TIPS FOR WRITING A PERSONAL STATEMENT (PERSONAL NARRATIVE ESSAY)

          So many students have come to me to work on personal statements (a.k.a. personal narrative essays) for university admissions, scholarships, and school assignments that I decide to create a tip sheet to assist them in creating a first draft on their own. The tip sheet (copied below) will empower them with independence during the initial writing stage, as well as the first editing stage--substantive editing (which covers issues of substance, over style and grammar, etc.).  By carefully using the tip sheet to create second drafts, students can expedite the entire essay-writing process by reducing the level of my involvement to the final "polishing" or proofreading stage. Here are my tips:

1.  Be sure that the essay is actually PERSONAL—a vivid story specifically about you, which only you can share/show via recounting your memories. Avoid generic statements about your skills, talents, traits, or passions; SHOW those qualities--don’t merely tell about them.
2.  Use a retrospective narrative style: a) start in the present, to briefly introduce the theme; b) then bring the reader back in time, into a vividly recalled memory; and c) conclude with an introspective reflection, looking into yourself and what you have learned/gained.
3.  Use fiction techniques, such as Susan L. Lipson’s “D.A.D. Technique” (Description, Action, Dialogue), to share a story that illustrates your specific traits and/or accomplishments via an event.
4. You can borrow some other writer’s wise words (a quotation) as your opening, but be sure to build upon those quoted words as you begin your first sentence. Don’t just use a quotation as an opener without directly referring to its wisdom as it relates to your personal story.
5. Read your essay aloud and delete repetitive words (even entire sentences that only restate what you have already said before, just in different words).
6. Delete also any words that veer off the topic.
7. Listen to someone else read your essay aloud, slowly, and make notes about any lines which cause the reader to halt, stammer, seem confused, or sound bored or repetitive. Based on your notes, find ways to clarify or enhance the power of your word choices (see the next item, below).
8. Replace all vague words with specific details that create mental movies in the minds of readers. For example: instead of merely telling readers, “I was disappointed that I spent most of the baseball season on the bench;” show them your perspective, how you watched through the fence as your teammates played instead of you.
9. Delete passive verbs (such as am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been, go, goes, went, do, does, did) and replace them with active, precise verbs that create images in the reader’s mind. DON’T RELY ON WEAK VERBS ENHANCED BY ADVERBS (ending in -ly). TOO MANY ADVERBS MIGHT MEAN THAT YOU HAVEN’T FOUND PRECISE ENOUGH VERBS. For example, replace "walked softly" with "tiptoed."
10. Replace all clichés with original expressions; don’t rely on words so commonly used that they feel predictable.
11. Finally, ask yourself, will my reader know me better after reading my essay?

MINIMAL WORDS FOR MAXIMUM IMPACT

Conveying Concepts Clearly & Concisely:

An Exercise To Focus on Using Only Necessary Words

Can a story plot/mood/genre show itself in just six words? Read the six-word “stories” below, in the left column. Match each mini-story with the conceptual that best describes the plot.

Story:                                                                                     Title:

A) She died. “I cried,” he lied.                    1) DISILLUSIONED

B) She lied, “I tried.” He cried.                   2) GULLIBLE

C) She sighed, “He lied.” I cried.                3) NO LOSS

Write your own mini-stories in 6-10 words, not including titles. You need not rhyme as I have.

This exercise will force you to use only necessary words to convey the plot. Some conceptual title suggestions follow, or you may create your own.

·       CATASTROPHE

·      NEW BEGINNING

·      UNEXPECTED LOVE

·      SERENDIPITY

·      VENGEANCE

·      BETRAYAL

·      REJECTION

·      EPIPHANY

Poetic Thoughts on Education

On Education

by S. L. Lipson

Teaching to prepare for tests—

At best, I call that “training”;

Teaching means igniting thoughts,

Not pouring facts, then draining.

Writing is an art, a skill,

Never quantifiable,

Rated best by knowing nods,

Feedback that’s reliable;

Questions that elicit thoughts,

Empowering revisions,

Coaching that enables them

To make their own decisions.

I want to spark awe for words,

And stress communication;

I want to teach not for scores,

But for true education.

When I Cannot Refer to a Student as an "Aspiring" Writer Anymore

     An eleven-year-old student looked up at me during a lesson, after his pen came to a screeching halt (well, in my mind anyway), signifying the pause of his creative flow. His eyes refocused, as if he were awakening from a great dream, and he slowly grinned as he declared, "I just noticed that my character is becoming a very paranoid person. Hmm..." He tapped his pen thoughtfully against his notepad.

     As he was nodding, looking away from me again, back to his paper, I noticed something equally surprising: this aspiring writer had just transformed before my eyes into a real writer, for his character had taken on a life of his own! I expect to be tweeting about his books someday. He is now the conductor of his own train, and I'm just the guiding voice on the overhead speakers, calling out the stops along his way.

   

Writing Teacher as Choreographer

Choreographed Prompt

by S. L. Lipson

My student does not like it

when I play peppy classical music--

or does he?

He fidgets with his pen,

raising and lowering it,

but not onto his paper,

where he is supposed to be writing.

He waves the pen,

watching it as if watching a windshield wiper,

to the rhythm of the music.

He's conducting, not creating,

joyfully unproductive.

Maybe classical music deafens his muse. 

I switch radio channels to blues 

and his pen stops dancing, 

as he leans back in his chair

and takes a deep breath,

then leans forward and lowers his pen slowly

to his mostly blank page.

He starts writing, word by word at first,

and suddenly in a stream.

His posture projects passion through his pen.

Finally, he clicks his pen shut, rereads, sighs, 

and looks up at me.

"Wow, this is the saddest thing

I've ever written."

His eyes look glassy.

