The International Reading Association (IRA) has declared Sept. 5-9, 2011 to be "Revision Week." Visit the IRA's Engage: Teacher to Teacher Blog this week to read/hear comments about revision from several well-known children's authors, including Cynthia Lord and Kate Messner.
Classroom teachers often tell me that one of their greatest challenges is helping students understand that a first draft is only the first step in the writing process. And many adult writers also dread the "R" word: Revision. Yet, as Kate Messner says today on the Engage: Teacher to Teacher Blog: “Revision is where writing really happens.”
(In the audio interview, Messner also talks about making time to write while working full-time and raising a family.)
One of the best ways I've found to help writers of all ages appreciate the benefit (and necessity) of revision is a bit of "show and tell." I "show" the drafts of my novel Rosa, Sola with all the post-it notes from my editor and I "tell" about how that feedback helped me polish that story. You can see some photos of one of my drafts and read a bit about that process in this post from last year.
For both young students and adult writers, it's often difficult to look at our own work objectively. Below is a revised version of the Writing Workout I shared last year. (Yes, even blog posts and writing exercises get better with revision!) The Workout is intended as a way to help trick ourselves into reading our work as though it were written by someone else.
Speaking of revision, the next session of my Craft & Critique Workshop, which is held in Oak Brook, IL, begins on Tuesday, Sept. 27. That class is ALL about revision. For more information, see my website. If you don't live in the Chicago area and are looking for some feedback on your writing, check out the Blogosphere Buzz below for help finding a critique partner.
In addition to Revision Week, this is the third annual
Random Acts of Publicity week, a chance to celebrate and publicize the work of our fellow authors. I'd like to take this opportunity to remind you that
THREE of the
TeachingAuthors have new books out this year. If you're new to our blog, please read these posts to learn all about them: JoAnn Early Macken's
Baby Says "Moo!", Mary Ann Rodman's
Camp K-9, and Esther Hershenhorn's
Little Illinois.
Please help me welcome my newest book, the board book Little Illinois.
It’s the latest entry in Sleeping Bear Press’
Little State series.
Each Little book in the series shares 10 rhyming riddles that introduce the very youngest of readers to a particular state’s symbols and identifying features. Brightly-painted clues frame each riddle.
I’ve been smiling-smiling-smiling since Sleeping Bear Press invited me to write the Illinois entry for this series.
Forgive the pun, but little did my publisher and editor know: I’ve been preparing for this moment since I was 9 years old!
My state, when my fifth grade teacher Miss Smiley (I swear that was her name!) assigned each of us a U.S. state, oh, so long ago, Alaska and Hawaii were relatively new? Illinois, the Land of Lincoln!
I used my very best penmanship to write my perfectly formatted business letter to The State of Illinois, Springfield, Illinois, requesting materials to share with my class.
I can still remember waiting at the top of my Philadelphia home’s steps, hoping my mailman's worn brown leather bag held my package.
Once my Illinois-postmarked manila envelope arrived, I read the colorful pamphlets, memorized the state symbols, the state capital, the largest city, the crops and famous Presidents, then shared my information with my classmates.
Miss Smiley awarded me an A for my presentation. :)
Miss Smiley and that treasured package traveled my mind as I drove west, college diploma in hand, through Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, to Illinois, to “the city by the lake that stands sky-high.” I was off to teach fifth grade (!), serenaded by the “purdy-purdy-purdy” of Illinois’ very own red-feathered state bird. Several Augusts in a row I drove south to the state capital to that “summer party with show cows and pigs.” Along the way, I passed Illinois’ “golden-petal-ed “Hi!”-waving prairie flowers and farmers’ fields ripe with tall, kernel-ed stalks.
O, the joy I had writing L
Wow, thanks, Carmela, for the Rah, Rah, Radishes mention!
You're most welcome, April!
Yes, yes--I love this Writing Workout--I always tell kids in assemblies that I put my book aside for awhile (only I say that I let it cook on the back burner, rather than cool). Excellent advice.