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| Music in Our Schools Month logo |
In honor of this being
Music in our Schools Month here in the U.S., we
TeachingAuthors are doing a series on the connections between music and writing/reading. If you're a teacher, check out the
Writing Workout below for links to lesson plans on creating playlists for classroom literature. And for more information about
Music in our Schools Month 2011, see
the official website.
Reading Mary Ann's
post kicking off the series on Monday, I could definitely relate to what she said about writing with music playing in the background. At this moment, Pachelbel's
Canon in D Major is playing on my computer. I first started writing with music years ago to drown out the television and other sounds coming from my family. When I'm actively writing, the music has to be instrumental--lyrics distract me from the words forming in my head. I used to load my CD player with a collection of classical albums that included
Music for the Mozart Effect and
Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Nowadays, I play the music directly on my computer via the "radio stations" I've set up at
Pandora.com. (Pandora is a convenient way to create a quick playlist that "matches" a specific song or type of music.) Like Mary Ann, when working on historical fiction, I listen to music from the era in which my story is set. That means that lately I've been hearing lots of 17th and 18th century pieces featuring the harpsichord and violins. Such music is especially appropriate as the main character of my young adult novel-in-progress plays the harpsichord and her love interest is a violinist.
I've noticed that some authors are now sharing their personal playlists with their readers. For example, on
Kathryn Erskine's website, you can click on the titles of the songs she listened to while writing
Mockingbird, winner of the
2010 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Young adult author
Rachel Cohn has even created iMixes of her playlists on the iTunes Music Store. These playlists can be a great way to connect with young readers, especially teens. Teen (and adult) readers can also find playlists on sites like
Novel Novice, which often includes playlists for the young adult novels highlighted there, such as Elizabeth Eulberg's
Prom and Prejudice.
I know that l
x
Howdy to all February Picture Book Marathoners, you can do it, you can do it--you can, you can!
Similes. Metaphors. You know them well.
Similes compare two unlike objects using "like" or "as": That dog is like a lump of clay--he never chases balls.
Metaphors, in contrast, don't: That dog, a lump of clay, never chases balls. Or simply, That lump of clay never chases balls.
Eli being a lump of clay.
"Metaphor" sounds like someone saying, "May the Force," doesn't it? (It does if you tilt your head sideways and sing LALALA really loudly...) Their force, their power can create vivid images in our minds.
When I was writing
It's Not My Turn To Look For Grandma!, my editor asked me to clarify that the story starts at sunrise and ends at sundown. I had no idea how to communicate this without being
too wordy or clunkily obvious. I was actually pretty frightened.
I flailed about. My flailing is not pretty. Want to see what it looks like close up? This Monday I had a boatload of writing to do in the afternoon. But first I had to have lunch--I mean, c'mon. Since I was a little lost and didn't quite know how to start any of the projects looming over me, another helping of veggies and rice seemed like a jolly good idea and oh, that left-over clam chowder sure looked yummy.
After my large lunch, the flailing continued. I had a poem due and no ideas. None. Nada. I lead a pretty pathetic little life, I decided. Except for the dog park and the gym, I'd had no human contact. So I looked around my room. Eli was a lump of clay on the love seat--no help there.
I was too lazy to actually stand up and walk to my bookshelf (sometimes I'm inspired by the pattern or subject of other poems). There was a lemon next to my computer because I'd picked it from our tree and meant to drop it off in the kitchen but brought it into my office instead.
Not to make those of you shivering under snow jealous or anything, but this is our Meyer lemon tree righ
Over the last two weeks I learned (again) what a good first line can do for you. As I mentioned in my last post, I'm working on a picture book biography. While researching the genre, I came across an interesting article by award-winning biographer James Cross Giblin. In it, he speaks of the importance of finding "anecdotes that bring the subject to life in ways that can be appreciated by younger as well as older readers." I do have several such anecdotes about my subject, but I've been having a hard time arranging them into a story with conflict/tension that rises to a climax. My draft also lacked a well-defined focus or theme.
So I tried the Writing Workout I suggested last time: I went back to the stack of sample biographies I'd brought home from the library and I studied the opening paragraphs to see how each author set up the tension and/or piqued the reader's interest. In other words, I examined how the authors "say who, when, and where" and "state the problem," as Mem Fox says. Here are several of my favorite openings from those books:
"No one expected such a tiny girl to have a first birthday. In Clarksville, Tennessee, in 1940, life for a baby who weighed just over four pounds at birth was sure to be limited." (34 words)
--from Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became the World's Fastest Woman
by Kathleen Krull, illustrated by David Diaz
"In 1917, some girls dressed their dolls. They played house and hopscotch, jump rope and jacks.
But one little girl wanted more. Elinor Smith wanted to soar." (27 words)
--from Soar, Elinor! by Tami Lewis Brown, illustrated by Francois Roca
"From the time he was young until long after his beard grew white, Charles Darwin loved to collect things. He collected rocks from the English countryside he explored as a boy, coins in the home where he grew up, shells from trips to the sea, and dead bugs, too." (49 words)
-from Darwin by Alice McGinty, illustrated by Mary Azarian
Each of these openings hints at the challenges and/or aspirations of the book's subject while also introducing theme and tone. In each case, it took fewer than fifty words to hook me so that I wanted to know more.
I spent days working on a first line/paragraph that would accomplish the same thing for my manuscript. When I finally had it, so much of the story fell into place. My new opening provided more than a hook; it helped me find the focus I'd been struggling to define. What a
Eureka! moment.
In a bit of Synchronicity, yesterday I came across
a short article by author-illustrator Lindsay Barrett George on picture book writing in general. When writing picture books, she says:
In honor of
Picture Book Marathon month, each of the
TeachingAuthors will be sharing how we approach picture book writing. Mary Ann kicked off the topic in her
last post, where she talked about how deceptively simple picture book texts appear to be to those who haven't studied them. I once heard
Tomie dePaola, the author and/or illustrated of over 200 books, say that of all writing genres (including novels for adults), a picture book text is the most difficult.
Instead of discouraging me, dePaola's statement words were a great consolation. I didn't feel quite as bad about my struggles to sell a picture book. (
Mary Ann's words about typically taking at least three years to write and polish a picture book are consoling to me, too.) As I shared
in another post, I first became interested in children's publishing precisely because I wanted to write picture books. I eventually learned that novel writing comes more easily to me. But part of me still has ideas that I believe would make terrific picture books. So I work on them in between my novel writing.
