CENTRO UNIVERSITÁRIO DAS FACULDADES METROPOLITANAS UNIDAS

ESCOLA DA EDUCAÇÃO

AVALIAÇÃO A2
CÓD.DISC. 314.030002 DISC. Gramática Textual da Língua Inglesa
DOCENTE TURMA
Vanessa Maria da Silva
ALUNO(s) Evanira Pereira Dotte RA(s) 3260120
Fábio Saldanha Faria 5425261
Marcelo Matos Pereira 3433837

TOTAL

⮚ Choose one of the three texts mentioned below and analyze it according to the study
of the Seven Standards of Textuality. The analysis must contain between 300 - 400
words. Deadline May 15th, on Blackboard.

Text 2:

I’ve Been Ghosting My Book - I’m allergic to commitment, and to me, a book is a marriage.

(Felicia C. Sullivan, Aug. 27th, Medium)

https://psiloveyou.xyz/ive-been-ghosting-my-book-4976c6918fa6

I’ve Been Ghosting My Book

I’m allergic to commitment, and to me, a book is a marriage.
Felicia C. Sullivan
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Aug 27, 2019 · 6 min read

My first book was published in 2008, and it was a book I’d been writing and rewriting for most of
my adult life. Even now, if I could revise the book with the perspective I have as a woman inching toward
middle age, I would. Maybe I wouldn’t have held on to my anger so hard. Maybe I would’ve written that love
is tricky — once you think you’ve defined it, it changes form. I ached for the shape of my mother, the
woman she once was but recoiled from the details. Crumbled from all the history. The woman she was. The
better mother she was to another child that wasn’t me.
How do you reconcile loving someone and not loving them all at once? Maybe I would’ve
written about that.
My second book was published in 2017, and it felt like a bloodletting. I’ve learned not to listen to
people who tell me I should write every day. I’ve never been that kind of writer. Dutifully shackled to a blank
page. Hitting my daily word count regardless if the words were worth deleting. A story comes to me in a
torrent, fully-formed, and invariably there are weeks when I’ll write a hundred pages and then a four-year
period where I’ll write nothing at all.
It took me two years to write and edit my novel (more like six months to write it and forever to
gut renovate the fucker), and two years to sell and publish it. Believe me when I say that I’d revise that
book too, rewrite the entire third act if I could.
But I’ve learned it’s best to leave your books on a shelf. Like pencil marks on a doorjamb
charting a child’s growth.
In the past two years, I’ve written a 230-page draft worth torching and 80 pages of another
novel that stalled, sputtered, and died a cruel and quiet death. It got such that I’d label the file folders
Basura One, Basura Two. And then there’s the business of publishing, a specter that never leaves, but lies
dormant. Hovering in the periphery, it waits for when you’re at your most vulnerable. In 2017, I resigned my
agent for a multitude of reasons, and the few I queried half-heartedly since — referrals from fellow author
friends — repeated the same refrain. My writing is stunning but my Bookscan numbers are not.
Have you considered writing something other than a novel? Historical fiction? YA? A new genre
where editors won’t penalize your second book’s lack of sales?
Sometimes it’s best to lie down on the floor and scream into a pillow while typing NO, NO, AND
MORE NO. No one wants to hear that my first editor left, my second editor (who was the publisher)
resigned, and my book was orphaned. Apparently, I should’ve been a snake charmer — waving my pungi,
conjuring readers from dirt. That’s the business of book publishing: a beautiful work of fiction.
It takes everything in me to shutter that voice so intent on telling me that the book won’t sell, so
why bother?
Bother. I’ve been writing since I was six, publishing since I was ten. I’ve been at this for nearly
40 years; I know I’m good. So, am I going to let a slew of myopic agents dictate my life? Bother. Open the
laptop that takes twenty minutes to power up. Keep reaching into the recesses until you find your next fix.
That spark. The characters that come alive in your waking hours. The scenes that arrange themselves like
deck chairs on the Titanic. Your characters’ faces come into focus; their voices are loud and constant. The
story unfurls, sweeping you up and swallowing you whole. Your heart is on pause.
There’s nothing like the torrent. There’s nothing like feeling your body seize, your pulse quicken.
The moment when your mouth is metallic. You taste like shimmering copper coins. The torrent is worth not
showing up in front of a blinking cursor every morning.
Make no mistake, there’s beauty in the discipline. When it comes to the research, outlining, and
editing process, I am tethered to a routine. I prefer the familiar feel of a pen marking up paper (I edit on
hard copy), the rhythm of editing and hand cramping, and the satisfaction of transforming basura into gold.
Of printing out the next draft. Knowing it’s better. Closer to fine.
I should say that I have a problem with commitment — the problem being I don’t like it. My
longest relationship was two years and it felt like decades. I recede from the labels girlfriend and wife. The
idea of marriage sends me into anaphylactic shock. Rings feel like guillotines. Glittering guillotines, but
guillotines nonetheless. It takes a lot for me to stay because I’m the kind of woman who sleeps on top of
the sheets, not between them. Foot easing off the bed, ready to run.
And no, this is not an invitation for psychoanalysis or advice. I know why I’m this way.
So it’s no shock that it takes me a decade to write and publish a book. Writing essays and short
stories come easily to me because they’re one-night stands, pretty things that could be abandoned. You
can sneak out in the middle of the night. It’s the sort of writing that doesn’t require the level of commitment
a book demands. With a book, you have to linger, you have to be in love instead of want. You have to be
comfortable in its company.
It takes everything in me to not leave because I know the result is worth the stretch.
This summer, I had a plan. I took on a big project that would afford me a few months reprieve to
start on a new project. But that plan went to complete shit, and I spent the bulk of the summer in a state of
constant panic. It’s taking me weeks to resume some semblance of normalcy. Not only did I have to get my
life back into working order, but I also had to reconcile a heartbreaking betrayal. A good friend who willingly
allowed her business partner to steal from me. Suffice it to say, it’s been hard to fall in love with a new cast
of characters when you’re embittered.
But what I’ve learned over the course of my career is this: everyone’s career is at a different
pace. I have prolific friends who publish exceptional books every 1–2 years. One of my closest friends
hasn’t published in 15 because motherhood and life have taken hold, but she’s okay with that. The next
book will come when it needs to come, she tells me. Another friend has been working on her memoir since
I’ve known her and she’s content with the work and the joy it breeds. She doesn’t need to publish; she just
needs to write.
Some people have told me that I waited too long between books. They ask what happened as if
the only acceptable answer to the gap would be some unimaginable illness or nuclear catastrophe, to
which I respond with a shrug and I wasn’t ready.
I didn’t realize love was on a manufacturing schedule. I’m not a machine or a widget on an
assembly line. I’m a person who’s devoted her life to words, to finding ways in which I can use words to
bond myself to people even amidst my crippling fear of commitment. And cultivating those relationships
takes careful time and study. A love that is ardent and unyielding. And if that means that it’ll take me longer
to ferret out my next great love, I’m okay with that.
Because I’m a human, not a book-writing machine.
 ⮚ Analysis (300 – 400 words):

