Making of Project II

The Making of Project II: The Case for Calvino

Inspiration:

My original source was an essay that I wrote during my senior spring in high school, for a class titled Modern Society and Literary Theory. This class was my favorite of all the English classes I had taken, and the pieces that we read got stuck in my head. They were about symbolism and meta-fiction and the blurred line between what is real and the thought: who’s to say anything can be real?

It was trippy and thought provoking and seemed relevant and important. We wrote a lot, and one of the short essays that I wrote about representation stuck out to me as a topic that wasn’t yet completely analyzed. So I decided to focus on this piece, and write something, anything that was related. My problem was that I didn’t know what.

the introduction of my original source

Pitch:

At the time, I was reading If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino, a book that we had read an excerpt of in that senior year class. I thought that since I was enjoying the book, and since it contained similar concerns and themes as this original essay, I could focus on it for my remediation project. A few weeks earlier, I had even written a blogpost about Calvino and his work. It seemed as if I should write about what I was thinking about.

But I didn’t have a clear vision. And at my pitch meeting for the proposal of my project, I threw around some really vague ideas. People were understandably confused, because I didn’t have a clear direction. It wasn’t until after the meeting that I narrowed down what I wanted to do.

an email to T, my professor

Research:

From here, I searched for articles that I could mirror my piece after and articles that would inform me about postmodernism. This NYT article was what I ultimately settled on as inspiration for the tone and content of my project. It wasn’t a conventional book review, and it instead read more like a literary analysis. I wanted a space to transcribe and analyze my thoughts about Calvino’s novel, so I thought that this format fit well.

As I did my research, I wrote everything down in my writer’s notebook. It ended up being a great place to keep all of my thoughts together, and it was helpful to look back at while I was looking for quotations to use for my final draft.

I looked through journal articles, newspaper articles, and even a few books. My anticipated annotated bibliography began to look more like that of an academic essay rather than that of an article for the general public. I was focusing a lot on postmodernism and its characteristics and uses instead of the novel that I was interested in. As I read these academic pieces filled with theory and arguments, I realized that I didn’t want to focus on this aspect of the novel. I didn’t want to make this article completely about postmodernism and its supporters and critics. So I decided to take a break from Googling “postmodernism,” and I instead thought more about what I wanted to tell the world about If on a winter’s night… What were the things that stood out to me? What about postmodernism in this book was interesting?

As I started answering these questions, I realized that I wanted my project to persuade people to read this book, or a postmodern novel in general. I wanted to contextualize it as necessary, but I also wanted to make it clear that this novel didn’t have to be understood at a theoretical and academic level to be enjoyed.

I started Googling “If on a winter’s night a traveler reviews” to see what other people thought about the novel. The results that I got ended up being the most useful for me, as I was able to comment on opinions that I agreed or disagreed with. It was also helpful to see how people worded their opinions, because the confusing nature of postmodernism was making it difficult to write about. I wanted to find readable ways to talk about a very abstract topic.

Even though I had narrowed down my purpose, I didn’t have a clear idea where this project was going to go; I didn’t know what my final product would look like.

my writers notebook, where I kept track of my research

Drafting:

I decided that I just needed to sit down and start writing, so I could at least see where my thoughts were headed and if I could some how piece them together. I wrote little fragments about certain points in the book or certain comments that other reviewers had made. I eventually had a collection of different points I wanted to make. Still, there was no clear connection. I wanted an article that flowed, that came together in the end, and that had a clear direction. With my fragmented points, I couldn’t see that.

Yet instead of making an outline, I just moved forward with my writing. I started an article that I ended up completely deleting.

an early draft

I realized that this wasn’t working. I needed more structure and more direction. I wrote down in my writers notebook the important things that I wanted to touch on, and I pulled quotes that I wanted to use. I completely deleted the section from above, and I started over.

My new beginning, I kept for a while, but I could not get myself to write anymore. I was completely stuck, and I wasn’t sure how to move forward. Nothing was coming to me, and I felt like I had hit a wall. I let my draft sit for a few days, and when I came back to it, I acknowledged that this was again not working, and I deleted this second beginning as well.

Third time’s a charm:

On my third attempt, something finally clicked. I had a more focused view of what I wanted to get out of the introduction, and I had a clearer view of where my project was headed. At this point, I probably should’ve tried outlining a draft, but I instead moved forward with a new beginning, that slowly transformed into a new middle and eventually an end.

The first half of the article felt the most complete and polished, as I had spent so much time editing it. The second half, with the numbered paragraphs, felt weaker and more out of place. I liked the numbers, because the NYT article had a similar structure that I thought was effective, but I also wanted the writing to flow. I focused a lot of making the transitions work, and I made some of my friends, who knew nothing about postmodernism, read it, just so I knew that I wasn’t using language that wasn’t attainable for a general audience.

In the end, my third draft ended up being, more or less, my final project. My peer reviewers didn’t have too many comments, other than the fact that they were confused when I called it a book review, because when they read it, it wasn’t a book review. I ended up with the article that I wanted, but I needed to be careful about labeling it something that it wasn’t.

Generally, I am the kind of writer who does major edits from a draft to a final, but this time around, I felt that my drafting process did a lot of the editing for me. When I went back to edit the project a few days before it was due, I felt like it was finished, and I only tweaked the last few paragraphs. I don’t think that this was a bad thing, but it was definitely a new thing, and it felt strange to hand in a paper that looked almost identical to what I had brought into peer workshop. But I was happy with the final product, and I wrote what I wanted to.

Afterthoughts:

One thing that I wished I had paid more attention to or done more research on was where I was going to publish it. I settled on the NYT Sunday Book Review, because the article that I loosely mirrored it after was published there, but I’m not convinced I ended up with a piece that the NYT would publish. Although I am confident the structure would work, I am unsure if my tone or language is appropriate for the newspaper. I felt like the literary analyses and book reviews all had slightly different tones, so I had trouble pinpointing conventions outside of structure and use of quotations. So I don’t know if my article reads like a NYT article, but then again, I’m not completely sure that I know what doesn’t read like a NYT article.

Although I wish I had done more research in this aspect, I, like I mentioned above, wrote the article that I wanted to write. My project ultimately did what I wanted it to, and I think that it is an interesting read that explains a genre and novel that not many general readers know about. I accomplished my purpose, and I’m happy with what I’m putting out into the world.