It's not always easy for me to transition between the two genres (especially when the novel I'm working on is in the voice of a teenager living in 18th-century Milan!). The best way I've found to get into a picture book state-of-mind is to begin by reading aloud several picture books that have a tone or rhythm similar to what I'm aiming for. As
I've shared before, I sometimes also type out the text of those books. I recommend my students working on picture books do the same.
Don't know which picture books to study? You might want to begin with those on the New York Public Library's
100 Picture Books Everyone Should Know, or the
Top 100 Picture Books Poll Results compiled at the Fuse #8 Production blog. (See the
Blogosphere Buzz below for some Fuse #8 news.) If you're looking for more recent favorites (especially if you're trying to create a manuscript that might actually get published in the current market), then check out the latest winners of the
Charlotte Zolotow Award for picture book text. (In case you didn't know, my fellow
TeachingAuthor Mary Ann Rodman won the Zolotow Award for her book,
My Best Friend. So go back and re-read
her post to learn whatt inspired that manuscript.) Another approach would be to do an author study of a picture book author's body of work. Some of my favorites for this include Mem Fox, Lisa Wheeler, Phyllis Root, and Carolyn Crimi. Mem Fox also has two terrific articles on her website that every aspiring picture book writer should read:
"So You Want to Write a Picture Book"<
If you looked in my office, you might start dialing the number for the show Hoarders. Disorganized as it may appear, everything in there relates directly to a writing project.
A quick inventory would include: Gibson Girl prints, three nun dolls, turn-of-the-century textbooks, s 16 Magazines 1963-68, The Searchlight Cookbook, copyright 1931 ("Spring Beauty Salad, anyone?), a 1940 edition of Hymnal for Christian Worship, a WWII vintage volume, Song and Service Book for Ship and Field; Army Navy (did the Marines and Coast Guard have their own editions? reproductions of old Sears & Roebuck catalogs, an actual mostly intact copy of the Sears Fall 1941 catalog, a Sherwin-Williams store display book, Colors and Rooms for Your Jet Age Home (very Mad Men!), floor plans for 1920's homes...and that's just the top layer. BTW, the source for 99% of this stuff was the online Goodwill auction site (www.shopgoodwill.com) I got most of this for under five dollars.
In case you couldn't guess, I was once a librarian. I am now an ex-librarian who writes historical fiction. I also live in an area where library funds are nil, the collections meager, and interlibrary loan fees astronomical. So I maintain my own research library. I always have three books in my head; the one I am writing, and the next two I have planned. The WWII stuff was for Jimmy's Stars, the nun dolls and hymnals for my current project, and the 60's items for a possible sequel to Yankee Girl. (I said possible!)
I am something of a chicken in writing historical fiction. So far, I haven't written anything that takes place before the 1880's because I can't find primary sources that old on Shop Goodwill, and previous to that, my family was an illiterate crew so there are no family letters or documents to rely on. (Hence, Karen Cushman will have no competition from me...chuckle, chuckle.)
It takes me a year minimum to research my books. Step one is to find a calendar for the year(s) of the story. (You can find these on line using the search term "perpetual calendar" That calendar is taped to the lid of my laptop, so I can instantly see which day of the week was Christmas, or any other holiday or historical event.
So once I have my calendar, I start researching and writing in the dates that are important to my story. My calendar for Jimmy's Stars, in addition to marking off the usual holidays as the dates for certain battles and the day in which they became news in the United States. There was usually quite a gap, due to time zones and wartime censorship. What day did the movie The Sullivans open? (For anything you need to know about every movie ever made, www.imdb.com is a life saver. It's also good for settling movie arguments!) What days did certain items become rationed? Filling out my calendar is always step one.
I also need maps. I usually fictionalize a real neighborhood, in a real town. The Macken Street Hill neighborhood of Jimmy's Stars
This is the second January our TeachingAuthors posts address 6 + 1 Trait Writing.
Last January we focused on the
first trait, Ideas, each of us sharing the generation of a particular work.
This January we focus on Organization.
Brainstorming this post, though, I wondered, “Are all of our readers familiar with 6 + 1 Trait Writing?”
Many of our readers are classroom teachers, reading our posts to help them grow writers; many, however, are first-and-foremost writers, specifically children’s book writers.
6 + 1 Trait Writing – or Six Traits Writing as it’s often called - may mean little, if anything.
So, I’ll organize my post as most writers would organize their work – i.e. structure its movement forward and create its shape, then begin by grounding my readers in this singular Language Arts approach.
Essentially, the Six Traits approach offers an analytical model for assessing and teaching writing based on six identifiable key qualities of strong writing:
• IDEAS, the main message;
• ORGANIZATION, the internal structure of the piece;
• VOICE, the personal tone and flavor of the author's message;
• WORD CHOICE, the vocabulary a writer chooses to convey meaning;
• SENTENCE FLUENCY, the rhythm and flow of the language;
• CONVENTIONS, the mechanical correctness;
• PRESENTATION, how the writing actually looks on the page.
I like the Six Traits connection children’s book author and teacher Anastasia Suen shares on her
website:“I like to teach with the six traits because this is how I write! I start with ideas, and then I organize them. Once I have a plan, I begin to write. I say things the way I want to say them, with my voice. I choose words and make the sentences flow. Then I clean it up by focusing on the conventions (grammar, punctuation and spelling). I work in this order, so that ideas come first and conventions are last.”I’ll be sitting at her feet soon, learning-learning-learning, at the upcoming February CCIRA Conference (Colorado Council International Reading Association) in Denver – and – March Illinois Reading Council Conference in Springfield.
Dr. Culham was formerly the Unit Manager of the Assessment Program at Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory in Portland, Oregon.
1 Comments on 6 + 1 Trait Writing: Organization, last added: 1/19/2011
By:
Carmela Martino and 5 other authors,
on 12/3/2010
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Howdy and Happy Poetry Friday! There's a teeny tiny
Writing Workout and a not-so-teeny poem below!
A recent
School Library Journal article has inspired
TeachingAuthors to chat with you about the books that have most influenced us.
That article introduced us to
Bookprints. Run by Scholastic, its full name is You Are What You Read; it's sort of a FaceBook for readers.
