This is the first week of Teachers Write, the online summer writing camp I run for teachers & librarians. I started doing this to help people create a writing community, so people who work with young writers could practice their own craft in a safe, supportive place. But the truth is, I learn so much more than I teach in these summers. This is our fourth year, and launch week is always busy – posting lessons, scheduling guest blogs, responding to comments, welcoming everyone. It’s wonderful and joyful, but chaotic, too.
So I’m late in slowing down to really think about the Monday Morning Warm-Up that Jo Knowles shared this week, as she does each Monday. Jo has a gift for inviting us to poke around in our own story worlds in ways that open up doors and shine lights. Her prompt was just what I needed this week because I’m about halfway through drafting a new book that’s real and honest and risky enough to scare me every time I sit down to write.
But sitting down is what I need to do. So today, I sat down and wrote in response to Jo’s prompt – “White Page Day” – is an invitation to list and reflect and pull ideas into a poem.
Nora
This is a story about a girl
Whose world was safe
Until it wasn’t.
It’s about sirens that stayed silent,
Police on the school bus,
And killers in the woods.
Good guys and bad guys
And people who don’t fit in categories
And that’s a problem
Because Nora always knew
Before.
It’s a story about the moment you realize
That your world is not as safe as you took for granted
With your unlocked doors and tree fort sleepovers.
The moment you realize it’s bigger,
More complicated,
That your good guys are not all as good
As you want them to be,
And your bad guys weren’t always that way.
Hearing their stories
Makes it hard to tell the difference
Between the two.
It’s a story about what we cheer for
And who that makes us.
It’s about small towns and mountains
And the monsters that hide there,
Some flesh.
Some shadow.
And some that aren’t out in the mountains at all.
It’s about ugly things
Living in beautiful places,
Lines that divide us –
And how two people crossing one
Made all the others go wavy and unsure.
One time an author came to our school –
He had a black t-shirt and sunglasses on his head –
And said the secret to selling lots of books
Was just writing cool stuff.
But things that are cool in a story
Are different when the characters aren’t made of paper.
So this is about looking more closely
At a place you love.
Seeing the beer cans and cigarette butts in the high grass
Loving it anyway,
And putting on work gloves.
It’s about happy endings
And whether you can have one
Even if you finish the story
More unsettled than when you began.
——————————————
And now it is time for me to get back to that story. Thank you, Jo!! xo
Traditionally, Wednesdays are Q and A days at Teachers Write – a chance to ask published authors questions about the writing process, from brainstorming to outlining to revision. This summer, we have so many amazing guest authors with so many great lessons that we’re also going to have lessons along with our regular Q and A sessions on Wednesdays. Excited about that? Me, too!
Today, we welcome guest author Melanie Crowder. Melanie’s debut novel, Parched was one of Bank Street’s Best Books of the Year and a Junior Library Guild selection. Her second book, Audacity, has received three starred reviews and is an Editor’s Choice at BookBrowse and a Top Pick from BookPage. Her third novel, A Nearer Moon, releases September 8 from Atheneum Books / S&S. Melanie holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in Colorado with her family. Her mini-lesson today is all about image systems…
To get started, if you haven’t already, draw up some sketches for a few of the characters in your story. I don’t mean actual drawings; brief descriptions will do. (What they look like, their hobbies, their habits, their flaws, their nervous tells.)
That’s done? Good. Now look back through what you’ve got. Anything particularly visual standing out to you? If not, add a few more details until you find something you like.
I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about. One of the characters from my work in progress is an eight year old girl named Pilar. She collects things like empty snail shells, dropped moth wings, desiccated leaves, and abandoned chrysalises. All the discarded things.
Why? I don’t know—it started out just as a thing she did. But I liked it, so I expanded it. The discarded things became an element of the physical descriptions I wrote for her: the shadows on her skin like whorls on a snail shell or the wind tossing her hair like a leaf ripped from the tree.
When I want to show her emotions, I put those discarded things into a metaphor. Rather than saying she’s lonely, I describe the hollows and creases of the empty nutshell in her palm. And you know what—it turns out that there is a very good reason why she collects all those discarded things. It’s how she processes the fact that her mother left. So much thematic resonance there!
Okay, let me give you some more examples. This afternoon, I popped in a DVD of the 2005 film Pride & Prejudice and turned on director Joe Wright’s commentary. He talks about things like the symbolism of the birdsong in the opening scene, or the way the swan with its head stuck in the water is like Lydia (Ha!), or the way the film opens and closes with the sunrise. (I find a huge amount of inspiration in listening to artists working in other media talk about their process, but that’s a post for another day.)
Here’s one thing he has to say about the actress who plays the eldest Bennett sister:
“[Jane] is obsessed with ribbons. She carries two or three ribbons with her wherever she goes.”
