Over the last semester I have been forced to go through a process of revision in my works of writing that I was previously unaccustomed to. The process involves multiple rewrites, peer editing, and self-revision. It takes significantly longer to finish writing anything but I have seen great improvement in the quality of my work. This new and lengthy revision process forces me to re-evaluate my thesis statement several times as I write. My body paragraphs often go through the most significant change through out my essay so my thesis must adapt to tie together all of the body paragraphs. Typically my thesis would be re-written for every draft. Unfortunately
My new process of drafting and revision has three stages, each one taking a week to allow myself time to distance myself from the essay to take on new perspectives and come up with new ideas. For my first draft I don’t bother with writing any introductory pieces or making a conclusion. I always write a short thesis instead just to keep my writing on topic but as I explained is in no way permanent. The way I think of it I’m simply rambling and writing whatever comes to mind for about 1000 words and then I call it quits. Once this first draft is finished I let my peers go through it and tear it up, which they do. All I want to see from them is what ideas they liked and what ideas they thought didn’t fit. The first essay I wrote this year was an explanation of how I go through the process of writing. It had been about four months since I had to write an academic paper and I had no idea what I was doing. In what I submitted as my first draft I had five different ideas all vying for attention. If I hadn’t had someone go through my essay and told me what worked and didn’t I probably couldn’t have gotten through the paper. Once I get through this step I make an outline using the good paragraphs and then just cut out the ones that don’t fit.
After I’ve made an outline from my strong paragraphs I go back in to re-write my main ideas and to add more examples, detail, and also to make sure that everything conforms to a central Idea. Typically this is the last step before I go in and fix all of my grammatical and sentence flow errors. I wasn’t a fan of writing this way at first but there is a clear difference in my writing now than at the end of high school. My arguments and ideas are presented in a much more intelligent way and I am much better about being able to flow from idea to idea and paragraph to paragraph.
I quit writing introductions to start my essays, instead waiting until my body paragraphs have been written and then using the sum of their parts to decide on what my central thesis for the essay should be. All of the introductions I had written never matched up with my body paragraphs so I had to go back in and rewrite them every time. It saves time for me and also allows me more room to write in for my body paragraphs because I am no longer trying to write them to a pre-established central theme that may not reflect my thoughts by the end of the writing process. If I hadn’t have taken one last look over my essay on conventions of the western genre I would have actually forgotten to write a conclusion.
I still need to work on my ability to present my ideas in a more detailed manner and to do a better job of going in depth so that I can describe them to their full complexity. There are definitely times when ideas don’t come to fruition when I write. I believe that it is just an issue of revising. With every revision my work becomes a little bit better, and usually taking a few days between revisions helps even more. Taking a little bit of time off lets me generate new ideas and approach my work from different angles when I edit.
There is no issue in my ability to present my ideas but when it comes time to go into their individual details I believe that I need to provide more direct examples and still need to elaborate and clarify my ideas at a higher level. In my essay on genres I believe that I provided too few examples form western films. Not only that, I needed to do a better job of setting up the scenes in the essay so that the reader could understand what I was talking about. Since film is a visual art there would have been plenty of opportunities for me to provide descriptive detail, however I just
I think that if I can learn to write less in generalizations and focus on distinct incidents I will be able to improve my clarity and come to a sharper conclusion than before. I felt myself getting closer to do this when I wrote my discourse community ethnography because I had to be so specific on my topic. I started out writing in very broad terms talking about all of baseball as a central theme, but then I realized the best way that I could explain things and demonstrate to my readers what the true conventions of baseball were could only come through focusing on a team I had played. It had to be this way for two reasons. First off I had direct experience with the team and therefore could speak directly to it and secondly I was able to focus on the behaviors of my teammates which was much easier than the behaviors of athletes in the entire sport.

