Category: TeachersWrite

Teachers Write 7/11/14 – Friday Feature: Embracing the Process

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.

cards

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.

cards plot

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:

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~~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!)”

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~~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.”

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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.

Teachers Write 7/10/14 – Thursday Quick-Write

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!

Teachers Write 7/9/14 – Q and A Wednesday

Welcome to Q and A Wednesday!

Got questions about writing?  Wednesday is Q and A Day at Teachers Write! Virtual Summer Writing Camp, and we’ll have some great guest authors answering – today’s official author guests are Cynthia Lord, Donna Gephart, and Lynda Mullaly Hunt.

Teachers & librarians – Feel free to ask your questions in the comments.  It’s fine to ask a general question or to direct one directly to a specific guest author. Our published author guests have volunteered to drop in and respond when they can.

Guest authors – Even if today isn’t a day you specifically signed up to help out, feel free to answer any questions you’d like to talk about.  Just reply directly to the comment.

Note from Kate: I’ll try to be here for Q and A most Wednesdays, too. Please be patient with me if you’re a first-time commenter – it may take a little while for me to approve your comment so it appears.

Got questions? Fire away!

Teachers Write 7/8/14 – Tuesday Quick-Write

On Tuesdays & Thursdays during Teachers Write! Virtual Summer Writing Camp, we’ll be sharing quick-write prompts, designed to get you free-writing for a few minutes in response to a question or idea. Some of these will feel like writing memoir, some will focus more on fiction or nonfiction or poetry. Some of them will just be hard to categorize. Many will be prompts that you can bookmark and share with your student writers later on.

Our Tuesday-Thursday quick-writes can be used as a simple free-write, brainstorming, warm-up activity OR as a way to deepen your thinking about a work-in-progress.  So feel free to approach the prompt in whatever way works best for you, even if that means ignoring it and writing about the other thing that sprouted in your head when you sat down to do the quick-write. Okay… got your keyboard or pencil ready?

Today’s Quick-Write is courtesy of Nora Raleigh Baskin, who’s written a whole bunch of wonderful books, including RUNT and the Schneider Family Book Award winner ANYTHING BUT TYPICAL.

Tuesday Quick-Write: Taking a Risk

The most important skill to have when writing books for children is to be able to get into the mind of a child, not an adult looking back. However, being able to “mine” the memories of your own childhood is key.

Today, choose a memory from your own life, preferably of a deeply felt emotion (i.e. fear, joy, embarrassment, anger, sadness). Now write the experience as fiction, as if it happened or is happening to your character. It can be either in first or third person, past or present tense. It can as close to the facts or as far as you wish, retaining the “truth” of the emotional experience while creating “fiction.”

Note from Kate: 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. (We’ll talk about more constructive critiques later on. Let’s just get our feet wet with compliments today!)  If you’d rather keep your writing to yourself today, in your notebook or on your hard drive, that’s fine, too.

Please feel free to TALK to one another in those comments, too! Some things you read there will resonate with you or spark memories or simply make you sigh. Writers will appreciate hearing about that. Nora and I are actually both on a writing retreat this week and probably won’t be able to comment on every single post, but we’ll pop in and read, and you know that cheering one another on is part of this community, too!

Please note: If you’re a first-time commenter, I’ll have to approve your comment before it appears. This may take a while if I’m not at my computer, but don’t worry – I’ll get to it and it will show up later on!

Teachers Write 7/7/14: Mini-Lesson Monday: You Come, Too

Welcome to writing camp, everybody!

Teachers Write! is a virtual summer writing camp for teachers and librarians. Click here to sign up if you’d like to join us!  If you’re on Facebook & want to also join our group there,here’s the link. Then click “Join Group.” And please click here to sign up for my email newsletter so that you’ll get updates throughout the year.

A quick note about blogging your Teachers Write experience: There will be daily opportunities for you to share and interact with one another in the comments section of each post. It’s great if you also want to set up a blog where you share all of your writing from this summer. One important request: Our guest authors have given permission for their lessons & prompts to be shared on the Teachers Write blog only. Please do not copy and paste the mini-lessons or writing prompts – publish only your own writing on your blog. If you’d like to reference the ideas shared here, providing a link is the best way to do that. Thanks!

