Letter to the Editor

Dear Paul Douglas Newman,           

            Hello, my name is Tiffany Wingard and I currently attend Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I have written a research paper entitled “Sixty Years Later” and am emailing you with the hopes of publication. The paper is about the differences in women in the workforce in the forties and women in the workforce today. I have included original research by interviewing my sister, mother and grandmother and getting their opinions about the typical image of a housewife and their feelings towards women in the labor force. I wrote this paper as a requirement for my English Research Writing class but was able to pick a topic I feel strongly about. You are able to reach me by email at nnnn@iup.edu or nnnnnn@hotmail.com and also by cell phone at 555-555-5555. Thank you very much for your time and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

                                                Sincerely, Tiffany Wingard

 

 

Blog #18 Publication Piece

I have decided to send my research paper for publication. I think because we had more time to work on it, it is a better piece of writing. I also don’t think I am a very creative writer, so I feel that my creative writing piece wouldn’t get published anywhere. I also picked my research writing for publication because I have original research in it. No one has ever interviewed the three women I have about women in the work force, so I feel that it adds a little bit of flare to my writing.

I talked to my history professor Gary Bailey about where I should send my piece of writing for publication. He actually passed around a piece of paper that day with different history websites and different ones that publish things, so I stayed after class and talked to him about it. We decided the best one would be the Pennsylvania’s Historical Association (PHA). They are a very big historical site and a lot of people are members of it.

I’m not really worried if the PHA site doesn’t publish my writing because I have a huge list of websites that I have as back ups. I also am going to try and work on my creative writing piece over the summer and try to come up with more ideas so I can eventually get that published as well.

Blog #17 Story about Novel

            I have a passion for my research topic, which is women in the war effort because I don’t believe that men should always hold the power and decide what goes on in our lives.  The world will always be consumed with issues regarding fairness and it’s our job to make sure we all recieve the same equality.   As I did my research I found new topics that I have never uncovered.  I found out the differences in wages in the forties and today and was shocked to realize that women are still trailing behind the men in this country.  What do we have to do to prove ourselves in the work industry and to society?

            Until I was 6 I was raised by my mother and grandparents.  My father left us and left my mom in charge of everything, the finances, the household and me and my older sister Kristin.  My mom never received child support from him and it really forced us to live in desperation.  I think that is why I feel so strongly about women not depending on men.  I feel it is our responsibilty to get our own careers so we are able to support ourselves.  You truly can’t count on anyone but yourself and I learned this at an early age.   

Novel…Draft One

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Transition

            I am making this transition by making my creative writing more personal.  I made my research paper more personal at the end by adding original research but for my creative writing I plan on making every journal article from a personal view.  It has been a little hard trying to figure out what I need to write so it is believable but since I spent so much time researching women in my paper, I am hoping I will be able to pull information from it and use it in this creative writing.

Free Writing Trois

            An inside view of the ups and downs of the forties.

            I am going to write journal entries that are coming from women working in the forties.  I was going to have the journal entries come from one women’s perspective, but after talking with Marlen I think I am going to go with a couple different women, so people can see different scenarios from this time period. 

            How am I going to get real women’s thoughts from their lives in the forties and make it realistic and different from the other women?

            When I met with Marlen for our conference we discussed a movie called “If these walls could talk” he told me it is about 3 women and what goes inside their homes and how no one else knows what goes on.  They are considered normal to everyone in the outside world but inside their own homes they know they are very different from everyone.  I want my journal entries to mock this idea.  I think by having more than one women talking in her entry, it will make it more exciting and also make more people understand about what went on in this time period.  Because not everyone goes through the same things or thinks the same way about situations I feel this is the best way to represent my creativity in my novel.  I think I want to have 4 or 5 womens different entries and each of them can write one.  I am going to research more women from this era and put them each in their own journal.  I already have some womens quotes from my research paper, so I am also going to use that in its seperate journal entry.  I am hoping that I will be able to find enough information that women have given about their lives so I can make the journal believable and interesting.  I also hope each one will be different and unique so they each form their own story and idea about the women working during the war.  I’m not sure if I am going to publish my research paper or my novel or both.  I am hoping that I will find and create enough information so I am able to publish both of these pieces so I am anxious to start writing my actual novel/journal entries. I really don’t know what else to write about this.  I have the proposal for this already and I have revised my plans over with Marlen, so now all I need to do is get started and organize my ideas and research. 

Blog #16 Main Issues

            As you have already stated, the main issues in the research papers were the citing, formatting and bringing something new to our topic.  For our novel I don’t feel like the citing and formatting will be that big of a problem.  We are not required to cite for our novel and we don’t need to have a specific format, so the only problem that is left is bringing something new and creative to our novel so it entices someone to read it.

            I think my biggest problem is going to be the creative aspect.  I have decided to write different journal entries from a woman working in the forties and I am going to take quotes from my research paper and use them in my entries so it is more believable.  I am just scared that is is going to be boring and will be like any other novel/journal about women working in the forties that someone has already read.  The Diary of Ann Frank is so popular because it was the first from it’s time explaining in detail things that were happening during that period, but after this journal was created nothing really lived up to it.  People generally go back to this book when they want to read something about the Holocaust.  I want my journal entries to be this effective, informative and interesting.

            I have been trying to think of ways to do this and it has proved to be hard to come up with something.  I have been trying to research different celebrities from the forties and will try to use their personal life experiences for my entries so it is coming from a reliable source and has actually happened.  Hopefully it will turn out like I expect!

Sixty Years Later…Final Draft

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Blog #15 Types of Research

            In order to write my novel I am going to have to do research on the women from the forties so I can depict them correctly in the journal entries.  I have done a lot of research so far, so I will be able to take certain things out of my research paper and insert them in to parts of my journal.  I am going to take certain quotes that I have from the women in my paper and try to incorporate them.  I will also research stories of other women and try to take certain aspects of their life and create a story out of it.

            The process is different because my paper was stuffed with information from journal articles and other reliable sources.  This novel is more creative and free.  I will be able to write more about what I feel rather than what is intelligent for a 15 page research paper.  It is also different because we don’t have to cite anything.  We really can make something up so we grab the readers attention in a different way.  Many people would rather learn about something from a play or journal articles rather than reading a long research paper, so I am glad we are doing both.

            I am excited to finally be at this stage.  Even though it took me weeks and weeks to try to perfect my paper, I feel that it is written to the best of my ability and contains a lot of useful information.  I am glad that I put the effort in to researching what I did and that I am able to reuse the sources and information that I used in my paper for my novel. 

Blog #14 How Research Helps

            In this class we have read many short stories and two books that have given us ideas on how to put our research in to pieces of writing.  The first book I read was in Cold Blood and this taught me how to plug research in to my paper.  It also taught me what pieces of information were important that I needed to include.  I’m sure Truman Capote had many other pieces of research he had that he did not include because of his audience and this made me look at my audience as well.  So reading these short stories and books helped me to write my research paper.

            In turn my research paper is now helping me to write my novel.  I have decided to do journal entries for my novel and to have one main woman character.  Because I researched so much for my paper I am able to take women’s quotes from my paper and put them in to my entries as if they are actually saying it.  I also now know what information I am putting in my journal entries because of everything I found in the journal articles.

            All in all I think reading these books and short stories has helped because I know what to look for when I am researching and I know what to include.  It has helped me gain different ideas and insights that I might not have had before I read them.  It has enabled me to put my own personal aspect in to my paper and I am very excited for the final result!