Example of Student Using Corpse or Relaxation Pose for Revision

Below is an example of a first-year college student's work with the Relaxation or "Corpse" Pose for Revision. She completed this work as a low-stakes exercise, applying the method to a longer project in genre analysis. Kylie Leydon is a student at Salem State University. 

For steps in teaching this exercise (or using it on your own writing), see the post from November 1, 2018.

Conclusion Paragraph:

This conclusion is way too short. I used the terms “I” and “you” too often.  I need to sum up my ideas better. Maybe relate it more to the concept and main ideas of this assignment- it is too brief and not formal enough for a college assignment.  I need to relate back to the idea of Genre and my coupons…how did I learn from it?  I need to write more- perhaps details and examples- on my analysis section.  This is my weakest paragraph I think.  More “formal” words are needed to my piece.  Don’t talk like you are to friends- you are passing this in for a grade.  Conclusions are the most important pieces of an essay. Make it count.  This part of my writing is “jumbled” and thrown together almost out of a last resort to get this over with.  Pay more attention to summing up your ideas.  I need stronger sentences to sum up/ conclude my ideas.  Formality and organization is key in a rhetorical analysis, so I must take time to review this work.  I want to achieve a good grade, so I need to start putting in better work and pay more attention in focusing and expanding on my ideas.

Second to last paragraph:

What even is this topic sentence “Genre is often viewed differently for each person?”…. Were you seriously going to turn that in? Again, I need to make this formal.  Even though it is a letter to the future students, it states right in the directions that it is formal.  In this paragraph I need to look back on the rhetoric of my genre more.  I need to make sure that I am looking at the questions in the prompt and answer them more properly.  I need to use better language and expand my ideas while maintaining formality and professionalism.  I need to ensure that the quote fits where I placed it as well.  I feel like I kind of just threw it in there as a last resort to fulfill this requirement and I feel that I can expand my ideas more.  I feel that I am either using too many short, choppy sentences or too many long sentences lacking voice.  Sentence structure is key in any essay and it is important to keep interest.  Review the concluding sentence as well and see if any transitions can help with this section of my writing as well.  I feel like the length of my paragraph is strong although the content could use some revisions and work.  This is the finale before the conclusion…end on a strong finish.

Third to last paragraph: 

I need a strong conclusion that links my main idea to my paragraph.  I am simply just going into my requirements and answering questions on the prompt instead of forming coherent paragraphs and sentences.  I need to focus more and use the skills I have to form the quality of paragraphs that I am capable of writing.  I do like the detail of the first sentence and I may decide to keep this but I feel it needs to be in the content and body of my paragraph writing.  I also feel that I can eliminate some “flowery” words and add some colons like we learned in class to make my words mean more and get to the point quicker.  I can eliminate some words that actually take away from my piece like “ultimately”, “things”, and even “some” to strengthen my vocabulary and purpose behind writing this analysis.  I need to stay on topic and be more concise.  Stop starting your sentences off with the same few words and use variation to make your ideas have more meaning.  Gain a unique voice and do not try to fulfill a genre simply by filling in what ever you feel.  Stop sounding like a robot. Your sentences have no meaning when you are answering every question on the prompt.  Focus, focus, focus!

Intro Paragraph:

I know it’s okay to not be the typical “five paragraph essay” but it does certainly feel weird.  Since it is not set up like one, I feel like I need to make my intro stronger or perhaps break it up.  Intros are not supposed to be really long but what if it’s on a letter? Is that ok?  Something about my first sentence doesn’t feel right to me.  I keep reading it and keep wishing that it wasn’t on my paper every time.  I’m going to change it.  I need to introduce my preconceptions first I think.  I can take out unnecessary phrases such as “as I am a commuter student”, “the first thing”, and “I would mock the genre of coupons as I find them ironic”. Looking back, I question what I was thinking when I thought that it was a good idea to write that on a paper that I was going to turn in.  Maybe I’m going into too much detail in the first paragraph and I can fuse some of the sentences into other ones? I don’t know.  I need to reduce the number of times I say the word “I” and look for other words to avoid during formal essays.  Do not use words that you would when talking to friends and instead replace them with words you know are formal enough for a college professor to read.  Not a super awful paragraph but some revisions and editing will improve the content of my genre analysis piece.