In my discourse community ethnography I tried to explain what makes a good high school baseball team win. I didn’t look at star players or freaks of nature that can throw 100 mph, but instead focused on team chemistry. I also examine many of the quirks and unknown aspects of baseball that cannot be found in the rule books. I paid special attention to the language that ball players use and how they interact with each other and the officiating crew while on the field and in the dugout.
In my senior season at West Potomac I can remember playing with more distinct characters than any team before. We had our own language and our own culture to go with it. The coaches must have thought we were all insane.
We started out on a hot winning streak going 7-0 which at the point was a West Potomac record. We were great friends, hanging out together, but unfortunately started to get too relaxed. Once we were on top of the division we developed a sense of complacency and started to fall off. Teams we used to be able to beat started to look more fearsome. Once we lost our sense of greatness it was like our whole team fell apart, our chemistry was all gone and we started defeating ourselves with errors and a lack of confidence.
I look into what characteristics of the team made us who we were and why our season ended up the way it did.

Chemistry is the defining characteristic of every team and is what can bring them greatness, or defeat. It is a function that every community of people develop and is critical to the success of group as a whole. Posotive chemistry can make people come together and push each other to new heights, while negative chemistry will have the inverse affect. I focused my writing on the chemistry of my High School baseball team in an effort to describe what it was like to be a member of the team.99
To conduct my research on West Potomac’s baseball team I interviewed a current senior on the team, and was myself a member of the team for four years. I explain why team chemistry is so important and went on to explain what the chemistry of West Potomac’s team felt like. Later in my writing I go into deeper detail and illustrate some of the wacky behaviors, superstitions and traditions we abided by.
Team chemistry is important because a baseball season is a marathon, not a sprint. It is one of the only team sports where individualism is on display. Every pitch the batter and the pitcher could be considered to be competing one on one. Of course the catcher is calling signs and the defense arranges themselves to make an out, but the primary focus is between the man in the batters box, and the pitcher standing 60 ft. 6 inches away. This individualism means that the best team will not always come out on top in fact 1 player often makes the difference in the game. To keep a team winning it is important that those individuals standing on the field can come together and get the best out of each other.
Team chemistry is what defines a successful team and a lackluster team. Great teams stay relaxed, and on every team there is always one dugout clown that keeps the teams spirits up and keeps pulse of the team going. I can think back to my sophomore year of baseball a frail and scrawny backup first baseman Zack “Dory” Belanger built a fire in our hearts every game. He didn’t care what the score was, or how much bigger anyone on the field was than him. He would heckle the opposing team from warm ups until the final out. He wasn’t just a loud yeller either he was a comedian. The man had no limits, girlfriends, half grown in beards, ugly swings and bizarre throwing mechanics all caught his wrath. I can remember game after game the coaches and even sometimes the umpires would tell him that if he didn’t tone down his insults that he would be thrown out of the game, something unheard of in high school athletics.
Behind the Scenes
As an observer to the game, you’d never know it, but the players on the filed can have a huge impact on how the umpires call the game. Talking to the umpire is actually one of the most important duties of a catcher. It’s not written down in any rulebook or taught as a skill but can still have a significant impact on the course of a game. What the catcher is trying to do is win over the umpire and hopefully steal some calls from the other team. Since both catchers are trying to do this I have always thought of it in my head as two princes trying to win over a Princess. Typically a catcher would start out by asking the umpire how their day has been going thus far. Then slowly begin to ask the umpire about their personal life and maybe share a little about their own lives. I would always say the count wrong and then once the umpire told me the correct count I would say, oh I’m sorry there’s a reason I’m a STEM guy. The jokes not very funny but it got at least a polite chuckle every time. There is a fine line that any position player has to walk between humility and humor while still trying to get their point across. It sounds silly but once a catcher is able to win over an umpire they can develop a relationship and have a serious impact on calls for the rest of the game.

Unwritten Rules
Outside the print pages of the official Virginia High School League baseball handbook there are many rules that players impose upon themselves. The most notable one only is enforced on Varsity because JV players just don’t have the ability to do it. After hitting a homerun many players will watch the ball fly and slowly trot around the bases. This is annoying to the other team but isn’t the end of the world. Many pitchers consider it a capital offense though if the batter flips his bat. It is the epitome of non-verbal trash talk and will often be acknowledged with a fastball to the head in the next inning.
A pitchers reaction, while well warranted, brings up another unwritten rule in itself. If anyone throws at one of our team’s batters, our pitcher is expected to return the favor. When pitchers begin to throw at other teams the tradition has long been to throw at the other teams best hitter and it has to come in a non critical moment. It’s not uncommon for weeks to go by before a team finally gets a chance to retaliate. Thus the game is kept from being a free for all and the casual observer may not notice anything more than a few wild pitches.

