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Project 1 – Photograph of Life

Mini Assignment 1

To get us thinking about our first writing project, Dr. Robertson assigned a mini assignment where we would choose a photograph that shows an important moment in our life. I chose the picture below of my husband, BJ, sitting on the beach on our last full day in Florida.

We answered questions about the picture, which helped get us thinking about our first writing project, the memoir. Below are my answers to the questions that helped me brainstorm about project one.

Project 1

For project 1 I decided to write about mine and my husband’s relationship, focusing in on me finally feeling like a part of the family.

We were newlyweds–married only one week–when this picture was taken, and our relationship was not easy, mostly due to family issues.

When you get married there are a lot of changes and adjustments that you don’t really think about or consider until you are actually married. Keeping this in mind, I thought about writing a piece about our relationship to show the good times, as well as the struggles and obstacles that we had to overcome.

I went back and forth on the genre I wanted to do for this project; however, I did have a pretty good idea of who I wanted my audience to be– young couples who are engaged or are newlyweds. I felt like this was the appropriate audience for this project because it deals with issues that young couples have to face.

My plan for this project, after reading chapter 8 in our textbook, was to write in first person, use past tense, write chronologically to show the changes of our family, and create a “podcast” in order to hear the emotion in my voice as I went through our relationship.  

While I stuck to my plan, mostly, I am grateful that we did a lot of peer workshops this semester because I received a lot of wonderful feedback from my groups–even with the class being online.

During peer review for this project, both of my group members gave me great feedback regarding my first draft. They both suggested elaborating more in some areas and breaking the draft up into “entries” for a diary. This is when I abandoned my idea of doing a podcast and switched my genre to a diary.

However, my genre switched again, this time to a blog post after my conference with Dr. Robertson. She made the point that diaries are very private and often not read, and since I wanted my audience to be other young couples, she suggested something like a blog. I agreed that a blog post would be much better because it is a genre that would appeal to my audience.

Dr. Robertson also helped me expand my audience a bit, too. She said that as a mother and a wife she was able to relate to my project. This made me think that even parents and couples who have been married for a while can think and reflect about their own experiences with accepting a new son or daughter-in-law into the family or reflect about their own issues when they were newlyweds.

I believe my final draft is written for those audiences, and while it seems pretty broad, a lot of these issues are ones that people deal with, but don’t necessarily talk about.

I have not even discussed these issues with my family; however, I was able to reflect and heal by writing this piece. That was my purpose for doing this project, allowing myself to heal from the pain and obstacles that I had to overcome, but also share my experiences to help other couples know they are not alone in some of these situations–most of which I never expected to be issues.

Below you will find my first rough draft, second rough draft, and my final draft and self-assessment.

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