Second Person Point of View
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Blog Post, Interrupted
Several weeks ago at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Convention, I presented a paper titled “Othering the Self: The Potential Benefits of Assigning College Students to Write Personal Narratives from a Second Person Point of View.” I intended to blog about my presentation immediately after the conference. But when I returned … Continue reading
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How to Gain Your Reader’s Empathy: The Case of a Partial Jewish Identity
As a memoirist or personal essay writer, one of your goals may be to elicit empathy from your readers. Perhaps you want readers to understand your perspective on an experience. Or you hope that readers will sympathize with you as the teller of your story. In other words, you may want readers to put themselves… Continue reading
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How to Restore an Abandoned Garden (An Experiment in Second-Person Point of View)
My thanks to Bear River Review, in which an earlier version of this essay was published. How to Restore an Abandoned Garden at a House You Bought in Ypsi First: Realize that you have moved into someone else’s house. Wander through the leavings of another person’s life. When you are a firmly established mid-lifer, get… Continue reading
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Point of View, Times Two
You’ve probably been warned not to do it. Astute and well-intentioned English instructors have routinely cautioned students against using second-person address of the reader as you in academic and scholarly writing. Doing so is too informal, they have said; it creates an inappropriate familiarity between writer and reader. Among fiction writers, the use of second-person… Continue reading
Do you write about yourself and your experiences? Do you write about traumatic events in your life? Or, do you struggle to find time and motivation to write?
If so, this blog is for you.