7-1-writing process

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I did my final project on Hannah Gadsby’s special Nanette. Writing a paper on Nanette required me to do something I had never done before. Reread, or in the case of Gadsby’s special, re-watch. I re-watched Nanette three times and took notes trying to clump certain ideas together, so my work wouldn’t have an episodic tone or structure to it. I wanted to avoid talking about one scene or one joke each paragraph. I really wanted to link certain parts with others that, in a first viewing of the special, seemed detached and isolated from each other in ideology or subject-relation. I wanted to glue together parts of a broken china plate to a tea-kettle to make it function and look better. If that makes sense… I wanted to get to a place I never knew could be visited even with painstaking analysis. 

My first draft was difficult to write. I quickly discovered how much I had to stop and pause the special in order to get my ideas down. For the first time ever, I really let my main source guide me. I didn’t write the paper I wanted to. In fact, I found myself writing my introduction after my first two body paragraphs. I was trying to keep myself from limiting my own ideas. Which is something I’ve often found is a large mistake in writing a long paper. Writing an introduction paragraph first usually makes writing the body that much harder. I let my ideas sort of work out my introduction. What I found rewarding was remixing the typical structure I usually use to write my paper. 

 

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The rough draft I turned in was complete with “sound-bited” or edited quotes I recorded from people off the street because I chose the multi-modal project prompt. My Multi-modal project was interviewing strangers about Gadsby’s special on the street. The answers I got were usually comprised of fuzzy if not totally forgotten recollections about the special. The first couple bad interviews made me rework my questions into broader specifications. I asked people about their personal definitions and society’s ways of categorizing certain subjects like identity, gender, sexual orientation, and stand-up comedy. My questions became clearer and proved more fruitful as I interviewed more people. I only interviewed eight people. It was harder than I thought to find people who had seen the special. The words I found that evoked the best response quickly shaped my thesis. I ended up writing nine pages instead of the five Dr. Hanrahan and I agreed upon. 

After I got the interviews, I let my interviews lead the focus of my work on Gadsby. Most of the work I did, prior to the interviews, had to be thrown out completely. It was misguided and was absent of any definite shape. I’ll admit, after my first round of four interviews I decided to write the Gadsby focused portion of my major project paper first. After writing about Gadsby’s ideas I had the skeletal system mapped for my paper. The interviews were probably the most hyper-focused part of my work because each question I asked had an entire paragraph about Gadsby dedicated to it. 
 

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After turning in my rough draft, Dr. Hanrahan pointed out that I didn’t try to empathize as much I tried to explain what Gadsby does in her special. I was being too much of a dissecting scientist and to little of a psychologist. So I went back and tried to think about where Gadsby was coming from. I remixed the objectivity of my first couple paragraphs, into sympathy and empathy, to better understand the human element of the horrid stories Gadsby told. Something I didn’t realize until I went back to think about it was about Gadsby’s “coming out story” to her mother. I realized that this was quite possibly the saddest part of Gadsby’s special. 

As a “gender normal” I assume certain things. Certain things such as “coming out” stories for homosexual people are fraught with emotional pain. To hear about the pain in Nanette, in regards to “coming out,” wasn’t difficult because it was not harped upon. Instead Gadsby used it as a jumping off point to land on a much larger issue. But the story in itself is incredibly sad. Gadsby’s mother compares her “being a lesbian to being a murderer.” To link these words so closely together is a Freudian slip on the mother’s part. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cZr8hWy5sI

To realize that your mother connects these two words together must be excruciatingly difficult in one’s acceptance of one’s self. This terrible moment in Gadsby’s life was good to dwell on. It made me realize how approaching something from a new angle can help to enlighten one’s perspective. One’s identity is a delicate thing. Gadsby’s must be made of rock to weather the emotional stabbings she’s had to heal from, in this case, from her own mother. This was the kind of analysis I found myself garnering from Nanette after careful introspection remixed with empathizing instead of explaining. My writing process was scattered and misguided, to say the least, but in the end I had written the most precise essay I have ever written in my life. Mostly because I was so smitten by the subject matter.

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