Superstitions
Even though the game of baseball has become increasingly based on numbers like batting average, earned run average, slugging percentage, and more complex statistics that evaluate players worth many athletes and coaches completely ignore the existence of these stats and instead prefer to rely on superstitions to help them win games. One of the most pervasive superstitions on the teams I’ve played on was the idea that if the bats in the bat rack are crossed any rally will fail. There was an idea and for many a true belief that crossed bats were cursed and anyone that hit while bats were crossed was doomed to failure. I can remember my strength and conditioning coach policed this phenomena every game. Any player caught crossing bats on the bat rack earned himself a conditioning workout after the game. There is nothing any baseball player hates more than sprinting from foul pole to foul pole after a game.
Some ball players are a little bit more creative. Many refuse to step on the foul line when taking the field believing that it is bad luck. Every now and then you will see someone counting the steps they take to the batters box. I never was that extreme but I made sure to enter the batters box the same way every time. Left foot in, swipe dirt with left foot out of front of batters box, right foot in, shuffle feet, adjust cup, and then wait for the pitcher to make their move. The whole at bat is a gamble if you try and mix it up trust me I’ve done it but never succeeded.

“Verbage”

Baseball players have their own unique way of talking to each other. The casual observer may notice that a lot of the sounds coming from the dugout aren’t discernable words, the sound more like loud mumbles. In an interview with Zack Day, a former teammate I learned that the newest phrases are the words “chowda,” “peppa,” and “Got Heeeeeeem.” They sound like the screams of a four year old still learning to speak when in fact, on a baseball diamond these words can mean a full sentence on their own. For example “Chowda” refers to how a pitcher is throwing. Instead of saying “oh that pitchers soft,” or “I could hit that” ball players will just yell “Chowda” and everyone around him will understand what he was saying. Then from this basic word, pronouns are added to make a more exaggerated statement. Saying “clam chowda” might mean I can clobber this pitcher but saying “ooh he’s got some spicy chowda” means that the pitcher has got some serious velocity on his fastball. These words have nothing to do with hiding a game plan from the opposition, or trying to be sneaky about what you are saying because the other team, and often the umpires all speak the same language. It’s almost as if the game

Nicholson pg. 6
of baseball developed its own regional dialect like Cajun or Chinglish and is just as difficult to understand for those not accustomed to the tongues.

Nicknames

Every member of the team had a nickname and all most all of them were derogatory. Zack “Dory” Belanger was nicknamed Dory because freshman year he was fat and had a chubby face that looked an astonishing amount like the character Dory from the movie Finding Nemo. Even when he grew up and skinny the nickname still stuck. I was nicknamed COACH (pronounced Coa-Ah-Oach) because I said “oh yeah coach” funny one time freshman year. These nicknames stuck and came to replace our actual names.

Conclusion

As a team we had great chemistry but lacked a solid work effort. We were the best of friends and started the season with undeniable success. After our 7-0 start we were world-beaters and became overconfident and developed a sense of complacency. We had the greatest chemistry of any team I had ever played on but it didn’t amount to anything. The first round in the playoffs we were knocked out by one of the weaker teams in the division. There is a famous quote from the movie Bull Durham “Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains.”
Nicholson pg. 7
Baseball is a funny sport and sometimes even the best team in the world will lose. We had everything going for us but couldn’t win a game in the playoffs simply because that day it rained.

The essay before you is an explanation of how Western films have become the iconically American Genre of film. I went into detail with examples from the films True Grit, DJANGO unchained, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to demonstrate how the conventions of Western movies tie them all together. Focusing on plot lines, settings, and rules of Western films I gave a basic template of what a viewer should look for in a western film.

I tried to hide my thesis inside of the essay and postpone my main idea with a longer introduction. I believe that this gives my essay a little more validity and makes it more interesting to read. The transitions between paragraphs however, are still rough. I think that if my paragraphs were rearranged then I could get them to flow better than the way they are currently.

