Category: Nonfiction

First a scribbled journal entry, my tutor and I worked to harness more feeling in this piece and avoid over-explanation.

This essay was still in the beginning phase when I submitted it for feedback. As the story deals with the recent death of my dog, I was consumed in finding a focus for the story. My tutor provided a few comments on syntax and structure, but her comment on a line she deemed “beautiful” stood out to me the most and became one of the few lines I kept from that first draft; the line was referencing the fear of the moment when I found the last stray dog hair.

My main focus in the editing process was on the point of view. My piece plays with multiple perspectives: a personal perspective which focuses on my own experiences, as well as a “you” perspective that alternates between a “you” character as the narrator and a character in the story who is experiencing Chicago for the first time. The “you” perspective sounds confusing and convoluted even through a quick explanation, but the feedback I received helped me work through some of the clunkier perspective transitions.

I ended up revising the story to reflect more on my relationship with my mom as well as this specific memory; I hinted at it in the original but held back as this was one of the first times I tried describing our relationship. I ended up including the second section from a different project to help elaborate a bit more on the importance of this moment and, in a way, my mom. The last big change was switching the order of the two main sections as they were originally the other way around. After making that change, the narrative flows better and aids in conveying the complexity of a strained relationship with one’s parent.

The specific feedback I received was to separate my two original writings. Together they didn’t work and the feedback to keep them as separate stand alone pieces proved to be correct. Originally, I had a preceding piece (Dogs Pt. I) which spoke to my love for my first dog. I expressed the friendship we shared and details of his last week which was the most significant death I had experienced up until that point in my life. But, it didn’t flow with (Part II). It was best to remove it and save for later.

In its early stages, this piece felt almost like three distinct parts crammed together even though it isn’t long enough to support that. The most helpful feedback I received was to compare those sections to find out what was making them feel different from each other and then to try to bridge those those gaps until it was one continuous story. We realized some of the divide was coming from the fact that most of the interesting creative stylistic choices about grammar and style were concentrated in the middle of the piece; incorporating those throughout helped with cohesion. Now, those stylistic choices build throughout the piece until you get to the end which ends with a kind of standalone poem.

One person [at Writers Guild] said that the ending was a little “over-explainy.” I bore [this] in mind as I made my revisions, but I didn’t make any drastic changes because I feel like it works well. They said conveying the message of this piece through action could be more effective. So this time around, I focused on making the plot of this piece unique to one particular evening. Before, I had posed the situation I was in as generalizable to all the times my grandparents took us to Toby’s.

The feedback I received on this piece was based on the stylistic components. This helped a bunch as sometimes I just have too much to say and can’t slow down to figure out if it all fits together. Due to the feedback, I was able to cut down on some unnecessary adverbs that I used as well as some words that came off as redundant. In the end, it helped with my rhythm and clarity throughout the piece by removing clunky structure and confusing sentences. I was able to finally hear some parts that may be muddled because I can stay stuck in my own perspective.

My introduction I completely rewrote in order to more blatantly hint at the death of Bob. I also included more thorough descriptions of Lazlo and Bob in comparison.

I received feedback about the content and how to improve the direction of the story as well as give it more authenticity. I added three paragraphs to give the story more context and depth. I also changed the title of the piece.