in the doorway of his house, flop of hair in his eyes, grinning his crooked grin before running to swing me into a tight hug. “How’s my beautiful Bella?” I smile into his shoulder and he turns my face to his. “Bella”. His lips form a smiling “b” that fades into a laughing “ella”. He calls me “Bella” and hasn’t stopped. I don’t want him to. I like this name best of them all. Sometimes, that’s enough comfort when he’s away.
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My thoughts on this piece are really to just take it in a stronger direction of reflecting about what this name MEANS and how it's changed. I really want to hone in on Dr. G's comments.
See you all next post!!!!!
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