Upon registering, I discovered a few glitches to Bookprints' wonderful universe. I couldn't figure out how to sign on as an author (help, anyone?) and, on strict orders of my financial advisor (aka my husband) I never give out my birth year.
So I signed in with a different birth year. I must say, I look remarkably young for a 109-year-old.
: ^ )The first thing it asks you (after rudely inquiring about your birth year) is to list the five most influential books in your life. Here is my list:
A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence FerlinghettiAs I wrote when listing my
five favorite poetry books, an older teen gave this one to me on my 13th birthday. I was thrilled she thought I would like these poems. I memorized the poem,
DOG and choreographed a dance about it for my modern dance class...I even wore my dog's collar! (Of course, those were the days I painted a flower on my cheek each morning to match my outfit...and painted
Twiggy lashes on my eyes.)
Thanksgiving smacks of Tradition.
Shelves overflow with books about turkeys, Pilgrims and family gatherings.
Bloggers and columnists laud keeping a Gratitude Journal.
Reading, sharing and modeling
Debbie Levy’s The Year of Goodbyes (Hyperion, 2010), however, could start a whole new tradition for a holiday that celebrates family, friends and life.
In her introduction, Debbie Levy writes,
“This book is based on another book – not a library book, or a bookstore book, or even a typed manuscript. It was a book written by hand and owned by my mother when she lived in Germany as a girl. The year was 1938. In her own language, German, the book was known as a poesiealbum (po-eh-ZEE Album). In English you could call it a poetry album.”
Poesiealbums weren’t hastily created. “Usually,” Levy shares in her introduction, “you took your friend’s
album home overnight and used your best handwriting, and maybe also colored pencils, to create a lasting impression. Your illustrations were likely to include symbols of good luck, such as ladybugs, piles of coins, horseshoes, fly mushrooms, four-leaf clovers, hearts, and chimney sweeps and their tools. You might further decorate your page with oblaten (o-BLAH-ten), stickers that girls collected and traded.”
Levy uses her mother Jutta’s discovered album - the actual poetic entries, art and oblaten of her friends sharing their twelfth year in Hamburg, Germany, from January through November – as the springboard for telling, in poetic verse, the true story of the Salzberg family’s last year in Germany. Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party reigned supreme. As public persecution of Jews and thus Jutta’s family increased daily, escape to family in America proved the only way out. Excerpts from Jutta’s diary share the Salzberg’s eventual safe passage to New York. Jutta’s sister Ruth’s entry closes the book.
“Whoever loves you more than me Should write behind me, certainly.”Levy created
The Poesiealbum Project on her blog,
The Year of Goodbyes.She invites readers of all ages to send their own pages.
Perhaps six lines about a wrong in the
Getting to know you, Getting to know all about you. Getting to like you, Getting to hope you like me...Oscar Hammerstein’s lyrics, sung by Anna in
The King and I, waltzed through my mind while I grew and wrote today’s post.
The words and tune make the perfect ring tone for students and teachers attempting our Back-to-School Getting-to-Know-You Writing Workouts.
BUT...before you read about today’s Writing Workout - creating an identifiable verbal ring tone of sorts, i.e. a Signature Quote, be sure to enter our latest contest for classroom teachers/librarians/homeschooling groups. The prize? Win either a 30-minute Skype visit from a TeachingAuthor or a set of six autographed books – one from each TeachingAuthor!
Esther Hershenhorn
“Go, Cubs, go!” (Steve Goodman, "Go, Cubs, Go!")
“It’s never too late, in fiction or in life, to revise.” (Nancy Thayer)
“Onward, kiddos! The world awaits!” (Esther Hershenhorn, Loop-de-Loop Leo)
Six-word memoirs.
Poetic expressions of pivotal Life moments.
The personal essay.
Creating each of the above offers us the opportunity to choose and order words that best reveal our true selves to the world.
But the words of others can also do the same when quoted and placed beneath our names.
The right quotation can serve as a signature every bit as singular as John Hancock’s bold cursive strokes or Zorro’s three sword-drawn lines.
What words - spoken, written, sung, filmed or posted by others, tell the world who you are?
The possibilities are infinite. So,
• Brainstorm topics/themes/subjects that speak to you – i.e. family, friends, heroes, school, learning, writing, sports, drama, music, pets, dreams, hobbies, traveling, as well as those topics/themes/subjects that speak about
My daughter started kindergarten two weeks ago. She seems to be enjoying it tremendously (the most frequent descriptor being "awesome"). On the social front, to my horror, she has been eager to tell us who knows which Lady Gaga songs. (I do not let my 5-year-old listen to Lady Gaga, I swear.)
Academically, she was fairly mum until about the third day when she said, "Mommy, I have a big problem. You know those composition books we bought with the Redskins on the cover? We have not used them at all." At her Montessori preschool, journal writing was a BIG DEAL for the kindergarteners, and I think coloring the letters of the alphabet has been a bit of a letdown. However, she came home proud as can be on Friday with news that, not only had she written in her journal, but she'd completed her first poem!
She went on to explain that she got to cut and paste (excitement!) a computer printout and fill in one blank. The poem, she tells me, goes like this:
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday, dear Kate, Happy Birthday to you
Never mind that her birthday is in April. As far as she's concerned, it should be her birthday every day. She was pleased as can be with her accomplishment, and she is tremendously excited about writing her next poem because the first one was so simple. Kate thinks that writing is easy and fun. Yay! May it always be so!
My three-year-old, meanwhile, is working on tracing his letters in shaving cream. He, too, is learning to love to write.
My husband and I are in the process of easing our new students into a writing-intensive semester. I caught a glimpse of the sixth-grade curriculum and was (somewhat naively) surprised to note that many of the objectives and outcomes were the same as those for my first-year college students taking English 101.
Our education-major baby-sitter was here last night. She is extremely bright, is terrific with our children, has several part-time jobs, and is taking 13 credits as a college junior. She said that she is enrolled in two writing-intensive classes that were going to "kill her." Now, I've read one of her papers in Spanish. She is a very good writer. She added that she loves the text (Zinsser's On Writing Well -- one of my faves, too) and the teacher, and she was very positive about how much she feels her writing will improve as a result of the class. It was the actual work that freaked her out. As a professional writer, I can totally relate. Can't we all? What to do? The first rule I teach my students: Butt in Chair, baby!
