Good morning, Teaches Write campers! I have two quick links to share with you today before we get to the main event…

First…a few people in the comments have talked about being overwhelmed by research & wondering about how to organize a project, so I want to share the tool that I use whenever I start a new project. It’s called Scrivener – and my favorite thing about it is that it has this nifty index card view where you can organize notes for scenes & chapters. They have a free trial if anyone wants to download & play with it. It’s been very helpful to me when it comes to organizing/outlining.

Second…I understand that at least a few of you are thinking that you may want to work on professional books this summer or at some point in the future. Writing about your classroom, your library, and your teaching is powerful for educators. If this is something that interests you, you should know that most of those books begin with a proposal submitted to an educational publisher like Stenhouse or Heinemann. I’ve worked with Stenhouse on my educators’ books, and they share their proposal guidelines along with some great samples on their website. It’s worth checking out if this kind of writing is of interest to you.

Okay…now it’s time for our Tuesday Quick-Write, courtesy of guest author & poet Jeannine Atkins.

Jeannine has written a bunch of wonderful books for kids – and one for writers, too! My favorite of them all is BORROWED NAMES: POEMS ABOUT LAURA INGALLS WILDER, MADAM C.J. WALKER, MARIE CURIE, AND THEIR DAUGHTERS, a book I loved so much I gave a copy to my mom for Mother’s Day.

Jeannine’s prompt for today is one that you’ll want to refer back to often:

Expanding and Compressing Scenes

 Keeping a story moving along, while making sure to deepen important moments, can be done by consciously compressing time, which is showing minutes or hours of action in a line or two, and expanding these with details to show how feeling-filled time may seem to get bigger or even stop. Examples of compressed scenes can be found in fairy tales, such as: The queen gave birth to seven boys. Jack killed the giant. The girl fled through the forest. Any of these great sentences might be, or have been, the base of a novel or a two hour movie.

 We’ll start out writing our own seven sentences, but before diving in, I’ll remind everyone, as you might remind your students, that prompts aren’t about following directions, but starting to write. As long as you’re writing, you’re doing it right. If you want to veer off, feel free. And have fun – even write that instruction at the top of your paper (I have.) Not just because it’s summer, but it’s good for some of what we call work to have some feeling of play.

 Now, take a character from your work in progress – or if starting fresh, grab a name and begin by quickly free writing seven key points of change in your character’s life. A few words will do for each. These important events can go before or beyond the time frame of what you’re considering for the book or story’s plot. Feel free to put in or leave out birth and death. Later, you may find these seven points serve as a sketchy outline or frame, but now we’re going to look at how each point can open out by the way we word it. Still practicing time compression, write each of your key changes as a sentence.

 Then expand time, lingering and bringing out details. What were the sensory qualities of that moment? What did the air feel like? How did the surroundings look, sound and smell? Try to do this with all your moments of change. Some might begin a story or novel. One might serve as a climax. Perhaps they fall into a useful sequence.

 Congratulations. You’ve just compressed and expanded time. You can stop here or keep playing with these seven transitional moments. While sometimes we want just a sentence to move things along, consider adding details you found when you expanded time to your sentences. At key moments in fiction, we often want readers to stick around and bask. An expanded scene might suggest its importance.

 Go over your draft and see what seems to work best as a short sentence and what should flow into a paragraph. When do you choose to be brief and when stroll from one lingering sentence to another? Sometimes a single, short sentence can set up just the sort of tension we want. Another slower sentence may be like a closed paper fan, opening to a glimpse of what was hidden.

 Maybe you’re attracted to developing a sentence into a scene. Wonderful! Maybe this prompt didn’t work for you. Find another! If you wrote seven sentences, I’m happy. And if you tried to reword some, you were already working on revision. I hope that wasn’t so bad. Check the top of your paper: Did you remind yourself to have fun?

Note from Kate: I don’t know about everyone else, but I have totally bookmarked this lesson to use as a novel revision strategy later on – such great strategies! Feel free to share a paragraph or two of what you wrote in the comments today if you’d like.

Good morning! Before we kick off Week 2, I just want to tell you that you all kind of blew me away last week. Your willingness to write and share and support one another was just awesome. It’s amazing & so exciting to see this writing community taking shape.

Want to start with a Monday Morning Warm-Up today? Check out Jo’s blog to get your fingers moving.

And guest author Donna Gephart joins us for today’s Mini-Lesson Monday. Donna is the author of Death by Toilet Paper and other humorous novels for middle grade readers.

Part of writing is getting motivated, so today’s mini-lesson from Donna is a bit of a pep talk!

YOU CAN WRITE!