Why? What does that detail reveal about her as a character? What potential is there in that image for description, metaphor, or theme?
Here’s another quote from the director about Lizzie’s aunt and uncle:
“[I] love the Gardeners. Their relationship is based on pies. In every scene, they’re eating and they have a very happy marriage in their shared admiration of the great English pie.”
Hilarious. And so telling, right? If you were writing those characters, with the image system of the great English pie, just think of all the different directions you could take it!
Today’s assignment:
Pick one character, and one image connected with that character. Either as you rewrite an existing scene, or as you draft a new one, bring that image with you. Use it when you describe your character or when it’s time for a metaphor to reveal your character’s emotion, and hey—if all else fails, throw that object into the scene with them and see what happens.
I’d love to hear what you come up with if you’re feeling brave enough to share in the comments. Good luck!
Note from Kate: And of course, today is also Q and A Wednesday, so feel free to post any questions you’d like to ask our guest authors, too. In addition to our “official” guests, we tend to have a wide variety of guest authors popping in from social media on Wednesdays, so you never know who might answer your question!
It’s time for your first Teachers Write Tuesday Quick-Write! Today’s post is courtesy of Phil Bildner, the author of the New York Times bestselling Sluggers! series, the Texas Bluebonnet Award-winning Shoeless Joe & Black Betsy and its companion, The Shot Heard ‘Round the World, both illustrated by C. F. Payne; and Twenty-One Elephants, illustrated by LeUyen Pham. Phil’s new picture book, Marvelous Cornelius: Hurricane Katrina and the Spirit of New Orleans, comes out this month from Chronicle.
Here’s Phil’s prompt for today…
People make wonderful prompts. Sometimes when I’m building characters, I’ll go to a place public — a coffee shop, a park, the library — and I’ll people watch. When I taught middle school in the New York City public schools, on my way to school, I would sit with my journal in my lap (when I got a seat) and make up stories and build characters based on those around me.
Find a fresh place to write. People watch. Create characters or character traits based on those you see. You’ll be amazed at how quickly the ideas develop.
Note from Kate: This is a really great prompt to do with your kids in the first weeks of school, too. Take those notebooks and pens out of the classroom — outside, or even just to the front hallway or cafeteria — and get them writing!
We’d love to hear about who you watched (and wrote about!) today, so if you’d like to share, feel free to post a snippet of your writing from today in the comments!
And just to remind everyone… I tried to reply to every comment yesterday to say hello to everyone, but that probably won’t be the case with all of our guest authors. Most try to pop in to say hello and chat a bit, but many folks are traveling or on deadline and can’t reply to all of your comments. That makes it even more important for you to build this community and talk writing with one another, too. 🙂
Hi there! Happy Summer! And welcome to writing camp!
Teachers Write! is a free virtual summer writing camp for teachers and librarians. Please click here to sign up if you’d like to join us and haven’t already registered. 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. Often, our guest authors will stop by to be part of the conversation, too (though not always – some will be on deadline or traveling for research). In addition to commenting, 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 any 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!
Four quick things before we get started…
1. Teachers Write is an online summer writing camp with 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. 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.
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.
4. The first time you comment, I will have to “approve” your comment before it appears. This is to prevent us all from being besieged by unpleasant rogue comments. So when you comment, it will not show up right away – sometimes, it may be later in the day when your comment appears. THIS IS OKAY. Please don’t post more than once.
Now…let’s get started!
Today, I’m inviting you to wonder. Because that’s where authentic writing starts – at least for me. I’ve written books because I wondered what goes on under the snow in winter, because I wondered what it would be like to have a magic pencil that answers questions, because when a rainforest guide told me that a thousand different organisms depend on one species of tree that grows in Costa Rica, I wondered what those animals were and how they needed it. You get the idea. Wonder is essential for writers, but sometimes, we don’t leave time for it in our daily task-finishing, dinner-making, laundry-sorting lives.
So today, your assignment is to wonder for a while. Take 15 or 20 minutes and make a list of things you wonder about. Here’s mine for today:
I wonder what would happen if a kid stole his mom’s notebook & changed stuff.
I wonder what role women and girls played in Viking Iceland.
I wonder how the California earthquake of 1906 affected Chinatown and the people who lived there.
(Those last two are questions I’ll be researching soon for future books in my Ranger in Time series.)
I wonder about water bears.
I wonder about women mathematicians in history – how come we usually hear about men?
I wonder how we can channel anger for good.
I wonder how much we can control what we dream.
There are a dozen story possibilities here, but I won’t know for sure if any of them can grow until I take some time to explore those wonderings. I’m going to start with the women mathematicians and do a little reading tonight…
What about you?
