Slice of Life

I signed up for Teachers Write, but haven't written very much since it began. A trip to Michigan for Nerdcamp was the first lovely and inspiring distraction.

The next was a trip to Indianapolis with my mother and sister to see my brother. Then, the three of us women went to Niagara Falls and Toronto.

When I arrived home from that week long adventure, I prepared to have my daughter home from her four week trip to Japan. She was bringing her exchange sister. We have been sight-seeing locally, but have also taken three different day trips to Minnesota, Milwaukee, and Chicago. It makes me tired remembering, but it also makes me happy.

I haven't had a lot of time to sit down and write, but one place where I can "write" is on my runs. I am training for RAGNAR which is a team relay race. My training days have been out of wack, but they have been happening for the most part. On those runs, I have a lot of time for thinking. I've brainstormed a few poems out there on the paths and thought a lot about my writing. With the girls away for part of the time today, I am hopeful that I will be able to finally write for a significant amount of time. In some ways, this break has been good since I am often avoiding my writing time or putting it off. I have missed writing. Absence has been working its magic. Today I am getting some words on the page!

National Day on Writing

The National Day on Writing happened earlier this week. This year the theme was #write2connect. For me, writing has been all about connecting with other people over the past few years. My blogs and those of others, twitter, Facebook, e-mails, texting, participating in write-ins for NaNoWriMo and other avenues I have surely  forgotten involved writing and connecting. Sharing, expressing myself, learning, questioning, getting to know people and reaching out to others have all happened through writing.

I have grown as a writer through connections I made on Twitter. Jen Vincent of Teach Mentor Texts shares her writing and more importantly her writing journey with us through her blog and Twitter. She is also a part of the fabulous experience that is Teachers Write. Spending part of the summer interacting with other educators around writing is fun and a great stretching experience. I have appreciated the prompts, hints, teaching, and sharing involved there.

Being a part of a blogging team has also been a way of connecting with others too. This spring I became part of Rich in Color and have been able to work with four others who have diversity in literature as a high priority. I feel like I learn from them as I read their posts and deadlines help keep me writing.

The writing on twitter may be brief, but the many connections I make through "mini-blogging" are priceless. My professional learning network has expanded through Twitter and has influenced my teaching for the better.

NaNoWriMo has also been an eye-opening experience. It stretches me even more than blogging because I typically don't write fiction. I don't think I had written fiction since a creative writing class in college. That was over 20 years ago. As a child I didn't sit around writing stories except for assignments - and then I wasn't happy about it. I tended to do fanfic and nothing original. Writing fiction is HARD. What I loved about NaNo though were the write-ins. Getting together with other people and sharing a tough experience is crazy fun - especially when you get to drink hot chai, eat fabulous crepes and have live jazz in the background.

Beyond that, the second year, I wrote a book that delved into some tough times in my own past. I shed about a bucket full of tears that month looking back into some of the events that shaped me. Digging into the past was difficult, but writing it down helped me come to peace with some things. I connected with the child I used to be and found some healing in the words filling my pages. I am not sure if that story will be shared with anyone, but writing it got me talking to people about things that we hadn't dealt with in the past and connecting with them in new ways.

Writing is one more way to communicate with people, but it is also a way we learn about ourselves. Writing is an expression, but also a path to understanding how we see the world around us. How are you connected through writing?

Preparing for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

I successfully completed NaNoWriMo 2011 and 2012 (on the very last day). I had a hard time deciding whether or not to do it again, but a former student talked to me the other night about my very first novel and told me that I should do another one. She and a few girls from my school book club had asked for copies of it. They are the few that have read it. That tipped the scale in NaNo's favor.