What I learned  from the Relaxation Method and how I plan to implement:

I always dread the editing and revision stage to any one of my projects or assignments.  I often find it hard to remove or change information because I feel that I already said everything that I could possibly say.  I also find my audience very close.  I feel that by re-reading I can only find the bad within my writing and never the good.  It is almost as if when I read some parts that do not sound pleasant, I wish that it was already turned in because I really do not want to have to look at it again.  

This corpse/ relaxation pose was very different and was certainly a first.  I knew that my analysis piece was worse than my creative piece so I wanted to work on that. I noticed myself calling out my lack of formality on my essay and the need to better organize and expand on my thoughts.  I found that I had a lot of unnecessary words and phrases as well.  I will include more clarity on the genre assignment perhaps and even relate more back to the genre of coupons that I chose.  I am going to vary my sentence structure thus incorporating more voice into my writing and I am going to ensure that all my sentences are in the proper place backed up with explanations and details.  

I find that I will do this exercise more often.  It is a great way to write down initial thoughts on your work from end to start then actually let the ideas slide away as you push the papers on the floor out of thought.  It is like gaining a clean slate every paragraph and is an overall great activity to constantly be aware and conscious of your words in the moment.  I was not preoccupied with prior thoughts and it felt good to let it all go.

Bullsheet: A Type of Deep Revision

 Over the past few years of teaching, I have handed out a sheet similar to the image to the left to initiate a discussion of what I call "deep revision." (The handout was given to me many xeroxed years ago by a fellow MFA student, Herman Fong.)

I tell students with prior Western art history knowledge to sit still for a moment while those students who have no idea that the artist is Picasso bat back & forth the questions: "Which is the first draft bull? Which the final version? What would be possible equivalencies for a writing process?"

I tell my writing students that I'm less interested in the reality (i.e.: the final bull is at the bottom of the middle column) and more interested in their perceptions about what it takes to revise, to reach such a radical change in an artist's perceptions. This work, I say, was from a point in this painter's career in which he had reached notoriety, but he was not satisfied with remaining in place.

Re-vision. The importance to get down on one's knees as an artist and rethink one's entire approach. What I call my "Martha Graham" moments--thinking of how the legendarily hardworking dancer spent years crouched on a hard wooden floor trying to work through her aesthetic. It's the willingness to put everything on the table, to be able to relinquish any component of a piece, no matter how hard it was achieved or what others have already said of it. Perhaps even your "signature" gesture as an artist.

What does it take to do a type of deep revision? It can entail identifying a structural question in one's text and meditating on it fiercely, with perhaps fewer or no provisions for self-expression or personal emotion. To identify a structural element and take it much deeper, yards deeper than one would normally go. It means taking on deep issues such as:

* one's subjectivity (are you willing, for instance, to change your whole outlook--indeed, your personality? the way you proceed with life? the way you look at the world?)

* one's relation to truth and fact

* one's writerly "crutches," habits, and support systems

* a single formal element (figurative language or even the use of prepositions) and making it the dominant organizing feature

* the logical progression of one's meaning: deductive? inductive?

* the moral framework of one's meaning: a different sort of implication

Change like this is right around the corner. It's in the frame of the next moment. But it's certainly not easily achieved. It takes a radical groundlessness, a freedom from preconceived notions about one's work, about oneself.

It is easy to fool oneself or others. For instance, this Bull seems like it could be done. It seems like a sufficient amount of revision face time has been put in:

 

No one else would probably know what you know: that your work is not yet done. I've sent out
Bulls like this one to literary journals or to writer friends under the guise of a finished product, knowing full well that my work remained before me.

To end up with the last Bull, the get-it-right Bull, the one the writer knows is the final product, that is one of the biggest rewards of this writing life:

20 Versions: One Way to Train in Impermanence

 

Picture of Don Murray

Legendary writing professor Don Murray once proposed that we think of 1,000 rewrites for a piece of our writing.  Instead of 1,000, come up with 20 versions of a text you’re writing, thinking of changes in style, content, and even genre. * SD indicates a revision that keeps the piece the same type of document or genre.

