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Howdy, Campers!
Happy Poetry Friday (link at the end, original poem's in this post)!
If you follow this blog, you'll remember the day we spent with author/illustrator Barney Saltzberg and his marvelous book, Beautiful Oops! (Workman). Well, guess what?
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Tell me if this sounds familiar: you've wrapped the gift for your friend Julie, sealed it in a box, stuck stamps on it and then, as you're listening to the Beatles sing "
Hey Jude," you address the package... to Jude. OOPS!
Now what? Well, if you're Barney, you'll make a weird-looking cartoon heart over the word "Jude"...which sprouts legs and arms, a top hat and cane, and suddenly there's a host of fabulous creatures framing Julie's mailing address...a veritable celebration.
That's a Beautiful Oops...a mistake made beautiful.
The point of this book is to encourage all of us to allow "the magical transformation from blunder to wonder," and as schools all over the world celebrate
Beautiful Oops Day (in any month, on any day; a school could decide to celebrate Beautiful Oops Day each month), I wish we'd celebrated it when I was in school!
The Beautiful Oops Day website includes
project ideas shared by teachers from all over the world to get you started. And here's a 1:41 minute video of Barney sharing with young students:
How does this translate to writing? I just happen to have a perfect example. Here's a new poem author
Bruce Balan sent me just this week; beneath it is his "mistake" backstory:
THE PLAINTIFF CALL OF THE WILD
by Bruce BalanI submit to the courtthat this specieshas ignored the proper protocol:They’ve decided that it’s allfor themand no one else;Not fish nor elknor tiny eels.Their ills are real.They spoil and takebreak and forsakeand maulevery spot and plotand it’s not as ifthey don’t know…They do!They just ignore,which underscoresmy call.
Please dear Judge,I do not intend to fawn,butI pray the courtwill look kindly on my callbefore my clients allare gone.(c) 2015 by Bruce Balan. All rights reserved.
Bruce (whose newest book,
The Magic Hippo, is available at the iTunes store,
B&N, and
Amazon) explains: "I was going to write a poem called The Plaintive Call of the Wild (it just popped into my head), but I misspelled plaintive and so ran with it…"
Perhaps today's Beautiful Oops lesson is RUN WITH IT!
So, thank you, Barney Saltzberg, for gifting us the space to make mistakes; to be human.Campers, stay tuned: on February 4, 2015, Barney will share a
Wednesday Writing Workout on this very blog!
posted with inevitable mistakes by April Halprin Wayland 
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Howdy, Campers!
The winner of our latest autographed
book giveaway is....KAY S! Congratulations, Kay!
Today is Poetry Friday and the fabulous
Jama Rattigan is hosting. A poem from my first verse novel is waiting for you at the end of this post. The poem is about...
Creativity!
In case you've missed
TeachingAuthors' series on Creativity,
JoAnn started us off with kindness and community, Jill left us on a high note with
5 secrets of creativity, Esther got our juices flowing with a
Writing Workout inspired by punctuation, Carmela offered "
4 Ways I Boost my Creativity", and Mary Ann, back from a TA sabbatical (yay!),
grants us permission.
My turn!
Here are four reasons why I think you should give up trying to be creative:
1)
Don't you dare tell me what to do; 2)
Get miserable; 3)
Find someone so frickin' honest you want to hit them.4)
Write weird things. Other peoples' brains are are loony as yours. Trust me.1)
Don't you dare tell me what to do. For me, authentic ideas come most easily when no one is expecting a product; when I let myself play with words...the reason I fell in love with writing.
If you're our regular reader,you know I've been writing a poem a day since April 1, 2010. I send them to my best friend, author
Bruce Balan, who sails around the world in a trimaran, and he sends me his poem. (BTW, Oct. 2nd was Bruce's birthday. Since it's past his birthday, kindly sing to him
the Birthday Song...backwards.)
Bruce can always smell if a poem is an assignment. "It's stiff," he'll write. "It's not you."
After I shake my fist at his sail mail critique, I pretend I'm not writing on assignment. I toss out everything I think I'm
supposed to write and stand on my head...because I WANT to stand on my head. That's when words begin to flow from my heart.
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| Me, writing a poem...okay, not LITERALLY on my head... |
2) Get miserable...(if you're already depressed, think of it as a big mud hole of ideas made especially for you!) Some of my deepest, truest words are written when I am in a muddle of misery...or when I think back to some terrible time in my life, feeling every heartsick, petrified or bewildered feeling. (Why would anyone want to bring back life's worst moments in living color? You think writers might be just a teensy bit cuckoo?)
So, how can you stimulate creativity in students? Make sure there's misery in their lives. When I read my students the tender book,
I Remember Miss Perry by
Pat Brisson, illustrated by
Stéphane Jorisch (about the death of a beloved elementary school teacher), the topics they choose to tackle are much deeper than if I give them time to write without reading it first.
3)
Find someone so frickin' honest you want to hit him. I write better when someone who believes in me and who is on the writing path with me (usually Bruce) reads my work and tells me his truth. (Sometimes I want to throw darts at him for his stupid, doo-doo head honesty--good thing he's in Thailand right now.)
Exhibit #1--recent correspondence between us:
From: Bruce To: April Subject: RE: poem for September 25, 2014 Hi You,This feels more like a very short story than a poem.Doesn’t have your heart in it. It feels like an assignment.Love,B
(See what I mean? Can't he just pretend a little bit that he likes it?)
From: April To: BruceSubject: Re: poem for September 25, 2014
Well, damn.
I read it again tonight and see that you're right. But maybe I can do something with it. But maybe I can't.
Not sure it's worth it.
I am so tangled up in my novel. I wish I could hire someone to sit with me and figure the darn thing out.
Why do we do this, again? I forget.xxx,April
From: Bruce To: April Subject: RE: poem for September 25, 2014
"I wish I could hire someone to sit with me and figure the darn thing out."Unfortunately that is not possible. I, too, wish I could hire someone to fix so many problems but those problems always seem to be ones I need to deal with…not someone else.I hate that part about writing.B
4)
Write weird things. Other peoples' brains are as loony as yours. Trust me. Go ahead, unlock the heavy wooden door in your brain and let the odd stuff out.
 |
| Let the odd stuff out (this odd stuff is from morguefile.com) |
For example, here's a poem I thought no one would get. I wasn't even sure
I got it. And listen to this: my editor didn't throw it out--it's in my book,
Girl Coming in for a Landing--a novel in poems (Knopf 2002)!
WRITER: CREATOR
I want to
make something
beautiful.
Peaches.
If I could
make peaches--grow them
from my pen...
or stretching my palms
up to the sun, watch as
they grow from my lifeline,
that
would be something
beautiful.
drawing and poem (c) 2014 by April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved. Okay, I'm done. I order you to be creative.
GO. And remember, Poetry Friday is at
Jama's today!
Posted by April Halprin Wayland, who thanks you for reading all the way down to the end.