Now that I have made my decision, maybe some actual planning is in order, but instead of outlining or even thinking of characters, setting or plot, I am gathering helpful quotes and links. I think this is procrastination at its best. :)

Writerly Quotes

A sixth grader told me last year, if I don't know what to write, I just go outside and listen. #nctechat
— penny kittle (@pennykittle) October 21, 2013

A8. Trust the writer inside you. Write with faith and fearlessness. ~Tom Romano #nctechat
— penny kittle (@pennykittle) October 21, 2013 

I think I just came up with the slogan - "#NaNoWriMo. Because those books aren't going to write themselves."
— Leigh Ann Kopans (@LeighAnnKopans) October 21, 2013

The beautiful part of writing is you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. ~Robert Cormier #nctechat
— penny kittle (@pennykittle) October 21, 2013

Helpful Hints
Things you need in the first scene by Susanne Lakin

How to Create a Plot Outline in 8 Easy Steps from Glen C. Strathy

Are You Ready to NaNo? by Nephele Tempest

NaNoWriMo Etiquette via Errol

Advice for Making it Through NaNoWriMo via The Dirigible Plum

The book Little Red Writing

Motivators

Debs and Errol have some fun comics and videos to get you going or distract you or at least make you laugh. See a great example here:

Write or Die

Written? Kitten!

National Day on Writing - Write to Connect by Katherine Sokolowski

Thoughts on Writing

Strangely enough, I drive with my dog about 20 minutes each way when he has to be groomed. He goes to a lady who knows just how to take care of a Shih Tzu since she has about ten of them herself. He is always excited when we pull into her driveway because he knows he gets to visit with her crew and of course she gives him treats too. The nice thing about the long drive though, is that I can listen to a book or a podcast on the way.

Today I listened to the "Let's Get Busy" podcast with Matthew Winner and his guest Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen. I loved learning more about Sudipta and hearing about her stories. As a participant in Teachers Write though, I paid close attention when she mentioned writing. She shared a quote from Jules Renard, "Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted." I love it! Sudipta explained that her books are part of a conversation between her and the reader. Writing is a different kind of conversation because there is this huge pause between the writing and the reader's interaction. So, the reader participates in the conversation, but doesn't interrupt the writer's flow of thought. I like that way of thinking about writing.

Now I just need to do more writing!

Teachers Write

I am excited to get back into the habit of writing through Teachers Write. It's a virtual summer writing camp for teachers and librarians and I am sooooo glad that Kate Messner and her cohorts are offering us this fantastic opportunity.

Last summer I participated in a class called The Artist's Way. As members of the class, we were expected to write every morning for at least thirty minutes. This was part of exploring and expanding our inner creativity. We also got to have artist dates every week where we set aside at least an hour to create or appreciate art on our own. It was a fantastic experience for me. I enjoyed the writing and I especially loved having an excuse to go off with my camera taking pictures or making a collage from images out of magazines. It was like getting to be a kid again without all of the negative filters that I had built up over the years.

This led me to be open to National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo when it was mentioned on Twitter. I had heard about it the year before and thought it sounded cool, but this time, it actually sounded possible. Writing 50,000 words in one month was a pretty huge undertaking for me as I have never really written anything beyond an article or a very short story. The guidelines were perfect though. We were to write without editing. To write in a flow of words. No filters. Exactly what I needed to do. It helped that my teenage daughter agreed to do it with me and that we found a local group that met once a week. I loved working at a table with a bunch of other people struggling through the same task at different speeds and working in wildly different ways. It helped that we had live jazz music, super yummy crepes and chai lattes available too. We ate, laughed, and vented together all month long. The minute I finished though, I saved the file and never touched it again from November until today, when I finally shared it with six young ladies who were convinced that they needed to read their teacher's book no matter how boring or silly it might be.

Coincidentally, today is also the first day of Teachers Write. I am once again working amongst a large group of people with the common goal of tapping into our creativity and writing something. We aim to push at our self-imposed boundaries in spite of the vulnerable feelings we might experience. With this challenge, I hope to remember what it feels like to be a student in language arts class being asked to write to a prompt. I also hope to remember how good it feels to express myself and tell a story and I would love to find my writing voice. I have been blogging for awhile now and am beginning to know my non-fiction voice a little, but I am way more uncertain about my fiction voice.

I am once again on a new adventure. I can't wait to see where this leads.

Writing Workshop with Kate Messner!!

So excited to see Kate Messner's blog today.  I have been doing a happy dance and my dog thinks I have gone mad.  I cannot wait to show my students tomorrow.  They will be super excited about it.  To win the signed book is really cool, but getting a free writer's workshop series is extremely and amazingly awesome. Big smiles keep popping out on my face.  That just made my week.

I am also loving the cover art of Marty Mcguire Digs Worms!  A little squirmy and a lot of fun. :)