English 221: Intro to Creative Writing
Agenda: April 10, 2008
Greg Martin

Essay: Self-Evaluation

NAME______________________

•  What is your essay about? What does your essay have to say about what it's about? (What about what it's about?) Write one sentence for each question.

•  What is the most important sentence in your essay? Quote it. Why?

•  Of the craft elements we've studied, which is the most developed in your essay? Explain.

•  Which craft element did you struggle with most in drafting this essay? How so?

•  What published essay that we read influenced you the most as you drafted this essay? (Shunned; The Water Bug; The Ring of Time; Somehow Form A Family; On Impact) How did it influence you? What did you emulate? Where specifically in your essay can I find this emulation?

•  What did you learn , as you worked on this draft, that you did not know before, about yourself or about writing?

•  What are you most proud of about this essay?

•  First sentences matter. They are often the most important sentence of a story or essay. Does your first sentence create the right set of expectations for the reader, signaling what the essay is really about? How so? If not, cross it out, and write a new first sentence right now.

•  Veteran writers often say things like, “It's a draft until you die,” as a way of communicating how they always feel there is something else they would do with a story or essay or poem, if they could take it back. If you had more time, how would you revise this essay? What would you expand or develop or make more clear?