Don't forget to enter our biggest contest yet! The prize? Win either a 30-minute Skype visit from a TeachingAuthor or a set of six autographed books—one from each TeachingAuthor! Your entry doesn't have to be long. See the Carmela's post (updated 9/12) for more details. -- Jeanne Marie
Happy Poetry Friday! But first, Campers, make sure to enter our latest contest for classroom teachers/librarians/homeschooling groups! The prize? Win either a 30-minute Skype visit from a TeachingAuthor or a set of six autographed books—one from each TeachingAuthor!
Our current topic is getting-to-know-you exercises as this new school year begins. (Wait...school's started already?!?)
Writing Workout: Back-to-School/Getting-To-Know-You Exercise
My niece, writer
Julia Halprin Jackson, sent me a prompt which fits our topic.
Julia said Smith Magazine suggests writing about “a single moment which changed...(your) life in a profound way. Your “Moment” could be a decision you made, something you saw, a letter or email sent or received, a literal or mental discovery. The Moment can be serious or funny, dark or light.”
What an interesting way to get to know your students!
Okay, so here's the step-by-step:
1.
Brainstorming. First, share a few of the pivotal moments in your own life. To get your juices flowing, here are three of my Moments:
- I remember when my father tried to pull a waterlily out of Ellis Lake so we could plant it at home...but try as he might, he couldn't break its strong root. That was the moment I realized my father was human.
- I remember being on the phone with Shelley, my best friend; I remember the moment she stopped being my best friend.
- And I remember when Great Aunt Genia was astonished I didn't know how to wash the spaghetti sauce stain from my shirt. At that moment I realized I was capable of doing more than my mother asked me to do.
2.
Brainstorm as a group, list possible pivotal moments on the board.
3.
Have each student make his or her own list of pivotal moments
. 4. Have them
select the one they'd like to write about.5.
Write a poem, a story or an essay about that moment.I ended up with several versions of one pivotal moment in my life: a
Long version, a
Tanka (syllable count: 5/7/5/7/7), and a
Six-Word version.
So, Campers, let me know: do any of these work? Which do you like best?
LONG VERSION This is the first one I wrote. You know that Mark Twain quote: "I didn't have time to write a short letter so I wrote a long letter instead." So true! I always need to tell the whole dang story first. This is a simple poetic form called an
Envelope Poem<
By:
Carmela Martino and 5 other authors,
on 9/8/2010
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Whether your school year started weeks ago or only yesterday (as in the Chicago Public School system), we thought this would be a good time to kick off a series of posts featuring back-to-school getting-to-know-you writing activities especially for teachers, librarians, and homeschooling parents. And, as an added incentive to try our
Writing Workouts with your students, we're offering a special giveaway contest
exclusively for teachers, librarians, and homeschooling groups. (If you're not qualified to enter yourself, please tell all the teachers, librarians, and homeschoolers you know about this great opportunity!)
The prize? Your choice of:
A) a 30-minute Skype author visit from one of the TeachingAuthors OR
B) a prize package containing six autographed TeachingAuthor books.
Not sure you
want to host a Skype author visit for your book club or classroom? Then read teacher and author Kate Messner's blog post,
Virtual Author Visits: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, & the Awesome or check out
Skype an Author Network.
What do you have to do to win? Below, you'll find a
Writing Workout on using six-word memoirs as a getting-to-know-you activity. To enter our contest, you need to try the
Workout with your students some time in the next few weeks. Then come back and post a comment about the experience to this blog entry by
11 pm (CST) Monday, Oct. 4, 2010. Be sure to also read through to the end of this post for complete entry rules and instructions on how to qualify for a second, bonus entry. (If you've never posted a comment to a blog before and need some help, you can
email me via my website.)
About the activity: I first wrote about using six-word memoirs in the classroom
a year ago. It's an activity students enjoy that can be adapted for all ages. I tried it over the summer with my writing camp students, and they had so much fun, they didn't want to stop--they wrote one memoir after another! I hope you'll give the following lesson a try and then enter our contest. And if you're not a teacher or librarian, why not write some six-word memoirs for yourself? You can visit the
Six-Word Memoirs website for inspiration. The site even provides a box where you can type in your memoir and the computer automatically counts your words!
Writing WorkoutGetting to Know Me Back-to-School Activity:Writing Six-Word Memoirs
Lucky us!
Newbery Honor Medalist and TeachingAuthor Patricia Reilly Giff chose TeachingAuthors as her last August Blog Tour Stop.
She’s been out and about in the Virtual World sharing news of her early chapter book series for readers ages 6 through 9, Zigzag Kids, which kicks off this month with its first two titles, Number One Kid and Big Whopper.
And lucky me!
I’m the TeachingAuthor who interviewed her.
In many ways, I’m paying Kindness forward.
Patricia Reilly Giff taught me. As I traveled my oh, so long Writer's Plotline, learning my craft, honing my craft, I read her books - first as a reader, then next as a writer, over and over and over again. Today I share them with my writing students, young and young-at-heart.
Most of us know Patricia Reilly Giff as an author. Her award-winning books include The Pictures of Hollis Woods and Lily’s Crossing. The Polk Street Kids series sat on many of our shelves, at home, in the library, in the classroom.
But I bet most of us didn't know Patricia Reilly Giff was and is a teacher still.
She taught school before she wrote, at P.S. 136 – St. Albans, New York, and on Long Island, in various districts.
And, she currently teaches Writing for Children to adults at her Fairfield, CT bookstore, The Dinosaur’s Paw. Her current class, she brags, holds five students whose books are being published this year.
In the Zigzag Kids series, Patricia Reilly Giff again creates a world and kids readers will instantly recognize: the Afterschool Center at the Zelda A. Zigzag Elementary School and the eleven wonderfully-unique students who stop by every day. Though wonderfully-unique, the five girls and six boys deal with all-too-common, universal problems. As in her Polk Street Kids series titles, Real Life becomes easily-readable – and instantly fun.
Read on to learn how this teacher became a writer, how she jump-starts her writing and what writing means to Patricia Reilly Giff. And be sure to check out the related Writing Workout at the end of this post.
And don't forget to enter our Book Giveaway Drawing by 11 pm CST, Monday, August 30!