Those words were spoken by Brother Tom Price, an English professor at the University of Dayton, to Erma Bombeck. Price was Bombeck’s English teacher and ran the school’s magazine and he was impressed by her writing. Those three words – “YOU CAN WRITE” — represented permission for Bombeck to allow herself to pursue the passion that was inside her all along. What followed, as you know, was a wildly successful humor writing career.

 At the start of summer, I purchased a “YOU CAN WRITE” mug from humorwriters.org for me and a few writing buddies.

Why do we need permission to write? Do we feel writing is a waste of time? Frivolous? Should we be doing something more important, like laundry, taxes or mowing the lawn?  At the end of Bombeck’s life, did she wish she had folded more laundry, grappled with more tax forms or edged a few more lawns?

Of course not! And we shouldn’t either. Life’s too short to repress our creative energy in favor of more “practical” activities. We should do what makes us feel fully alive.

The only person who can give permission for you to write with wild abandon is YOU. The biggest roadblocks to our writing successes usually come from within ourselves.

So, today, give yourself permission to write.

Your Assisgnment:

First, list every writing project you’d like to explore, as though you have unlimited time and energy.

 Always itched to create a picture book about hens who got chicken pox? A memoir about your years as a sky-diving, ninja-fighting postal worker? An alliterative poem about perplexed people who picked pickled peppers? A middle grade novel about death by toilet paper. (Wait a minute; that idea’s already been taken.)

Once you have your list, find the project that scares the heck out of you, the one thing you think you shouldn’t write. Or the project that makes your heart beat a little faster and your cheeks flush with excitement. WRITE THAT!

Kick fear out of your way.

Now, put your list aside and write the dedication of your next book or project. That’s right. The dedication. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t written a single word of this book or project yet. For whom are you writing? Remember, your writing is a gift. Who do you love enough to give the gift of your words to?

My fourth book – Death by Toilet Paper — was kicking my tail feathers. I kept starting and stopping, lost in a tangle of ideas and words until I came up with the dedication. I’d gift this book to my sister, Ellen, whose persistence with contests and with life inspired my book. As soon as I came up with the dedication, the words flowed. And I ultimately did give the finished novel – Death by Toilet Paper — to my sister, Ellen, as a birthday gift.

Note from Kate: What’s on your list of projects? Which one scares you? Which one makes your heart beat faster? And to whom will your favorite project be dedicated?  If you’d like to share some ideas in the comments, feel free!

Congratulations! It’s Friday, and that means you’ve survived your first week of Teachers Write. Gae is hosting Friday Feedback on her blog today, so even if you’re not quite ready to share, you should go visit & see how that works.

And we also have a Friday Feature with guest author Lynda Mullaly Hunt. Lynda is the author of ONE FOR THE MURPHYS and the forthcoming FISH IN A TREE.

Lynda does frequent school & Skype visits. She’s pretty terrific, and she’s here to talk about embracing your process.

Roll with the Hunches: Thoughts on Writing Process

As a writer, I struggled in the beginning because I thought that writing was done the right way or the wrong way. I figured the right way was to write things in sequential order and the wrong way was the way I do it.

Thing was, characters dropped into me. I’d imagine things that would happen to them almost as if coming back to me as a memory. So, I started taking notes. Soon, those notes became scenes. The writing wasn’t great but it was better than it had been. So, I decided to try and go with this lack of form.

I wrote an entire novel that way. It’s a novel that will never be published but it taught me character development, plotting, pacing and–most importantly–to trust myself. To stop emulating my outline-loving friends and to embrace my own process even though it felt like that first white-knuckle hill on a roller coaster. Soon, I realized that at the end of a “writing ride” I was happy and wanted to ride again, so…

When I write a book I write the first two chapters and then I write the last chapter. All the middle chapters are written out of order. I don’t plan it that way—it comes to me that way. While I’m in the kitchen making coffee I have no idea what will leak out of my fingers that day.

I begin by reading some of what I’ve written the previous day and then begin writing—I just jump in even if it’s not coming easily. (I often cut the beginnings of scenes as those words were the map that helped me get to the important stuff.) When I’m finished with the chapter I give it a title and write it on a 3 x 5 card. Then I add three bullet points of important things that happen. Finally, I slap it on a giant magnetic whiteboard in my office.

So, by the time I finished the first draft of Murphys what I had was 50 chapters about a girl named Carley Connors who lands in foster care. Then I had the task of laying them all out on the floor in such an order as to make a novel. Was this hard for me? Very.