In the post Finding America an Ocean Away I have gone back to this essay to rearrange some of the paragraphs, and then I went back in to look at how I was describing scenes from the movie. I decided that the way in which they were written required the reader to have previously seen the movie. To fix this I went in and added an even greater amount of description and should have hopefully made my essay so that someone who has never seen a western before will be able to understand some of their key characteristics.

In 2005 my father, a pilot in the Air Force was stationed in Ramstein Germany, and my family and I moved overseas with him. Living in a foreign nation, western films reminded me of home. Their stories are centered on romantic idealization of the American West. Full of hope and adventure, there is an outlaw around every turn, and adventure just beyond the horizon. Many of the people who lived in Germany and had never been to America thought that movies like “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, or True Grit” were accurate depictions of modern America. Western films were what made Hollywood successful in its early years and have become known the world over as the definitively American Genre of Film. Without westerns the film industry may not have been as popular and America would be missing a part of its cultural identity. It’s not hard to imagine cowboys and Indians or outlaws and sheriffs running around in the Wild West. The genre has developed several conventions that make the genre so easily recognizable. In “True Grit” the story line starts in the Great Plains but the characters travel all the way to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Another thing I grew to love about westerns is their distinctive sound. The genre was most popular in the 50’s and 60’s so the music in the movies comes from the era as well. DJANGO Unchained is a great example of this. DJANGO was produced in 2012 but the soundtrack sounds like it could have been written in the middle of the 20th Century. Finally the plots revolve around the triumph of good versus evil. In the end we almost always will see a final shootout, or a fight in which the noble cowboy comes out on top.

The Opening scene, and closing scenes to westerns are as iconic as the Statue of Liberty. Almost all Westerns start of with scenic views that capitalize on the grand scenery of the West. They usually do this with a wide-angle shot, a shot that encompasses a wide-open landscape giving a feeling of the freedom of the West. Open ranges, wide-open town streets, or sloping canyons are classic scenes to open a Western. Typically at the end of most westerns the cowboy or hero exits the picture with their back facing the camera as the sun is going down in the background. This is known as riding off into the sunset, but can be done on train, by horse, by wagon, or by simply walking away. In some cases such as Bush Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the protagonists don’t get a chance to ride off but instead are gunned down and then the screen changes color to reflect a sunset over a freeze frame of the two outlaws being impaled by rifle fire. Sometimes there is no reason for the main character to ride off. In fact it doesn’t even make sense to ride off into the sunset. By the end of a Western all of the conflicts have been resolved so it would be easier and more comfortable to sleep in a hotel instead of riding for an hour and then having to make camp on the outskirts of town. Western Films do this for two reasons: one its iconic, and two it wouldn’t feel like a western if it ended any other way. As my film studies instructor explained it to me in high school “at the end of the movie the sun is going to go down and the main character is going to get off stage.”
Usually westerns are set in dark and gritty lighting. This is down by underexposing the film lighting to create darker shadows in the foreground as well as the background. Most producers choose to do this to Give a sense of how uncivilized the west was. Villains usually look like they have not bathed in their lives and live in the shadows. The dust from settlements and in towns is usually on display instead of cleaned up. It is supposed to be very obvious that every thing on the frontier has just recently been built, and extra attention is paid so that it is not overlooked how hard life is on the frontier.
The Western Genre uses the subgenre of country music known as western to fit into its films. Many of the sounds such as the whistle from the good the bad and the ugly are widely known to the general public even though most people would not recognize what movie it came from. The steel guitar, strong whistle sub vocals to imitate cowboys yelling or range hands, and the harmonica are almost always used in the soundtracks of western films. The twang and wine heard in many country songs is even heavier and often oversaturated in western film scores. More modern films such as DJANGO have introduced modern genres of music such as rap and rock to westerns, but still keep the distinctive instrumentation and twang that western country is known for.
Obviously living out on the frontier in a different era the characters in westerns dress differently than we do today. Characters in films are clothed as cowboys, miners, or as townsfolk. In “True Grit” the Texas Ranger, La Boeuf is wearing full chaps and a cowboy hat to over exemplify his Texan heritage.
One of the most famous conventions of the western genre is the good guy wearing a white cowboy hat riding his white horse going up against a black-hatted villain on his black horse. Originally this was done to make obvious to viewers who was good and who was bad when film was shown in black and white. In the age of color TV the tradition has kept, while not every horse is white and hats pristine, the protagonist tends to have a lighter colored horse and hat while the protagonists are much darker. “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” has a very interesting look at this convention. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are outlaws running from the law, but they wear the lighter colored hats. Since they are the protagonists in the film however, the producer chose to give them the light hats to inform the viewer that from our perspective we will consider them the good guys and root for them instead of the law.
By virtue of their genre, westerns are generally set west of the Mississippi, can go as far south as Mexico, but do not typically venture north of the Mason Dixon line. There are a variety of settings that they can take place in, frontier towns to scenic and expansive ranges to rugged stretches of the badlands. Film directors can create a lot of meaning in their films by choosing their setting. The western genre has long used frontier towns as places where the bad guys meet the good guys. It’s not hard to imagine a scene where a few deputies run into a notorious villain in a saloon or a card player is shot down for cheating.