Your assignment: Spend some time daydreaming. Think about the things that fascinate you, the things that scare you, the things that are important to you. Make a list of things you wonder. And choose one or two of those that you’d like to explore a little more in the days and weeks to come. If you’d like to share some of your list in the comments, please feel free to do that and please feel free to leave a short introduction today, too. We’re all going to be writing buddies this summer, and it will be nice to get to know people.
If you’re reading the Ranger in Time books & want to participate in my focus on historical fiction this summer, you may be interested to know how that idea of “wonder” plays out in author research once a topic has been selected (or assigned!). When I first sold the Ranger in Time series to Scholastic, I’d given the team there a list of possible stories. They responded with a list of suggestions for the first four books — two that came from my list and another two they added based on teacher and library requests for those topics. One of those titles – RANGER IN TIME: RESCUE ON THE OREGON TRAIL – ended up being our very first book in the series. When Scholastic asked for this topic, I had to ask myself, “Are you interested enough in the Oregon Trail to spend months researching and writing about it?” The answer was yes – I wondered about a lot of things during that time period!
I read stacks of books and visited websites, but the best part of my research came during a field trip to the National Frontier Trails Museum in Independence, Missouri, which was one of the jumping off points for the Oregon Trail. There’s a whole library here, filled entirely with books about the Oregon Trail (research geek heaven!!), and I was excited to spend time there, reading and researching.
I knew there were many diaries here – some of them never published, so they were original manuscripts, scrawled in dusty leather journals. And I wondered if any of those diaries had belonged to children, since I hoped for a glimpse into the mind of a kid my character’s age who made that journey. When I asked the library director about this, he said, “No, we don’t really have any from kids.”
“None?” I said.
“No,” he answered. Then he paused. “I mean, there’s Lizzie, but…” I could hear the dismissal in his voice, even over the phone. He did not care for Lizzie. When I pressed him, he explained more. “We have Lizzie Charleton. She was a teenager, but her diary’s terrible.”
“Terrible how?” I asked..
“She just complained the whole time. Lizzie didn’t want to go.”
Think about that for a minute. Lizzie didn’t want to go. If you’ve ever taken a long car ride with a kid, you understand why this diary is a perfect source. I knew I needed to see it.
Here are some excerpts from Lizzie’s diary, shared with permission from the museum library:
April the 19th last night it rained & made the roads so muddy that we did not start until noon we travailed 14 miles to day & it rained all day & is so cold we like to freeze to death
April the 20th This morning it is still cold enough for winter we travailed until 2 o clock today & it was so disagreeable & cold we had to stop the rest of the day
May the 14th Camped for to night on the bank of Platte River it looks verry much like we might have a storm to night came 18 miles to day through sand & mud holes till there is no name for it & I am vary tired a walking
May the 16th Camped again this eavening on Platte came over bad roads to day & are verry tired came up too Hills half mile long & sand there was no end to it & was so warm we could hardly get up
May the 27th Camped this eavening on Labonte creek came 24 miles to day it rained & snowed a bout 4 hours it was 3 inches deep.
Monday May the 28th Camped this eavening out on a hill & cold enough to freeze us came 20 m
Tuesday May the 29th Camped again this eavening out on a hill & still cold enough for winter came 32 miles today & killed one Antelope
Tuesday June 5th Camped this eavening out in the Bluffs our stock stampeded last night we did not get started till 10 oclock we came 15 miles in the fore noon we Started at noon took the rong road travailed a bout 5 miles out of our road then started a cross the Bluffs came a bout 4 miles a cross came to the road a bout 7 oclock in the eavening went back a bout a mile after water so we did not get but 18 miles to day Charley Killed an Antelope we will have a mess of Antelope for supper then we will be all right again if we dont freeze to death the snow was a bout 2 inches deep this morning.
When I read Lizzie’s diary, I have to confess that I fell in love with this grumpy teenager right away. I appreciate the much more detailed and descriptive diaries that other women travelers left behind, but Lizzie’s voice rang true to me. She’s cold, she’s tired, and she probably didn’t want to come in the first place. The whole time I was reading, I half expected the next line to be “Aren’t we there yet?” To those of us reading Lizzie’s diary more than a century later, it’s easy to appreciate the overland journey as a grand adventure. But to Lizzie, it was long, cold, and kind of boring, too. Stepping into her shoes, it’s easy to see why she’d use the same lines over and over and complain about the cold. Her voice struck a chord with me because it felt real. I ended up using Lizzie Charleton as the model for Sam Abbott’s older sister.
If you have the first Ranger in Time book, take a look at Chapter 5 (pp. 34-45) and you’ll get a sense for how that initial “wondering,” followed by some research and note taking, ended up developing into one of my favorite characters in the book. We’ll talk more this summer about how to incorporate historical details into a project without losing the sense of story, but this should give you some ideas to start.
I’ll be around today to chat more about our first historical post, as well as to greet people and say hi, so if you have questions, please feel free to fire away in the comments!
