--Sun Tzu (101)

I have yet to talk about the essay itself. Some professors agree that every essay is meant to be formal. Some argue that as long as convention is followed through means of proper MLA citation and grammar an essay can be a letter, a story, or even a series of drawings. In the course of the semester we will study several aspects of Rhetoric including visual rhetoric and audience analysis. I encourage creativity because when you are being creative you are usually writing with energy. If you are using such tools as metaphor, unusual syntax, multiple voice and allusion, they are the keys to writing well and infuse your work with energy. I require that you abide by the rules of the dojo which include honesty and avoiding plagiarism and that you learn to properly quote and cite sources in your work.

This semester you will read essays by many authors and no two essays will be alike. It is your responsibility to give your voice and your thoughts the proper form, but like Sun Tzu states, there are no "constant conditions." We will read many writers who blur the lines between reality and fiction as they write and use poetic techniques in their writing as part of style. We will discuss aspects of poetic technique that can also make your writing stronger and stylized. I am going to end with a quote from Annie Dillard, one of the writers in an essay called "On the Essay:"

The essay is, and has been, all over the map. There's nothing you cannot do with it; no subject matter is forbidden, no structure is proscribed. You get to make up your own structure every time, a structure that arises from the materials and best contains them. (Dillard 16)

Annie Dillard's words will become clearer once you explore the various handouts and essays in this course. Like the essay you should consider this course a beginning. We will read wonderful essays and writers in this course. We will explore many viewpoints and open out minds to hear the echoes of the conversation that drifts into the dojo from the outskirts of the world's parlor. I hope you will leave my dojo with the tools and skills necessary to walk a disciplined path into the parlor of tomorrow and with the skills to move the conversation toward your own needs.