Usually the plot of a western revolves around maintaining order out on the frontier. The original “True Grit” is a perfect example. In a frontier town a man is shot down by one of his employed range hands. To avenge his death John Wayne playing Rooster Cogburn accompanied by a Texas ranger La Boeuf and the dead man’s daughter Eula, track the murderer into the frontier passing through various terrains and meeting many different types of people including Indians. The entire plot revolves around restoring justice to the frontier. The movie DJANGO provides another and interesting plot line. While through out the whole movie DJANGO is trying to rescue his wife from her slave owners we see that his character does some very evil things to get her back. Normally in most westerns the protagonist upholds high morals whether they are a part of the law or are an outlaw.
In my childhood Western Films were a way for me to feel attached to American culture while living in Germany. Their stories of the Wild West and perseverance of the American spirit are iconic in American pop culture. As a child 3000 miles from home, they made me feel like I was still in the states.

Help Received:

In class workshop

True Grit. Dir. Henry Hathaway Perf. John Wayne. Kim Darby. Glen Campbell. Paramount Pictures. 1969. Film.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Dir. George Roy Hill. Perf. Paul Newman. Robert Redford. 20th Century Fox. 1969. Film.

DJANGO Unchained. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Perf. Jamie Foxx. Christoph Waltz. Leonardo Dicaprio. Weinstein Company. 2012. Film.

The essay “Writing About Writing” is the story of how one high school english class enlightened me about how I think, work, and express myself as a writer.  In my senior year of high school my class was reading the novel Dracula by Ben Stoker.  As a class we discussed the book 2-3 times per week.  We dissected and ripped it apart till it seemed like there was nothing left but a flimsy covering.  Through these classes and then again while writing my paper on the book I learned that my best work comes after a socratic seminar.  I needed to be able to talk about my ideas and then reflect them off of other people in order to fully develop them.  This wasn’t something that I knew or even realized at the time.  Working through my various drafts of “Writing About Writing” made me think back and expose how I write even more.

To start “Writing About Writing” I sat down for an hour and wrote and rambled everything I thought I wanted to say about writing about Dracula and writing in high school.  My first draft was in Anne Lamott’s words, a shitty first draft.  A lot of it was irrelevent or needed to be cut, but I had words on paper.  I took the sections that did work and I bullet pointed them and made them into an outline with which I wrote my second draft.  The second draft wasn’t perfect it had no introduction and no thesis.  A central idea was present but it wasn’t evidently stated in the beginning or the end of the essay.  For my third draft I polished my body paragraphs and added a short introduction that described a typical class period.  I with held stating my main idea until the conclusion paragraph just because it is a skill I’ve been trying to work on and I wanted to see how it played out.

A pyramid was set up on the board, covered in note cards arranged by importance. On each card was a symbol from the novel Dracula. The class was broken down into 7 groups, each competing to have their cards placed on the pyramid. We were arranged in a circle having socratic seminar type arguments to decide what cards should be placed on the pyramid. In small groups we would pick which card on the pyramid we thought that we could out argue its importance with another group to have our card take its spot. Our teacher, Mr. O’Grady would serve as a judge and decide who made the stronger argument and that group would get to have their card on the pyramid.