Random House has generously donated TWO two-book sets (Number One Kid and Big Whopper) to giveaway to two lucky TeachingAuthors readers, one a classroom teacher, the other
either a writer or librarian or home-schooling parent or parent/grandparent.
Note the Entry Rules at the end of this post.
In the words of Patricia Reilly Giff.....
&n
By:
Carmela Martino and 5 other authors,
on 8/23/2010
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My favorite book is Charlotte's Web. I loved it as a third grader, and I love it today. I cannot think of another book that makes laugh, cry and think . . . sometimes in one paragraph. Any book that can do all that for me, over a period of . . . well, a lot of years . . . is my definition of a masterpiece.
E.B. White's seamless writing is a delight to read . . . and hard to pull apart for examination. One thing that struck me as a child, was his use of lists as description. He does it in several places, particularly in describing the contents of Wilbur's slops. My favorite "list"is this one, after Charlotte's first web message.
The Zukerman's driveway was full of cars and trucks from morning till night--Fords and Chevvies and Buick roadmasters and GMC pickups and Plymouths and Studebakers and Packards and DeSotos with gyromatic transmissions and Oldsmobiles with rocket engines and Jeep station wagons and Pontiacs. ---pg. 83-84.
White could have ended the sentence at the word "night", and still had a perfectly serviceable sentence. But, no, he wanted to show the reader how many different kinds of people, through their various vehicles, came to see the wonder of the web.
I am sure E.B. White never gave a thought as to whether he was writing a "timeless" story to be read sixty years later in a world without Studebakers, Packards and DeSotos. Even reading it for the first time in the early 1960's. those cars were as dead as the dodo for me. That small detail never bothered me. What struck me was White specificity in using those brand names. Without knowing what it was called, I was introduced to the concept of specific writing.
While revising, I spend hours and hours picking over my word selection. Rather like Forrest Gump and his box of chocolates, ("you never know what you'll get") I never know how a specific noun, verb, adjective and occasionally, an adverb is going to feel in a sentence. I insert the word, and read the sentence out loud. Often, a word that sounded just fine in my head, tastes like a lemon cream center when spoken.
I hate lemon cream chocolates.
Unlike, Forrest, who was perfectly content to let life surprise him, I punch holes in my words, looking for the one with the maple fudge center.
I love maple fudge chocolates.
The perfect word, that specific detail, will melt slowly and sweetly on my tongue, like my favorite candy. Looking for that one word--the one that can describe that moment, that emotion, that person--is the reason I write so slowly. I can select, "chew" and reject words for hours on end. As Mark Twain said "The difference between the right words and the wrong word, is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."
When I have bitten into my nineteenth lemon cream, sometimes I use the listing method, writing down all the possibilities I can think of. Sometimes, I end up using the entire list, as White did. More often, listing frees my mind to produce that one word. For instance, in my picture book, Surprise Soup, I stalled out in the scene in which Kevie actually makes soup. I don't cook. Period. I couldn't list cooking techniques or tools. I could, however, list the sounds of cooking, since that is as close as I get to a kitchen. Listing sounds -- splishety splash, chippety chop, scrubbety scrub-- got me back on track.
In writing, finding that maple fudge chocolate is everything.
4 Comments on Writing Is Like a Box of Chocolates, last added: 8/24/2010
I just finished reading Michael Scott's young adult fantasy, The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. Scott's novel is one of this month's selections for Anderson's Bookshop's Not for Kids Only Book Club, and a nominee for the Illinois Rebecca Caudill Book Award 2011. While reading Chapter 6, I was struck by the following lines:
Josh was about to take a step toward the door when Flamel's iron hand clamped onto his shoulder.
"Don't move," he murmured. "Wait. Look. Notice. If you keep those three words in mind, you just might survive the next few days."
Nicholas Flamel's words to 15-year-old Josh stop him from entering what we soon learn is a booby-trapped hallway. In reading these lines, I was struck, in particular, by the three one-word sentences:
Wait. Look. Notice.
So I paused to consider why these sentences caught my attention. Here are a few of the reasons I came up with:
- The short sentences have an arresting effect on both Josh (causing him to physically stop) and the reader (causing us to wonder what danger lies ahead).
- As dialogue, they fit the personality/speech patterns already established for the character Nicholas Flamel.
- They increase tension.
- They create a pause in the fast-paced action.
Interestingly, I'm usually annoyed when I read a series of one-word sentences, as in:
Don't. Even. Think. About. It.
I understand the intent, but I still don't like such sentences.
This is another reason why I paused after reading the above excerpt from
The Alchemyst--I wanted to understand why, in this case, I
wasn't bothered by the one-word sentences.
Perhaps the difference between these two sets of sentences is more obvious to you than it was to me at first:
Wait. Look. Notice.
are true sentences, each made up of one-word imperative statements. On the other hand, grammatically speaking,
Don't. Even. Think. About. It.
are
not true sentences. (For a basic explanation of why, see
this page.)
I think it's interesting that the difference bothered my internal grammarian even though my conscious mind couldn't put my finger on the reason why at first. Have any of you ever had a similar reaction? If so, please post a comment telling us about it.
Flamel's instructions:
Wait. Look. Notice. happen to also be great advice for writers. I hope you'll put this advice to practice in the following
Writing Workout.
But first, I have another one-word sentence for you:
Remember! That is, remember that you have only until
11 pm (CST) this Friday, August 20, to enter our giveaway drawing for
Miss Brooks Loves Books (and I don’t), written by Barbara Bottner and illustrated by Michael Emberley.
Read April's interview of Barbara for details.
4 Comments on Wait. Look. Notice., last added: 8/20/2010
Happy Poetry Friday! Poem and Writing Workout below.
Today I’m continuing the topic of a writer’s conference I’d recommend…and why.
In the first class I ever took in the UCLA Extension Writers Program in about 1984, my teacher, the late Terry Dunahoo (who I call the Johnny Appleseed of Southern California children's book writers), told us to join the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrator (SCBWI) and to attend the annual international conference which, luckily for us, was in Los Angeles.
Like a good solider (or a well-trained little sister), I did what my teacher told us to do, and boy, am I glad I did. I swear that the classes I took through the UCLA Extension Writers Program and my membership in SCBWI made me the writer I am today. I've been going every summer since then.