I smile,

a content choreographer.  

For more poetry by S. L. Lipson, check out www.susanllipson.blogspot.com, my other blog titled "Writing Memorable Words."

Percy Wakes My Students: How a Poem by Mary Oliver Enlightened Two Middle-School Writers

     "Percy Wakes Me," a poem by Mary Oliver, describes a morning when a determined dog, Percy, wakes his slow-moving owner for a walk and breakfast and then "jumps onto the kitchen counter where he is not supposed to be." Instead of reprimanding the dog or getting angry, the owner pets and praises him: "How clever, if you/ needed me,/ to wake me." The owner observes that the dog seems delighted that he was not "lectured," and then she adds: "He has done something/ that he needed/ and now he hears that it is okay." The final lines provoke an answer from the reader: "This is a poem about more than Percy./ Think about it." 

     A perfect writing prompt, I thought, after reading "Percy Wakes Me." I knew this poem would elicit some thoughtful words from my middle-school students who, like Percy, have felt ignored or controlled by adults who set the rules. I knew that they would identify with the dog's joy at the surprising response to his rule-breaking/attention-seeking/limit-testing behavior. After a lively discussion about text-to-self comparisons, they wrote their own poems, and I am proudly sharing two of those poems below. 

     The first poem is untitled, by a 12-year-old boy, whose poem shows how a clever teacher redirects destructive behavior to teach a lesson about respect and responsibility. Notice how this young poet, S.M., also emulated Mary Oliver's style:


Johnny screams, and I groan with annoyance.
He has been dumping all the crayons onto the floor,
Now he's happily jumping on desks,
So I inhale deeply.
How great you are, I say, helping me teach a lesson about  
   respecting other people's possessions!
He thought he would have his ears yelled off,
His eyes glimmer with confusion.
He sits down, waiting for more compliments.
He expected yelling and now he hears praise.
Then I hand him the broom and his smile fades.
He understands now what I mean,
He understands his mistake.
He slowly begins to clean up.
This is a poem about Johnny.
This is a poem about more than Johnny.
Think about it.

The second poem is by an 11-year-old girl, A.M., who also takes her comparison to the classroom in "The Homework I've Forgotten." (Ironically, this student author NEVER forgets her own homework for my class!) The teacher in her poem offers a poignant lesson about how honesty and the ability to admit one's failures may earn us second chances to prove our earnest efforts. 

The Homework I've Forgotten

I get to school, smiling and skipping,
Then I realize what is wrong
When the teacher asks for the homework.

The homework I've forgotten.
I shuffle up to her slowly
and she smiles as I approach.

How can I tell her, that in
the big stack of papers, she
won't find my name?

"I didn't get your homework," she tells me.
Well, I tell myself, at least
you didn't have to start the conversation.

She raises her eyebrows at me.
"I forgot it at home," I say.
She just smiles.

"You have all recess," she says.
I smile too.

Both poems indicate not only the writing talent, perspicacity, and imagination of these young poets, but also their potential to grow into understanding, inspiring, and effective parents and mentors to others. (They might make great dog-parents, too!)

Creative Writing Sparked by Dialogue

          Snippets of dialogue serve as excellent writing prompts when they are ambiguous enough to suggest various possible tones, and in turn, various contexts for scene development. Often I propose that my students write two separate scenes founded upon the same line of dialogue interpreted differently. That writing exercise is part of a lesson on tone and how to convey specific moods in literature. I sometimes craft my own fictional scenes based on one line of dialogue uttered by a character's voice in my mind; from those scenes, novels are born. 

          Given two dialogue lines--"Um...you're welcome...," and "I just wanted to tell you how much you've inspired me..."--as prompts to create a piece of short fiction, my young teenage student wrote this:

Rejected 
by L.Z.

          I am so excited, but also very nervous. I’ve never done anything like this before, but
missing a chance to meet her in person would leave me in regret for the rest of my life. So here I am now, standing in the back of a line so long that I cannot even see the actual author and her desk, but then, suddenly, through a gap in the crowds, I get a good look at her. She looks just like the woman on the back cover of my book, with her beautiful smile, signing for her loyal fans.
     
          In a flash, I am in the front of the line. “Hi,” she said smiling, “Would you like me to sign your book?”

          I breathed deeply trying to calm my nerves. “Actually, I just wanted to tell you how much you’ve‐‐”

          She interrupted me, her smile disappearing, “So you don’t have a book for me to sign?”

          “No,” I responded, “But I just wanted to tell you how much you’ve inspired me. I also read your books everyday.”

          “Okay... Thank you?” the author replied impatiently.


          “Um...you’re welcome.” I trudged out the exit towards my car.


          Only now, after discovering who she really was, have I realized that her smile was
cold and fake, and unlike what she wrote on the back of the book, she did not actually respect her supporters. There are many other people in the world who deserve more fame and respect than someone like her. 

          The dialogue-based writing prompt could have evoked other scenes so different from the student's scene (above) that a reader might not even notice that the same dialogue lines appear in both. For example, "Um...you're welcome" could be uttered by a humble person who is uncomfortable accepting thanks; or by a rude person who has no intention of giving anything in the first place; or by a person who is unsure about why he is being thanked; or by a snide person who says these words to remind an impolite person to say "thank you"; or, as in this piece, by a disillusioned person who doubts the sincerity of the thanks she has received. Similarly, the speaker who tells another person how much s/he has inspired her could declare those words effusively, with sincere admiration for a warmly appreciative role model; or she could shyly murmur them and evoke tears from the mentor in return; or she could sneer as she utters those words snidely to someone she has no respect for at all. Thus, you can see how even a single dialogue line can serve as a path that branches off in various directions via the literary landscape planted by purposefully chosen, vivid verbs and memorable descriptions.