Despite the text has a good cohesion in general, it has a few errors that are typical
character from orality and not from a formal text. Such as and among others:
“and it was a book I’d been writing and rewriting for most of my adult life.” this
should have been written as “and it was a book I had been writing and rewriting for most of my
adult life”;
“Maybe I wouldn’t have held on to my anger so hard.” this should have been
written as “Maybe I would not have held on to my anger so hard.”
“Have you considered writing something other than a novel? Historical fiction?
YA?” this should have been written as “Have you ever considered writing something other than
a novel? Writing something like a Historical fiction? Have you?”
“You have to be comfortable in its company.” this should have been written as
“You must to be comfortable in its company.”
When we analyze the text, we can feel that it was written in a fluid way, with one
idea triggering another without the story not becoming tiresome and disconnected. The text
shows us a good coherence, the author uses a logical structure that makes sense for who is
reading.

Intentionality: The intention contained in the text is to express the feelings related to the
author’s hardship of engaging in long term commitments and her thoughts about the matter. To do
so, she tells us her own story and experiences.

Informativity: To give consistency to her writing, the author shares two lanes of
information, both her own story and experiences, traced paralleled. That being said, these lanes
are her personal relationships and her career as a writer. To give even more room to reflection
and to strengthen her arguments she shares her knowledge regarding some friends developments
as colleagues writers.