Blog 5

    In order to tighten up the draft of my first essay, I think I would want to look at clarifying some elements of the story that I hadn't really thought of at first. For example there are elements of my family dynamic that are well known to me but not made explicit, or maybe even implicit in my draft. Certain other details too, like things about my dad, including why, as the type of man he is, he would insist on doing an athletic activity like this despite his physical condition. I would like to talk about my family's history at the beach a little bit more. This would be particularly useful in the event that I manipulate this story to talk more about my dad, or me and my dad and our relationship. What kind of a guy he is and what kind of man I think I've become and how much one has been impacted by the other. I also plan to go into, at least somewhat, my relationship with my brother, if for no other reason than to establish that I am the eldest and he is the baby, or younger than me. I'm still not exactly sure what the fine point on the end of this might be, though I have a much clearer idea than I did. I think if I were to work on this piece, in the round of editing following this one I would want to start to try and make my language count for a little more. I feel as the draft is now and as it will likely remain in its next iteration, it lacks some of the tightness, some of the dense word-by-word punch that we have seen in CNF, where the best pieces use every single deliberately chosen word to some effect. Not that I'm near that level, but if we're looking at the best as examples it can't hurt to try and emulate them if you can, I think. So long as you're not doing damage to the piece you're working on. And I hope I wouldn't be doing that.
    I also, in this most immediate round of editing would like to work a little more closely with segmentation. I felt that my draft was reasonably well segmented according to action or ideas, each little chunk focusing on one part of the story, but looking back it really just seems like one paragraph after another until its over. I would like to try to get it to a place where each break has some meaning beyond "then something else happened" or "I thought of something different," if not an even more legitimate significance. Finally I'd like to work with the imagery here. For me the sights, sounds, smells, and physical sensations are a big part of this story, and while I lay on some detail about the scene here and there, I'd like to make those descriptions more concise, and try to imbue them with some significance beyond mere setting.