There is a difference between a travel writer and a tourist. A tourist is on vacation; a travel writer is on a pursuit.--Crafting the Personal Essay (196)
The key to successful nature writing...comes in the ability to see what is not commonly seen.--Crafting the Personal Essay (189)YOUR ASSIGNMENT
For this assignment, I want you to dig deep into a travel or nature experience that you have had and write about it. Whether your experience revolves, for example, around your first visit to P.F. Chang's in McAllen; or a sultry evening immersed in a Frito pie at the Palmview pulga on a Wednesday; or a visit to the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville; or a hike through Bentsen State Park, or a summer school session in London or Salamanca, Spain, these all qualify as experiences you can write about. Your job will be to recreate one of these experiences for your readers in a meaningful, coherent manner. If your piece will focus on a nature experience, remember what Moore states: "What readers really seek in a superior nature essay is for the writer to show us something new or something fairly common but in a new way" (187). If your focus will be on a travel experience, don't forget that your task will be to take the reader along with you; to immerse your reader in your particular journey and make him/her believe they are there with you. Regardless of which experience you choose to write about, both essays will require that you pay attention to the elements of the craft of creative nonfiction, such as narrative structure, sensory details, descriptive and figurative language, conflict, characterization and dialogue, research (where applicable),and, most importantly, verisimilitude.
YOUR ESSAY GUIDELINES
- in Google Drive, create a Google Doc and name the file like this: NatureEssay_YourFullName or TravelEssay_YourFullName (ex. NatureEssay_RobertMoreira)
- if your essay is hybrid (like Moore's "Ah Wilderness"), either file name is fine
- your essay should revolve around one nature or travel experience only
- if your experience includes both travel and nature elements (again, such as "Ah, Wilderness!"), that's okay, too.
- include a title for your essay, page numbers (top right), and your full name on the top left corner of the first page only
- in your essay, strive to render your experience through the elements of creative nonfiction mentioned above
- the final draft of your essay should amount to about 10 double-spaced pages (2500-3000 words)
That's it. Have fun with this assignment, and happy writing!
