This Annotation Will Teach You to Read Like a Writer!
Decoding E.J. Koh’s memoir ‘The Magical Language of Others’
Several years ago, a graduating student at Goddard College, where I taught in the MFA program, said to my faculty colleague Richard Panek: “I see annotations everywhere!” The point was well taken. Annotations comprise the beating heart of any quality MFA program in creative writing.
At Goddard, students had to write at least 45 “annos” over their four semesters with us. They could focus these very short critical responses on books, films, plays, or even museum exhibits, but the goal of every annotation was to unpack a literary tool that the student could apply to their own work.
Annotations teach us to read like writers. Simply reading for pleasure, or even like a lit major, will not do the trick. Far from the book reviews that we were taught to crank out in high school, annotations are more like mini-excavations or brief exploratory surgeries. A particular focus on craft goes into every annotation, and through this focus, we become better writers.
Nevertheless, most new MFA students find the idea of annotations daunting. And if you’ve never been in an MFA program, you might never have even heard of them. So I thought I’d use this post to deconstruct an annotation on a wonderful…