From this West Coaster’s point of view, SCBWI’s annual conference in Century City, California is a fabulous trip-to-New-York-in-a-box. Editors, authors and web gurus that we’d never EVER get an appointment to see if we flew to New York on our own, show up in LA to teach us, inspire us, critique our manuscripts and party with us.
Come if you possibly can. Really. But here’s the great news! If you can’t come to my home state, you can follow conference action on the SCBWI Blog, which has already begun posting preconference interviews.
How cool is that?
Here's a list poem about the conference:
EVERY AUGUST IN LOS ANGELES
by April Halprin Wayland
I join 800, sometimes 900
kith and kin,
blood and family,
clansmen and women
as we sing our
anxious,
frightened,
excited,
inspired,
ways through
this galaxy, this most amazing writing world
in solidarity
in fellowship
in unity...
in hope.
And if you DO come to the conference, please find me and tell me you’re a TeachingAuthors reader! This will be my eighth year of critiquing picture book manuscripts. Is that cool or what?
When I was a marketing manager at Pacific Bell lo, these many long years ago, I was pretty much a round peg in a square hole. I knew the corporate world wasn't the right one for me....but I wasn’t sure where I belonged.
Every once in a while managers were sent to seminars on business and leadership topics. One of these changed my life.
I remember sitting on the floor in this particular one-day workshop taking notes and wearing jeans and shoes that were not high-heels. My feet felt wonderful. This seminar was about goal setting and specifically about the power of affirmations.
We were taught to write three to five affirmations on a 3 x 5 card and keep it in our wallets. Affirmations, we were told, are in the present tense, as if whatever our goal is had
already come true. We were told to focus on our affirmations every day in three ways:
1. Say the affirmation aloud.
2. Visualize it.
3. Feel i
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Happy Poetry Friday! Poem and Writing Workout below.
Our blog topic is reading as a writer. I'm going to modify it and list some books I'm currently reading as a writing teacher.
You may remember that after ten years as instructor with the UCLA Extension Writers Program, I'm teaching a brand-spanking-new class this summer.
My vision is to make this class as playful as the theater games class I took years ago. No matter how tired my friend Steve and I were after a day in the corporate world, we couldn't wait to get to class.
What was so special about it that energized us? We were moving or we were mediating, we were reacting to smells or blindfolded, we were hugging or we were chasing each other, we turned into gorillas or bananas.
I want my picture book students to be equally energized. I want them out of their desks with exercises that get them stretching, walking, laughing, observing, closing their eyes, tasting, singing, crying, playing group games. I'll be covering such topics as point of view, dialogue, rewriting, publishing and more. Here are a few of the books I'm using:
Writing Workout The poet William Stafford wrote a poem every morning all of his life. Since taking the National Poetry Month Challenge to write a poem a day for the month of April, I'm continuing, inspired by the book, Early Morning--Remembering my Father, William Stafford by
Kim Stafford. Today part of a sentence Stafford wrote inspired me: "At a certain sound today I hear Father turn onto the gravel drive at supper time..." It reminded me of our dog, Eli, sleeping on his couch in the upstairs bedroom as I write.
1 Comments on We Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Posting....to ask for more writing exercise ideas!, last added: 6/4/2010
About ten years ago, I worked as an aide in the writing center at our local high school. My coworker and I helped students with composition, proofreading, revisions, and anything else they needed to polish their assignments. The English teachers supplied us with helpful handouts.
After I worked there for one school year, the program lost its budget, I lost my job, and the students lost the opportunity to sign up for individual help beyond their teachers’ limited time.
Since then, I’ve held a variety of jobs: freelance writer, editor, and proofreader; speaker; author in residence; managing editor for an educational publishing company; English instructor at a nearby college. I’ve hung onto the handouts I used in that high school writing center all these years. From time to time, I still refer to them.
What do the paragraphs above have in common? All three begin with transitions. A transitions handout I saved from that high school job lists examples of some of the most common types:
- Transitions for time or sequence (finally, later, next, first, second, third, etc.)
- Transitions for connecting ideas already stated (besides, likewise, for instance, furthermore, for example, in addition)
- Transitions for showing cause and effect (therefore, thus, consequently, as a result)
- Transitions for comparing and contrasting ideas (otherwise, on the other hand, however, nevertheless)
- Transitions for describing spatial relationships (above, below, beyond, nearby, across from, in the distance)
For the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about transitions. In writing, transitions perform the valuable function of locating a reader in time and space. In life, transitions can be times of great upheaval that make us long for an anchor, a safe harbor, a retreat, a way to help us locate ourselves.
Our older son has finished his first year of college and is home for the summer. In a few months, he and two friends will move into their own apartment. Our younger son is about to graduate from high school and itching to plunge into his own version of college independence. My husband and I find ourselves in a home we bought eighteen years ago (!) in a suburban school district where we hoped our kids would get a good education. When both boys head off to college in fall, our home will be too big for us. I’m itching, too, to make a transition into something more suitable for two with room for occasional visitors. We want peace and quiet, more room to garden, a smaller house on a larger plot of land.
At the same time, I’m in the middle of a short-term transition, the gap between semesters in my teaching job. I always plan to use this time to clear out, clean up, and prepare for the next semester's courses. Bu
xxxx
Howdy--and happy Poetry Friday!
Ellen Hopkins, author of Young Adult novels in poems Fallout, Tricks, Identical, Glass, Impulse, Burned, and Crank, uses interesting alignment in her poems. They are often layered, allowing the poem to say more than one thing, as if she were writing two poems at once.
An example of this is the poem, I had to Explain, in her book Crank. On the left side of this poem are stanzas; on the right side are a words pulled from each stanza to make a parallel poem. The words down the right side are:
kiss
first kiss
best kiss
that kiss
kiss so tender
kiss me again
fused by kisses
Writing an End of School Year PoemI've wanted to play with this form for some time. So let's write a poem about the end of the school year!
