Optional: About Me
Additional Activities
Want to do more? Try some or all of these optional activities.
Stretch: More Writing
Write a Public Profile: Most of us are familiar with “About Me” pages on websites or social-media profiles. Based on the different views of yourself you’ve already come up with, create a fresh self-description for use in a public venue. Aim for 80 words or less. If you can reduce it to one sentence – or tagline – so much the better.
Too Little or TMI? Presumably you already have an audience in mind for your profile. Have you told potential readers too little about who you are or dumped too much information? If yes to either question, do some more revising.
Do Daily Descriptions: Try writing a short description of yourself (50 to 80 words) every morning for a week. What changes and what stays the same?
Respond: More Reading
Read: First-Person Journalism, Chapter 4 (“Investigating Yourself”). Try some of the “Voice Lessons” in this chapter, adding them to your Process Notebook.
Watch: Video of Terry Tempest Williams reading from When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice.[1]
Respond: Reflect on and write about what you think of the reading and video in your Process Notebook (see suggested prompts in the box below).
Writing Groups: Connecting with Others
Discuss: When meeting with your group (or partner), address some or all of the discussion prompts below, especially if you’ve done the suggested readings.
Exchange “I” Views: Exchange some of your comparisons or self-descriptions, offering supportive feedback.
Notebook and Discussion Prompts
Respond on your own or discuss with a group:
- What do you think people need to know about a first-person writer?
- How did it feel to create six different views of yourself?
- What details hook your interest in a personal description?
- Do you consider yourself a good self-reporter – why or why not?
- How many variations of your voice are there? Have you silenced some, as Terry Tempest Williams says her mother did? Say why.
- How much do your views of yourself change over time?
- The half-hour video of a Salt Lake City bookstore event – "Terry Tempest Williams reads from When Women Were Birds" – is a good survey of her 2012 memoir, in which Williams wrestles with the blank pages of her mother's journals and the silences imposed on many women's stories. ↵