Mary Rowlandson Essay Topics - Essay Topic Preparation

Mary Rowlandson Essay Topics - Essay Topic PreparationMary Rowlandson offers a series of essay topics for online MFA programs. She explains that the essays are focused on 'a critical reading of a broad range of essay issues,' and that her approach to this is to see it as part of an 'essay writing project.'That may sound like an unusual way to organize a course outline, but according to Mary Rowlandson, the essays have helped students find their voice as writers. She tells the story of one student who initially had trouble putting together a cohesive essay about her experience as a married woman in a gay relationship.In her own research, she discovered that these essay topics were very specific, yet generalized enough that even experienced writers could find some information to base her essay on. One topic that she focuses on is how students need to bring an active imagination to the writing process. She points out that writing is not like drawing or painting, where you can make an 'a s-if' copy of your artwork or pictures.According to Mary Rowlandson, it's more like sketching and writing; it's 'like doing research.' The research involved, whether it's creating a storyboard or a script, or even just a series of questions and ideas, takes a lot of thinking. By contrast, creating a dialogue or character relationships takes less thinking, since there are other tools available such as the dialogue techniques of Shakespeare.'Writing an essay is a lot like doing a dissertation,' says Mary Rowlandson. It requires students to learn how to write and think.Mary Rowlandson stresses the importance of providing students with the freedom to write, rather than telling them what to write. 'We're teaching writing; we'renot trying to build the next historical biography. I'm interested in letting them go to the place where they are naturally going to be attracted to find the things they want to write about,' she says.The topics are designed to allow students to develop their skills in creative writing and write creatively, which Mary Rowlandson believes will help them in their careers as writers. Each topic can be chosen individually or as a group project, according to Mary Rowlandson, and it can be adapted to meet the needs of individual students.According to Mary Rowlandson, there are opportunities for students to work together as they create their essays, which includes working on a chapter by chapter basis or on the same topic in sections. They can even develop projects related to their own projects; she recommends talking to other students who are working on a project and asking for advice on how to adapt the project to fit their own needs.