I don't know how Ellen Hopkins approaches her poems, but here’s what I did:
xx
1) I flipped through my school year calendar, thinking about what happened each month. Then I jotted down five events that brought up strong emotions.
xx2) I chose one of the memories.
xx3) I constructed a simple sentence (for the right side) that conveys some of what I wanted to say.
xx4) I wove the words of this short sentence into the stanzas on the left side.
xxHere's a list of some of my memories from this past school year:
xx1) The pre-launch very first-in-the-entire-world reading of New Year at the Pier on the beach at sunset—I was scared, it was cold and there weren’t very many people at the event (Can you blame them? It was freezing!) See photo above.
xx2) Casting the three young actors for the launch of my book New Year at the Pier (See
a photo of them on the left side of my calen
Here in the United States, the school year is drawing to a close. Around this time last year, we received an
Ask the TeachingAuthors question about end-of-the-school-year writing activities. Unfortunately, we weren't able to address the question in time. To make up for that, we'll be providing a series of end-of-the-year
Writing Workouts this week and next. If you're a teacher, you'll find the first below.
If you're a writer, this may be the time to look ahead and think about how summer will affect your writing schedule. Summer is a very productive time for some writers. Many of my adult students are teachers and librarians who look forward to summer vacation as a time to catch up on their writing.
Not for me. Maintaining my writing routine during the summer months is often a challenge. When my son was young, the challenge was not to let my writing interfere with his summer activities, and vice versa. Now that he's grown up, that's no longer an issue. But teaching has become one of
my summer activities. I teach several week-long writing camps for young writers, along with adult classes. I love teaching, and I'm always revising and fine-tuning my camps to keep them fresh and fun for my young students. That takes creative energy, as well as time. I'm not complaining. It's just something I need to allow for when I set my summer writing goals.
I'd love to know how other writers deal with this seasonal transition. Will the end of the school year affect your writing schedule? Does taking a vacation refresh you as a writer or do you feel you've lost your momentum and have to start over? Do you have any tips on staying creative during the lazy, hazy days of summer? Please share your ideas via our comments.
And don't forget: today is the last day to enter our giveaway drawing for an autographed copy of April Pulley Sayre's picture book
Turtle, Turtle, Watch Out! See
JoAnn's last post for details.
Blogosphere buzz:
What better way for this children’s book writer to celebrate Children’s Book Week than to capture the event’s heart in a Zeno poem, the original poetic format shared last Friday, May 7 in my fellow TeachingAuthor April Halprin Wayland’s post.
Wave your bookmark! Clap! Shout! Holler,“Let’s go, readers!”This week beams on Children’s Books - golden reams of pages bound. How eachgleams!Sponsored by
The Children’s Book Council since 1919 (!) and administrated by
Every Child a Reader, this year’s May 10-16 celebration includes a bounty of brand-new events and initiatives to accompany the third annual
Children’s Choice Book Awards.
The CBC is partnering with a bookstore in at least 10 cities to stage CBW events, including Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Minneapolis, San Jose and Philadelphia. Former Children’s Book Ambassador Jon Scieszka and current Ambassador Katherine Paterson appear May 10 at the Barnes & Noble at 86th and Lexington. To learn what’s going on in your neck of the woods, check
CBC Online.
CBW receives a boost from a first-time TV partnership. Lifetime's
The Balancing Act hosts a different author every morning from May 10-14, including Scieszka, Johnette Downing, Barbara Bottner, Jo Nobisso, and Carol Nevius.
The
online website offers all sorts of fun, meaningful ways for teachers, librarians, booksellers, parents, writers and of course, last but not least, young readers to celebrate children’s books and the wondrous book selections available to kids this week, May 10 through 16, but any week, any month, any year, every year.
- Share how-to instructions for making Children’s Book Week bookmarks.
- Check out the downloadable Children’s Book Week Crossword and Word Search puzzles.
- Be sure to also check listings for your local libraries, local booksellers and local community events.
And, don't forget Jeanne Marie's Monday, May 10 Writing Workout link to the Children's Book Week
Story Starters created by National Ambassador Katherine Paterson, Eoin Colfer, Barbara Park, Lemony Snickets and others. Mo Willem's contribution starts a short comic story titled "BLAM!" His opening line?
"DUDE! DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE NEW TEACHER?"
Happy Children's Book Week!
Esther Hershenhorn
xxxx
Howdy! Happy Poetry Friday! Today's poem and your Poetry Writing Workout are below.
But hold on...there’s A LOT going on this week, including National Picture Book Writing Week, Mother’s Day, and Teacher Appreciation Week!
And I’ll bet there’s a mother reading this who's also a teacher and is writing a picture book a day for a week. So, Triple Threat, if you’re out there, we want to hear from you (but not until you’ve written today’s picture book!)
I can relate to those who are writing a picture book a day for a week. I took the National Poetry Month Challenge this year, writing a poem a day (many are birthday poems) for the month of April. I'm not sure if I'd call that a challenge...or insanity.
But is was life-changing. If you want to know why, you can read all my poems (or if the mere idea of reading all thirty poems exhausts you as much as it does me, just read the last poem, the one posted closest to the top.)
WRITING WORKOUT ~ writing a Zeno poem
I learned about Zeno poems from Greg Pincus’ fabulous blog, GottaBook. Greg learned about it from The Miss Rumphius Effect,
who interviewed J.Patrick Lewis, the inventor of Zeno poems. According to Pat, a Zeno is a 10-line verse form with a repeating syllable count of 8,4,2,1,4,2,1,4,2,1. The rhyme scheme is abcdefdghd.
Here's how I wrote a Zeno:
A) Pick a topic. I wanted to write about teachers and why I appreciated them.
B) Spill memories about this topic on paper. I wrote about Mr. Campman, my 10th grade biology teacher; about my father—how no question was a bad question, how he was always engaged and focused when taking about science with me; about my mother—how she helped me learn a violin piece and coached me for the Shakespeare competition; about my poetry teacher, Myra Cohn Livingston—how we rose to meet her very high expectations; about Professor Willis, who on a dare, taught all of Western Civilization in one quarter—the best college class I ever took.
C) Choose one of the memories.
D) Decide on the one-syllable word on which you’d like your poem to end.
E) List at least three one-syllable words which rhyme with the word you chose above and which could somehow be related to your subject. Find the rhymes by using your noodle, opening up a handy rhyming dictionary or using this one online.
F) Review the structure of a Zeno. It helped me to write out the pattern this way (the numbers indicate how many syllables, “A” indicates the same rhyme):
8
4
2
1
April may be the cruelest month, but I don't care. I'm too busy celebrating the last year of my thirties, my son's third, my daughter's fifth, and yes, a Blogiversary and our April's birthday, too.