I use those cards to organize the book. In the upper left-hand corner of each card I use colored circles to represent each character. When all the chapters are laid out it tells me if I have left a character for too long. For example in the first draft of One for the Murphys I had 11 cards in a row without a green circle which stood for Daniel, an important charater. So, I switched the cards around 🙂

I also put the setting in the bottom right-hand corner and if I have too many similar chapters I consolidate them. For example in writing the Murphy’s I had four conversations between Carley and Toni take place in the bedroom. So I printed those four chapters out, highlighted the material I wanted to keep, and rewrote them to make two chapters.

When I have it all together in what I feel is novel-form, I put aside a day and read the entire thing out loud in one sitting. That really tells me the shape of it. Then I go back to those cards—still lined up on the floor and go through each card to think about questions, tension, repetition. I look at the length of the chapters, too.

Finally, I make cards of “scenes to write”—holes that need to be filled in the story. I spread those out on my desk upside down and pick from the pile. Then I take a stab at writing the one chosen. This approach to writing is not as smooth. These scenes start our clunkier than most but I smooth them over eventually—the ones I keep, anyway.

So, the beginning really is from the guts and the card part is cerebral. It’s a strange system but it has worked for both One for the Murphys and Fish in a Tree (Feb, 2015).

I spoke with a few phenomenal writers and friends about their processes in writing a novel.

Apparently, Leslie Connor, author of five books including The Things You Kiss Good-bye also writes in a similar style to mine which made me happy. Because I’m *such* a fan of her writing! But, I thought you may want to hear from a couple of others who have different processes:

~~~~~~

~~Stacy DeKeyser author of Jump the Cracks , The Brixen Witch and One Witch at Time (follow-up to Brixen Witch out Feb, 2015) writes about her process:

“I’m more a stepping stone person. If I have a character who wants something, I give him some obstacles and plot out Turning Point #1 (at about the 25% point), the middle, and Turning Point #2 (at around 80%), climax, and resolution. And ending that is full circle in some ways but changed irrevocably in others. Then fill in the blanks! So easy! (Ha!)”

~~~~~~

~~e.E. Charlton-Trujillo, author of Fat Angie, writes of her process this way:

“As a filmmaker and short fiction author first, the novel writing process in the first draft is very dialogue based. I hear the characters talking and jot down the tension, texture and nuance of what they need to say. Followed by notes on key sensory detail. I don’t spend a lot of time describing the scene when I’m going. I know I can fill that in, but the dialogue is gold right off the rip. Often I’m thrown right in the middle of the character chaos. Whether it is the beginning, middle or end of the novel, I’m just there.

I also build a soundtrack for the overall book. Music that the characters laugh to — cry with — drive to their passion. The music is something that can drop me right into the story. Often there are specific songs for particular chapters. Sometimes a character theme. This allows me an immediate emotional access to them if I’ve had to step away from the story for some reason. I tend to write the way I would edit a movie. Ten to twelve hour days, six days a week for four weeks. Then I’m done with the draft. Let it sleep for a few days and revisit or send it to my agent to put eyes on the spine of the piece.”

~~~~~~

So, dear fellow writers, experiment with different approaches. Sometimes, you’ll dovetail processes. Have fun with it. Don’t over think it; ironically, the brain sometimes gets in the way of good writing.

Megan Frazer Blakemore joins us for today’s Thursday Quick-Write! Like some of you, Megan is a librarian, and she’s also the author of great books like THE WATER CASTLE and THE SPY CATCHERS OF MAPLE HILL.

Today’s Thursday Quick Write: Word Hoards

I’ve taken two writing workshops with Monica Wood (whose Pocket Muse books I highly recommend), and in each she did an exercise where we went around the room each person saying a word until we had quite a lengthy list, maybe three to five rounds depending on the number of people you had in the room. Then everyone wrote a story using the words generated.

I called these lists Word Hoards, a term I learned from Beowulf. I’ve done this exercise in turn with groups I’ve led, and keep the list in a notebook so I can go back and find words to inspire me. Over time, I started doing Word Hoards for my characters. I imagine I am one of my characters and that I’m participating in this exercise, and start listing out the words that the character would say, often with surprising results.

This exercise is both about voice because you are thinking about the specific vocabulary of the character, but also about letting yourself go and seeing where you characters will take you.

The exercise: Using a current work in progress, take three or four of your characters and create Word Hoards for them.

Note from Kate: If you don’t have an active work-in-progress, try writing this from the point of view of a character you dream up today. Maybe it will turn into a bigger idea! Or if you’d like to focus on history or science, try writing from the point of view of some historical figure or scientist or animal!

If you’d like to share a few lines of what you wrote today in the comments, we’d love that – and promise that all our comments will be friendly and supportive. If you’d rather keep your writing to yourself today, in your notebook or on your hard drive, that’s fine, too.

Happy writing!

Welcome to Q and A Wednesday!