Memo

To: Ms. Moody, From: Amanda Neary-Carey
In class, my intro draft was reviewed by Erin. She really gave me helpful advice on how to increase the strength of my paper. My topic is about my move from Connecticut to Florida and its effect on my life. Like me, Erin also moved to Florida when she was thirteen so she was able to relate to my story and add suggestions to it to make it better. Erin said that I should add in my memoir, my feelings about moving from Connecticut. This was really good advice since I was planning on writing about my feelings about moving to Florida and how I felt about this new place, but now I realize I need to also write about moving away from my hometown and everything I have ever known. In my memoir, I will probably first start writing about my feelings about moving to Florida and what I expected out of it, and then I will include my feelings about moving from my hometown and my family and how I was sad about that. Erin also said I should add more detail. I will describe more about my hometown in my memoir and create a visual scene so that my audience can feel familiar with the place. I can also describe the differences between my old town and Oviedo, which is the town that I moved to, so that my audience will have an easier time understanding my feelings about the move. I can describe people with more visual details, such as how they looked and sounded like, and also describe what both of my houses looked like. I think for my memoir I will start off with when I found out I was moving, then I will write about my feelings about leaving my hometown as well as my expectations about my new town. I will then talk about the actual move itself, so the audience can read about what it was like, but I will write much about that because that does not have much to do with the point that I am trying to make with my memoir. I will then talk about how different the schools were and how getting new friends in the middle of eighth grade was way more difficult than I had imagined it to be. I will talk about how I missed my family back in Connecticut and it was so much harder to leave them than I thought it would be. I will talk about how difficult it was at first and then my story will turn when I finally adjusted and started to love living here. I will say how I will never stop missing my family, but when I visit that old small town, I know my move was for the better and I am ultimately very happy with my life because of it.