Have you noticed that "Happy Birthday" is rarely (if ever) sung on TV? As Mary Ann pointed out, there's that pesky matter of royalties, and apparently this song commands exorbitant ones. Next time you watch a soap opera (if you dare), note the quick cutaway to commercial when the cake is wheeled out or the opportune ringing of a phone or sudden heart attack that befalls the birthday girl. It's not about the drama, I'm sorry to say. It's about the stupid song. Just as often, it's about the Midol product placement or the actor who can't remember his lines or the set that has enough room for only two people when you need to throw a wedding!
Most of my paid writing work has been writing for hire. Writing for hire can be an awful lot of fun. But apart from the challenges that are readily imagined (what if I hate the material?), there are also those devil-in-the-details moments I never considered. When I was writing Nancy Drew, I had to be cognizant at all times of the rules of Nancyland (no guns or drugs despite the raging crime epidemic in River Heights). There was a preordained number of chapters and pages, as well. An hour-long daytime program is only 39 minutes minus the commercials. Writing to a set structure (see the five-paragraph essay) makes life a lot easier in many ways. In other ways, it is horribly constraining.
My English Composition students write five essays per semester, and often they have trouble getting excited about the material, to put it mildly. This is writing-for-hire in its barest form, after all -- pass the class, and you get to graduate and, one hopes, find the job of your dreams. Fail to get the job done, and well... take English 101 again.
For my students, God is in the details. Once they can recount an experience vividly, without resorting to cliches and empty expressions, they have connected with the material in a way that makes the writing fun (and the reading, too). And if they have done it once, they can do it again. So even if their writing is full of run-ons and agreement errors and I despair of having taught them anything, I have. I think. I hope!
***
Don't forget to enter to win a critique of your work, in honor of our blog’s first birthday!
And please note: Your first entry must say how you follow us—via Google, Networked blogs, or email. You must post a SEPARATE comment to get a second entry. This makes tracking entries much easier. Entry deadline is 11 pm (CST) Tuesday, May 4, 2010.
I usually do this exercise earlier in the semester, but it's waited until the last day (today!) because we've been too busy cramming exercises in grammar
Happy Poetry Friday! There's a poem for you at the end and a Writing Workout for you, too. But before we begin, I want you to know that I'm still in the thick of the Poem-A-Day Challenge for Poetry Month. In fact, it's TAKEN OVER MY ENTIRE LIFE!...please don't click on this next link yet...today's poem is the same one I'm discussing in this post. You've gotta read the story behind the poem first. It's the law. And one more thing before we begin: Tricia has just posted an interview with me at her marvelous The Miss Rumphius Effect. Come celebrate our blogiversary!
Enter to win a critique of your work, in honor of our blog’s first birthday! And please note: Your first entry must say how you follow us—via Google, Networked blogs, or email. You must post a SEPARATE comment to get a second entry. This makes tracking entries much easier. Entry deadline is 11 pm (CST) Tuesday, May 4, 2010.
Birthdays. Earth Day.
Poetry Month. Poetry Friday. The world turns. What was cloudy becomes clear. The patterns in our lives rise to the surface. We lean towards structure. Forks, spoons and knives separated by dividers. Children in a choir arranged by height. Blouses at my local thrift store (yay, thrift stores!) arranged by color.
My mother could always count on me to put her pencils, rubber bands and paper clips in order. All my marbles grouped themselves into marble villages. The treasured plastic dinosaurs my sister and I got from a junk shop (all for a dime) quickly found their families.
And something beautiful happens in my brain when a word goes “click,” fitting into a poetic pattern.
There’s an elegant website called
Patterns in Poetry researched, written and created by Constance Curran, of Cranberry Designs. I hope one day she’ll add more types of poetry.
So let’s play with patterns in poetry today, in honor of the patterns of our lives. I’ll take you on the behind-the-scenes tour on how I wrote today’s poem.
I was thinking about how Earth Day and our Blogiversary were both on April 22nd. I thought back to last year, how I almost told my
potential blogmates, “Thank you for inviting me to join your blog, but I’m waaaay too busy to take on another project.”
I thought about the hands of five authors reaching out to me, all the way to the West Coast, and how for some reason I reached back. THANK GOODNESS! I wanted to catch that “thank goodness” feeling in a poem.
I began goofing off, thinking of trees and of leaping across the country, across cyberspace. A first and then a second line came to me:
What does it mean to have made this leap?
To swing from tree to tree to you?<
My husband and I walked through a nearby park along the Milwaukee River one beautiful spring morning in early April. We were appalled by the amount of trash we saw on the banks and in the water. We picked up garbage as we walked, and I listed in my notebook some of the things we carried to nearby trash containers. As we walked, I began to hear the poem below forming in my mind. Every item included in the poem is something we picked up that morning. I went back a few days later with my camera to record the heartbreaking scene.
Spring AwakeningDainty speckled dog’s tooth violet
leaves poke up from warming soil
through a six-foot strip of muddy
shredded plastic bag,
plastic straws, a root beer can,
caution tape, a bottle top,
a lip gloss tube, old newspapers,
a spray paint can, and one flip-flop.
Two red-bellied woodpeckers
shriek and tap above our heads
as we survey the rushing river
and the garbage on its banks:
plastic lighter, cigarette butts,
chunks of broken Styrofoam,
coffee cups with plastic lids,
a bandage strip, a plastic comb.
Mama goose sits on her nest
amid the evidence of thoughtless
picnickers and fishermen,
hikers, joggers, families:
McDonald’s ketchup packet, wrappers
(Kit-Kat, Slim Jim, Power Shot
™,
Cheetos®), plastic bait container,
broken plastic flower pot.
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4 Comments on Wait. Look. Notice., last added: 8/20/2010
I have created a few playlists both on my computer and Pandora, not all of classical or music-only scores. I love Symphonie Fantastique, by Berlioz, as well as movie scores for Michael Nyman, Craigh Armstrong, Danny Elfman, etc. In fact, I have one Pandora playlist that plays music from all of these composers. But for certain emotional stories and/or scenes, I listen to groups from my teens and twenties, like the Cure. Then, one in a while, some good traditional Irish music fits pefectly.
I also play some of these in my fourth-grade classroom.
Thanks for the great article!
Thanks for sharing the music selections, Bruce. It never occurred to me to create a Pandora station of movie scores. I have one now!