Three quick things before we get started today…

1. Teachers Write is an online summer writing camp with more than two dozen published author-mentors who donate their time to work with us. It’s free. There’s no charge to participate, but we do ask that you buy a few books over the summer as a way to support the authors who are supporting you. Our request: choose one book from each of our three main “all summer long” authors – Kate, Gae, and Jo – and at least one book from one of our daily guest authors. You can read about all of our author mentors and find great books here. If you truly aren’t able to do this financially, we understand that and still want you to write with us. We’d love it if you requested these books at your local libraries & signed them out.

2. Our weekly schedule will look like this:

Monday Mini-lesson, and a Monday Morning Warm-Up on Jo’s blog
Tuesday Quick-Write
Wednesday is Q and A day – authors will be here to answer your questions!
Thursday Quick-Write
Friday Feedback on Gae’s blog, and an occasional Friday feature here, too
Sunday Check-In on Jen Vincent’s blog

3. I’ll be popping in to comment, and I know many of our guest authors will, too, but since this community has grown so much (we’re more than 1400 teacher-writers strong now!) you’ll also need to commit to supporting one another. When someone decides to be brave and share a bit of writing in the comments, or when someone asks for advice or feedback, please know that you are welcome (and encouraged!) to be mentors to one another as well. Watching this writing community grow is one of the best things about being part of Teachers Write.

Today’s Monday Mini-Lesson: You Come, Too

I fall in love with places.

I can’t think about the drenching afternoon rain in Costa Rica or the creaky bridge over the creek behind my childhood house without sighing. And many of my favorite books are my favorites because they transport me so fully to a different place and time. The Revolutionary New York of Laurie Halse Anderson’s CHAINS. The small-town New Hampshire parade of Linda Urban’s THE CENTER OF EVERYTHING. The gritty inner city streets of SCORPIONS by Walter Dean Myers and the Boston landmarks of Erin Dionne’s MOXIE AND THE ART OF RULE BREAKING. As a reader, if I can not only see your setting, but also smell its air and hear its song, I’ll come along with you anywhere.

Writing, in many ways, is an invitation to come along someplace. Robert Frost knew this when he wrote “The Pasture” (from North of Boston, 1914)

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’nt be gone long — You come too.
 
I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha’nt be gone long — You come too.

Those tiny details – raking leaves, the mother’s lick of her calf – make good on Frost’s “You come too” invitation by taking us along on the walk. And we can all do this as writers.

Last night, we hosted my son’s graduation party at the house. Maybe my favorite moment was near the end of the afternoon, when all of the teenagers swam out to our raft and the neighbor’s float nearby.

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If I wanted to share this moment in a way that brings you into my yard, I might start with a free write:

The kids have left us late this afternoon, for that small, square island of independence seventy yards from shore. The girls are on one raft, stretched out  to soak up Saturday sun. On the other, the boys stand awkwardly until somebody shoves somebody and there is leaping and laughing and splashing and so much teenager joy that I ache from missing it already, before they are even gone.

Now, I kind of like this snippet of writing. But in order to bring you closer, I’ll want to bring in more of the tiny details – those that go beyond the expected sun’s warmth and light shining on the waves. Sometimes, when I’m searching for those unexpected details, I like to isolate senses and write about one at a time. So I might spend a minute or two focusing only on the sounds of that moment. This is easiest if you close your eyes and only listen:

Call from the house: Do we need more ice?
trampoline springs as the kids bounce – sproing – squeak – sproing
Neighbor’s porch door slamming
wind rustling the oak leaves that hang over the deck
scrape of a metal spatula on the grill

Then I might isolate only the sense of touch – scratchy grass under my bare feet, the tickle of a bright green, newly hatched bug that’s landed near my elbow. And smells – hamburger smoke, sunscreen and bug spray, new cedar mulch from the garden we cleaned up just in time for the party, and that lake-smell that is half fresh and half fish. You get the idea…and then I’d go back to rewrite the passage sprinkling in some of those had-to-have-been-there to notice it details to make the piece more alive.

The kids have left us late this afternoon, for a small, square island of independence bobbing in the lake-wind seventy yards from shore. Here at the deck tables, hamburger smoke drifts through the sunscreen-and-bug-spray air of summer. I wiggle my toes in the rough grass under the picnic table and listen to their cold-water squeals over the hush of rustling oak leaves above. The girls are on one raft, breathing in the cedar planks and lake air, half fresh and half fish. They stretch long and tan, soaking up Saturday sun, while on the other float, the boys stand, arms folded over their chests until somebody shoves somebody and there is leaping and laughing and splashing and so much teenager joy that I ache from missing it already, before they are even gone.

