Hi, everyone, and welcome to Teachers Write!!!!

This is such an exciting day. I love the thought of all you teachers all over the country writing together and putting your stories into the universe. It's a beautiful thing.

My role in Teachers Write is to provide a weekly writing prompt to all of you to help get you warmed up for the week. These prompts are meant to be fun, but also inspiring. I will try to help you think more deeply about your work: your intent, your stories, your characters. I hope you'll stop by each week to check in, try the prompts, and share how things are going!

To start you off, I want to ask you to think about finding the beauty in your work, no matter what your story is about. Why beauty? Every year, I choose a theme to try to live by, or live up to. It helps me stay grounded on hard days, and it helps remind me of the big picture when little things get me down. This year, my theme is "Finding Beauty". You can read more about what I mean by that here: http://jbknowles.livejournal.com/480410.html

Even in the grittiest, saddest, hardest stories we read (or live), there is almost always a glimmer of hope somewhere. It's what makes us read on, or live on. And that's the point. In fiction, this glimmer, this promise, is the heart of your story.

Often when we start writing we give our characters a big conflict. Even in picture books, the theme is to try fail, try fail, try fail, succeed! What's the beauty there? The willingness to keep trying after each failure. The beauty is hope.

The beauty in our work is why we write in the first place. It's why the story called to us. It could be triumph, it could be love, it could be survival. Joy. Discovery. Truth. Understanding. Forgiveness.

Many of you are beginning your stories today, so you may not even know exactly what you'll be writing about, or where your character's journey will lead. But you can still think about the themes that are important to you, and how underneath that, lies something beautiful. It's where the heart is, or will be, pumping life into your story.

Today, I ask you to consider the work you plan on doing this summer for Teachers Write. First, think about the over-arching story. Then, think about why this story is important to you. What's calling you to write this particular one? What do you think the beauty of it will be?

I hope you'll share in the comments. But I also know that sometimes, these are the things we want to keep close to our hearts. (And if that's the case, I hope you'll just say hi.) But do keep it, either way. And revisit what you've written as you write your story, and especially when you get stuck, as an important reminder of why you are doing this, and why you must keep going.

Good luck everyone! And next week, we'll get to more specific exercises/prompts as you dig deep into your stories. I can't wait!!!!

Love

Jo