 

Here's how it looked when I tried out this exercise:

 

Original document:

1. Scholarly article on history of figurative language and creative writing

 

Its Transformations:

 

1.  article for trade journal (professional writers) on same topic

2. an interview (of contemporary creative writers) on topic for a trade journal
3. incorporate an interview section (of creative writers) in the scholarly article SD
4. humorous piece on how academia limits creativity of faculty
5. poem that has the simile as its topic (figurative language)
6. a talk at a conference for creative writers
7. a talk at a conference for historians of rhetoric
8. add a personal or autobiographical section  SD
9. blog posting (for educators or for poets)
10. statement on professional web page
11. incorporate into a teaching philosophy statement document
12. incorporate actual 19^th century student creative writings as examples SD
13. incorporate lectures on figuration from 19^th century Harvard professors SD
14. turn into full-length scholarly book
15. turn into a cartoon or illustration for something
16. turn into a PowerPoint for faculty
17. article about poetic license as it occurs today
18. same article as #17 for Humanities faculty only
19. personal essay that starts with a simile and metaphor about this topic in my writing and teaching life
20. a freewrite on same topic

This method promotes impermanence by keeping the genre of one's writing open. You don't have rigid preconceptions about genre, for one thing. In turn, by allowing the genre to even stay in-flux, you are making good use of the absence of audience during the writing moment (because genre is connected to particular audience expectations). You're taking control of the audience-in-the-head. For me, this method resulted in a poem (included at end of my second book, Lid to the Shadow, as well as a scholarly article in College Composition and Communication.)

 

Conceptual Metaphors for the Writing Experience



waldzen

What sorts of metaphors or imagery about writing are you carrying around in your head?

As I've said on previous posts, it's important to consult your intrapersonal or inner dialog in order to write with ease, trust, and fluency. (See the post, "How to Make Contact with Your Inner Dialog" from September 2012, for instance.)

Part of noticing that intrapersonal conversation involves finding out how we talk to ourselves about our writing. So we turn to the intrapersonal to find content but also to find our opinions about the writing process, audience, and our writing ability. Chances are very good that those intrapersonal opinions are having a great deal of influence on a person's writing experience--and ability. It's important then to be mindful of those views we're carrying around because they have a tendency to operate unseen and unheard.

One of the best ways to become mindful of these internal commentaries is to conduct a search for any conceptual metaphors or images pertaining to writing.

Conceptual metaphors organize our everyday functioning: they organize our perceptions and actions. As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors We Live By put it: conceptual metaphors (also called cognitive metaphors) are "pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action,"

More than just a metaphor in a single sentence or line of poetry, conceptual metaphors are large conglomerates of thought. As Philip Eubanks describes them, they are "metaphor expressions [that] recruit larger metaphoric concepts." An easy example is the conceptual metaphor in English that "Time is Money." Behind this three-word metaphoric phrase is an influential belief of common assumption; it has the potential to change what you do in the next hour or how you go about the rest of your adult life.

Or your adult writing life.

Let's turn to a few common words for different aspects or moments in the writing process.

While each of these is not a metaphoric phrase per se, they each contain an image or association, in part because of their connotative language:

Draft
Brainstorming
Freewriting
Prewrite
Outline
Rewrite
Revision
Feedback
Proofreading

We regularly use these terms to talk about writing, yet each of them carries around usually unrecognized assumptions and views about what it means to write.

Draft: breezy, temporary, fleeting, insubstantial, invisible (notice only its effects). As one of my graduate students also said--draft, as in pulling a draft beer (a volume, abundance, a small sample from a much larger supply).

So those could be connotations of "draft," but what might be the effect of those connotations?

(One way to figure this out is to come up with alternatives or synonyms for a word. A synonym for "draft" would be "stage." How is "stage" different in what it suggests than "draft"? By finding alternatives, you can better notice the original language.)

Well, for one, if we carry around the idea of an early stage of a composition as fleeting, this could correspond nicely with the sense of impermanence, if we are of the Buddhist mindset. That breeziness or invisibility, however, could make early writing seem hard to catch--and increase the difficulty of starting out on a piece. Then again, if draft is like pulling from a keg, this suggests a big inner supply.

Each of the words on that list (and many others) can be explored. Please tell us what you think. What are the connotations of those ordinary words about writing? What sorts of imagery do they contain for you? After you find an image or connotation for one of the words, ask yourself, "What could be the impact on my writing experience of that image or connotation?" Send along your comments below.