This is still rough around the edges, and if it were to be part of something bigger, I’d revise more, trimming words here, adding more there, and playing with the blend of those concrete details and the inner world of emotion as I take it all in. But you get the idea, right?

So here’s your assignment for today:

Take your notebook or laptop and go outside somewhere – your house, the beach, the woods, a city bench…wherever. If it’s raining where you live today, you can sit by a partly open window.

Write a snippet of that moment, just off the top of your head without thinking about the details. Then, underneath that snapshot paragraph, try to isolate the tiny details of each sense with your words.  Take a minute or two to focus only on the details of what you hear…then what you smell…and so on. And then, go back and rewrite your paragraph if you’d like, working in some of those tiny, had-to-be-there details.

In writing, I find that the first details that come to my mind are not the most original. It’s when I really stop and listen to what’s there – rather than what I expect to be there – that I discover the richest details…the ones that invite a reader into the place I’m writing about. You come, too.

If you’d like to share your revised paragraph in the comments today, feel free! If you’re not quite ready yet, that’s okay, too. We’ll be here when you are. 🙂

Want some more inspiration for today? Check out your Monday Morning Warm-Up on Jo’s blog, too!

~Kate

For Teachers & Librarians: A special invitation to WAKE UP MISSING…

For teachers and librarians whose students enjoyed my books EYE OF THE STORM, CAPTURE THE FLAG, and HIDE AND SEEK, and for those with readers who just love mystery, adventure, action, science, and survival stories…

Bloomsbury/Walker appreciates all that you do to put books in kids’ hands, and so do I, so we’re inviting you to be a WAKE UP MISSING Launch School. The first THIRTY teachers & librarians to sign up will receive:

  • A full-color WAKE UP MISSING poster, mailed to your classroom or library (U.S. addresses only)
  • The opportunity for students to order personalized, signed copies of WAKE UP MISSING via Kate’s launch at The Bookstore Plus (you’ll get an order form to print & send home to families)
  • First priority to schedule one of Kate’s free 15-minute Skype Q and A sessions for January or February to talk about WAKE UP MISSING after your students have read the book

Wondering if WAKE UP MISSING is a good fit for your readers? You can learn more about it here and read the first four chapters online.

 POSTER

Edited on 9/12:  All posters are now spoken for. Thanks for your interest, and I hope you’ll check out the first four chapters of WAKE UP MISSING HERE.

To sign up for your free poster, book order form, and Skype priority list, send an email to kmessner@dap.kgv.mybluehost.me with WAKE UP MISSING LAUNCH SCHOOL in the subject line and the following information in the body:

  1. Your full name and complete school/library mailing address

  2. How many readers you work with and what grade(s)

 As soon as you sign up, I’ll email you an order form that you can share with your students if they’d like to order personalized, signed copies of WAKE UP MISSING (other books available, too).  The terrific folks at Bloomsbury/Walker will put your poster in the mail. In early January, you’ll get an email letting you know that my winter Skype schedule is open, and you’ll have first dibs on scheduling a WAKE UP MISSING Skype Q and A session for your classroom or library after your students have had a chance to read. Offer is limited to the first THIRTY teachers & librarians to respond. I’ll update this blog post with a note when all thirty spots on the list are taken.

Thanks again for all that you do to connect readers and books!

~Kate

Teachers Write Wrap-Up – Sharing a Secret

I’m a little weepy today… I know you all need to get back to your classrooms and libraries if you’re not already there, but it’s tough to say goodbye after such an amazing six weeks of writing and sharing together. The good news is that your Teachers Write buddies are never far away, though. Our Facebook community lives on through the school year, and we’ll be back with another online workshop next summer!  A HUGE thank you to Jennifer, Gae, and Jo for making these six weeks so great.

If you’ll be at NCTE in Boston in November, you can meet up with Gae, Jennifer, Jo, and me in person (and participant Brian Wyzlic, too!) Please make plans to attend our session on Sunday morning.  “Teachers Write!: How Teachers Writing Now Can Build Student Writers of the Future” is officially session L-32 and it’s being held at the Sheraton, Beacon E from 8:30-9:45 on Sunday, November 24th. Also…if you know you can be there and might want to help us out with a special secret project, please let me know.

