DIRECTIONS: This draft has one sentence the writer is proud of. Find it and test it. Page 2 needs a draft of your own (anything you have written, or one from english-06-daily-writing).
The Last Week of August
1My brother left for college on a Tuesday, which I think is a strange day to start a life. 2We spent the whole week before it not talking about it. 3He cleaned his room, which he has never once done, and every so often he would come and stand in my doorway holding something and ask if I wanted it. 4A hockey stick. A phone charger. A jar of guitar picks he has been filling since he was eleven. 5I said yes to all of it, including the things I did not want, because saying no felt like agreeing that he was going.
6On the Sunday the wind came through the maple in the yard and took half of it down in an afternoon, the way that tree does every year, letting go of everything at once and calling it a season.
7By Tuesday morning his room was a room again, and not his. 8He hugged me in the driveway and said something I did not hear, because the car door was open and the radio was on. 9I have thought about that sentence more than any of the ones I did hear. 10I still have the jar of picks and I have not opened it.
Which sentence took the longest to write? Not the one you like best — the one you can tell was gone over more than once.
In one line: what is this piece about? Then, in one line: what is that sentence about?
Cross it out. Read the whole piece again, out loud, without it. What changed?
The Sentence You Love — and now yours
The second draft · Page 2 of 2
DIRECTIONS: Question 4: the piece on page 1. Then your own draft. Look for one sentence, not problems.
Verdict on the maple sentence. Does it go back in? Yes is allowed — but if you say yes, name the job it was doing that nothing else in the piece does.
Copy yours out before you touch it. You can keep it here even if it leaves the piece.
The sentence, copied exactly. Every word, every comma.
Why do you like it? Say the actual reason — a word in it, the sound of it, the picture. Then cut it, read the piece out loud from the start, and write what a listener would have noticed. Nothing is a real answer and it is the useful one.
In or out? And the harder half: if it goes back in, is it in the right place, or is it where it happened to get written?