English Creative Writing Session Two 28 March 2009

About the assignment Questions Experience you would like to share with us?

A reminder about the final performance On 30 May (final session), there will be a group performance of your work during this course … –Short pieces of your work during the course + –New additions + –New approach + –New “message”

Personal narratives Diary Letters Blog writing Memoirs Autobiography

What are the functions of a diary? You may see different samples of our texts serving different functions – bear this in mind when you read them.

Task one: The Princess Diaries – by Meg Cabot 1.Why is a section of the play put at the beginning of the diary? 2.Does this diary entry conform to your usual understanding of what diary writing is like? 3.What do you think about Martinez’s comments on Mia’s writing?

Task two Let’s copy Mia, and do the same exercise as she did for her creative writing class? (But we do it in groups - and see whether you can do a better job than she did!)

Task three The secret diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13¾ What seems to be troubling him about his life?

Task four Suppose you are Adrian's mother, how would you respond to your son’s concerns? Write that in your own diary.

Anne Frank "Anne" Frank (June 12, 1929 to early March, 1945) was a Jewish girl who wrote a diary while in hiding with her family and friends in Amsterdam during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.

Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Frank and her family moved to Amsterdam in 1933, after the Nazis gained power in Germany, and were trapped by the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. As persecutions against the Jewish population increased, the family went into hiding in July 1942 in hidden rooms in her father Otto Frank's office building.

After two years in hiding, the group was betrayed and transported to concentration camps. Seven months after her arrest, Anne died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp within days of her sister, Margot. Her father, Otto, the only survivor of the group, returned to Amsterdam after the war ended, to find that her diary had been saved.

Task five Read the excerpt from Anne Frank’s diary, and try to see if you can picture the living conditions of the hiding place and how she responded to these conditions.

Personal writing e.g. Diary A record of daily life happenings A mirror of the self A companion (to share secrets) A proof of existence A place for self-talk

Assignment today Read the extracts from Diaries of Adam and Eve, and give your response in 300 words.