In the Fall of my Senior year of High School, my instructor, Mr. O’Grady assigned the book Dracula to the class. There was no rubric for the essay to be completed at the end of the book. Like any other class we would have assigned readings and then discuss the book in class. However, unlike any other class I’ve ever been in there was no format to the in class discussions we held. We as the students of the class led the discussions and talked about what we found in the reading. At first I didn’t understand the purpose of teaching a class in that manner, it felt like a free block more than anything.

It wasn’t long before Dracula had become my favorite book. I was drawn deeper into the story than I had ever been before. At night I would curiously check outside my window one last time before going to sleep. Every time I looked in a mirror I would then look behind myself just to be sure. I truly felt that in a far off land this monster was alive. Making connections to the novel, being able to relate it to historical events and finding symbolism, especially religious symbols came far easier than had ever before. I believe that this is true not because I was older and a smarter reader than before, but because I immersed myself in the novel, something I had never done before.  Conveying my thoughts on paper, something I normally struggled with, became simple and easy to do.

The essay I was tasked with writing had no formal subject. There was a set size and due date, but no prompt to write on. I was given the autonomy to pick something I found interesting, explore it, and then present my thoughts on the issue. I decided to write about the balance between Christian and satanic symbols in the novel. Personally I wouldn’t be able to recognize many religious symbols on my own, but when we discussed the novel in class I was able to feed off of my peers knowledge and then make my own opinions with there help. Never before had I listened to anyone else for guidance about what the text means. Listening to others opinions and ideas and then debating with them in socratic seminars, only furthered my knowledge of the novel and let me realize a whole new method of learning.

Due to the nature of the assignment, being a book report, it fell into my strong suit as a writer. In high school most of my instruction as a writer came from my History classes instead of in an English or Writing class. Almost all of my writing from freshman to junior year came out of my history classes. I was confident writing my essay. I knew the formula and I knew how to look for information, find it, and then plug it in to support my arguments. It was the first time I can remember taking curriculum learned in one class and then applying it so readily in another.

Every class for the duration of the unit was a socratic seminar. I found that by asking questions and being asked questions about key concepts of the book forced me to look deeper than what I had done in my original read of the text. I had to dig through the pages of the novel and extract quotes and lines to support my arguments. Other times a student would ask questions about certain paragraphs and through their own questions I gained a better sense of knowledge about the book because they brought up issues that I had not even considered before.

This was a painstaking process. I could have read the book in a little over a week but we spent about two months digging through the pages. In some class periods we would stay on the same page the entire time, ripping it apart to give new meaning to the text. The book took so long to finish that I had plenty of time to reflect on it and re-examine it. I came up with several different thesis and had many different opinions of the book by the time I had finished. What I now know is, I understand the novel extremely well and was prepared to write about it.

Eventually I decided to compare the moods portrayed when Van Hesling and Dracula would enter a room. Van Helsing, the famous vampire slayer kept religious texts by him and kept religious idols by his side. Dracula was often seen in the dark, and was always noted as untrustworthy and brought a cold aura with poor weather wherever he went. Their differences are highlighted when Van Helsing is attempting to save a young girl by blood transfusion. Blood in the novel was thought of as a sacred thing with many comparisons to be made to drinking the blood of Christ.  Dracula steals blood from his victims and turns their flesh into Vampire. Van Helsing attempts to save a young woman who has been having her blood stolen by Dracula, but in order to save the sanctity of her marriage Helsing will only allow her lover to donate blood.

The only regret that I had while I studied and wrote about Dracula is that I didn’t pay enough attention to my peer’s constructive criticism. I’m not sure if it was a factor of my own laziness, or just arrogance that I did not want to re-asses my opinion based on their remarks. Learning to take others constructive criticism and then re-write my work for clarity or for a deeper explanation is something that I need to improve upon. Whether it be by discussing my week points more with my peers to develop my own opinion or by re-reading the text to find out authors intent.

While reading this novel I found I need the help of others to truly divulge into a text. Without bouncing ideas off other people and being asked to think deeper and explain my own positions I am unable to dig deep enough into a novel to truly understand its meaning and to sympathize with its characters. When I am able to do this I am able to write at a far higher level with more intelligence and confidence on the subject in which I am writing about.