I know that I won’t get to meet many of you in person any time soon, but if you’d like personalized, signed copies of any of my books, The Bookstore Plus, a great indie in Lake Placid, NY, is hosting my WAKE UP MISSING launch on September 21st. If you give them a call at 518-523-2950, they’ll happily take your order over the phone and send your books (free for orders over $50) after I sign them in September. They carry all of my books, including my new picture book, SEA MONSTER AND THE BOSSY FISH, and you can also pre-order my fall science thriller WAKE UP MISSING. (If you do order personalized books for yourself, please let them know you’re part of Teachers Write and I’ll write a special inscription! I’m also happy to sign holiday gifts or books to your classroom.)

And now the secret I promised… Teachers Write is going to be a book! The folks at Stenhouse who published REAL REVISION: AUTHORS’ STRATEGIES TO SHARE WITH STUDENT WRITERS have been after me to work on a new book, and I told them that I’d really love to write something that celebrates what we’ve been doing at Teachers Write these past two summers…something that empowers educators to facilitate this kind of supportive writing community in their own districts. So that’s what we’re doing! I’ll be looking for a little help from some of you.  I’d love to include some of your writing from the past two summers as well as some quotes about how being part of a writing community has impacted your teaching. I won’t be able to include quotes from everyone – I wish I could – but I’d love a sampling. If  you’re game to help out with that, there’s a place in the final survey where you can let me know.

If you enjoyed Teachers Write this summer, please remember to show your support for all of our organizers and guest authors by ordering books for yourself or your classrooms or libraries. Want to do more? If you read one of our organizer or guest author books and love it, please consider nominating it for your state children’s choice award list. My writer-friend Lisa Schroeder has a creative blog post called “Supporting Authors When Your Heart Is Bigger Than Your Wallet” with even more great ideas.

And finally – please share your feedback from this summer by taking our survey here.  It’s just ten questions, asking you to reflect on what worked for you and what you’d suggest for next year, among other things. If you have a few minutes to complete it, it will be a great help. Many thanks for that – and for the gift of your words this summer. Have a great school year, and we’ll see you in June!

xoxo~Kate

katewriting

P.S. You are all so talented. Please keep writing and never forget what Jo told everyone yesterday… That thing you are writing is awesome!

Teachers Write 8/15/13 Thursday Quick-Write & Reflections

I can’t believe the summer’s flown by so quickly! How could we already be at the end of six weeks of writing together?? I hope that this is really just the beginning, though. I hope that you’ve met some friends — some like-minded teachers who want to be brave and write and show their students that writing matters — and I hope so much that you’ll all keep writing.  What you’ve shared here this summer has been beautiful and full of talent. It’s been funny sometimes, and sometimes sad. But always, it’s been brave. Thank you so much for beign part of this community.

Now…you didn’t think you’d get away without one last writing prompt, did you?  Take a few minutes to reflect on the experience of participating in Teachers Write this summer. If you’d like, you can use the following three sentence beginnings to get started thinking about how you felt when you first got here, how you feel now, and what you hope for tomorrow.

Back in June…

Now, after six weeks of Teachers Write…

When the new school year starts, I hope…

As always, I’d love it if you’d share some of these thoughts in the comments. And please stop by tomorrow for one last get-together. We’ll be sharing a pretty cool secret as well as a link to the post-Teachers-Write survey that will help me to plan for next summer.

Teachers Write 8/14/13 Q and A Wednesday

Good morning!  It’s hard to believe, but today is our last Q and A Wednesday of Teachers Write 2013. Our official guest authors are no strangers – Margo Sorenson and Erin Dealey have promised to come by to answer questions – and I’m sure we’ll have plenty of other folks coming by as well.

Got any last questions you’d like to ask our team of volunteer authors?  Fire away!

Teachers & librarians – Feel free to ask your questions in the comments.  It’s fine to ask a general question or to direct one directly to a specific guest author. Our published author guests have volunteered to drop in and respond when they can.

Guest authors – Even if today isn’t a day you specifically signed up to help out, feel free to answer any questions you’d like to talk about.  Just reply directly to the comment.

Teachers Write 8/13/13 Tuesday Quick-Write with Erin Dealey

Guest author Erin Dealey wasn’t quite finished talking about VOICE in yesterday’s mini-lesson. Today, she joins us with a visual Quick-Write to follow up!

Here’s another exercise in Voice.

Choose one of the doors pictured below…

 

Imagine the world behind this door. Who is talking? Shhh…..tiptoe closer and put your ear to the surface. Take yourself to this place and eavesdrop–and write it down…

I can’t wait to read what you’ve HEARD!

Happy Writing!

And as always, feel free to share a few lines of what you wrote (what you heard behind that door!) in the comments today!