An Uninhibited Playful Writer {CELEBRATE This Week: 197}

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! 

Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link. 

Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

*******

In February 2016 I was a mess as a writer. I was struggling with my most recent book and my editor from Stenhouse, Bill, said, "Keep going."

"It's kind of hard to keep going when I don't know what I'm making." The words may have been spoken in a tone more whiney than I care to admit. It wasn't the first time I defined the problem for him. I wasn't sure what I was creating. Was it memoir? Narrative? Informative? Professional and practical?

"I can't really find a mentor," I said, "And I need one."

There was silence on the other end of the phone and I wondered if maybe this were the end of the line. Maybe this was the point when Bill realized I wasn't going to cut it as a writer. Maybe this was when we just gave up on the book and on me.

"I think you're writing lyrical essay," he said.

Having no idea what a lyrical essay is, I googled it. 

Bill said, "It's not exactly what you're doing, but I think it's close enough to help you have something similar to look at."

I kept scanning the Google results. and he said, "Have you ever read anything by Eula Biss?"

"No," I said scribbling her name on a sticky note.

"I've been reading her essays and her writing reminds me a little of the way you write. Not exactly, but there are lines that are reminiscent of the way you write."

Before we hung up, I'd found an essay online by Eula Biss. "Time and Distance Overcome" changed me as a person and as a writer. I bought her book, Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays, a collection exploring race in America and her response. Often I read snippets of Eula's writing before diving into my own work on the book.

This week I was at a Choice Literacy writing retreat. The theme was Ourselves in Our Writing and the anchor was Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal.  It was a perfect place to live my decision to embrace a playful spirit. It occurred to me that perhaps Amy was writing lyrical essay also. She is definitely more playful than Eula, but both weave facts and poetry and story together to leave the reader deeply moved.

Decidedly uninhibited, I stopped thinking and jumped into the essayist pool. 

I decided to begin with No. 2 pencils. Brenda (my Choice Literacy editor) thought it would be a good idea for me to jump. She even had a story to share with me about No. 2 pencils.

The next morning, she laughed when I told her at breakfast how hard the writing was. "I bet," she said. "You're going to have to write a lot of the wrong things in order to find just the right things for your essay."

I brought a meager 339 words to response group and explained that I was trying to learn how to craft a lyrical essay. I knew they would be kind with their encouragement, but I didn't' expect it to be so energetic. Maybe I wasn't going to drown in the essayist pool. Perhaps I have a little more than a doggie paddle to keep me afloat.

They didn't have any No. 2 pencil stories, but they did have glue stories. The idea of school supply nostalgia grew out of our discussion. Earlier, Brenda mentioned she hadn't thought of the No. 2 pencil story for years. It only came to mind because of my topic. I began wondering what other school supply stories are buried.

Why not throw it out to the universe and see what people have to say? It's the kind of thing a person with an uninhibited playful spirit would do. Do you have anything to share with me about No. 2 pencils? It can be a joke, quote, passage, poem or story obviously or thinly connected to a pencil. Will you help me spread the word? Please use #SchoolSupplyStories so I can find them in social media. 

Cheers to playing as writers!

Right Beside Writers {CELEBRATE This Week: 177}

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! 

Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link. 

Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

***

This place, 

right beside writers,

is where I 

watch 

and 

notice.

This place 

is where I 

celebrate 

and 

nudge 

growth.

This place, 

usually on my knees 

and 

always with a servant's heart

is the

one 

place 

where I always feel 

like I'm doing what 

I was made to do.

Helping others write 

what 

matters 

most. 

I'm pretty sure, 

in some small way, 

I will 

change 

the 

world.

I posted this picture and some of these words on Instagram. A former student left me a comment: I still hear your questions echo in my ear as I write. Sometimes it feels like you are right there next to me.

Her words have followed me around all day. It's been a dozen years since she sat on the floor of my 7th grade classroom, under the chalkboard, back against the wall with her notebook balanced on her knees.

I didn't know then that I spent my days in a sanctuary. We wrote in our notebooks. We read books cover to cover. We talked and laughed and teased and tried and failed. And in the end, we all became writers. 

I dedicated my first book to them. 

Because the truth is, sometimes when I kneel next to another writer, I still feel like they are right there next to me. 

*********

Make a Plan? Teach Student Writers to Think in Parts

When I was a little girl, my dad let me help him plan our route for family road trips. I slid the heavy map out from under the couch and Dad wiped the dust from the cover of it. Lying side by side on our bellies, we opened the map to Indiana. I  put my finger on our town. Dad opened his pocket notebook and we began planning our route, step by step.

Today I don’t plan the route for road trips. I just open my map app, type the name of the place I’m going (I don’t even need an address) and push “Go.” The route choices appear and I tap the one that will take the least time.

It reminds me of the way students “plan” their writing -- whatever is going to take the least amount of time.

Lots of students don’t need a plan in order to write a draft. In fact, sometimes a plan hinders the draft. I watch others make “plans” after they write the draft, and then pass the plan off as “prewriting” to their teachers. All of this makes me question the planning phase of the writing process.

There is no doubt, planning is essential to writing well. The question becomes --

What kinds of planning strategies help students write well? I think the key is this...

Writers think in parts.

Narrative writers think in scenes. Non-narrative writers think in subtopics. Poets think in lines and stanzas. The most effective planning strategies scaffold students to think in parts.

Here are two lessons to help students think in parts.

1. Storyboards (4:34 introduction to storyboards)
2. Oral Storytelling (video lesson)
   
   

(Don’t forget to check out the resources for each of the lessons. The link is in the description of each video.)

The storyboards lesson is designed for older students and the oral storytelling lesson for younger students. However, both can be adapted to all experience levels.

If you’re looking for a techy option for planning, I’ve had lots of success with Google Slides. The slides automatically set students up to think in parts. Each slide is a different part.

The important part of planning is students take a little time to think through the parts of their writing. It doesn’t have to be elaborate and it doesn’t have to be lengthy.

It does need to be thought through!

Add a comment to join the conversation and let me know how you help students plan in parts. I'd also love to hear how you use the storyboard templates.

i get to be their momma {CELEBRATE This Week: 166}

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! 

Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link. 

Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

*****

These are my kids. 

None of them grew in my belly. 

All have histories that don't include me.

Let me introduce them, starting at the bottom of the photo.

Jordan is 11. He joined our forever family in 2013, when he was nearly 8. He lived for more than 7 years in foster care. You want his eyelashes, I promise. He has a contagious smile. He loves football. His strength is his resilience.

Sam is 10. He was our first child, adopted at birth in 2006. I cut the cord. He has an obnoxious amount of knowledge about trains. His strength is his ability to love people when they are hard to love. His favorite thing to do is have fun and makes sure everyone around him is lighthearted and laughing.

Stephanie is 12. She joined our forever family in 2008 when Sam was 2. She's a beast on the basketball court. She's creative and independent. She takes care of herself. Her strength is her resolved to overcome.

Hannah is 15. We adopted her at the same time as Stephanie; they have been together their entire lives. Hannah loves to read, especially historical fiction and greek mythology. She is an old woman trapped in a teenager's body. Her strength is her commitment to grow into the best version of herself as possible. She is a beautiful mess.

My celebration is I get to be their momma.

It's not an easy gig.

Motherhood never is.

This week I wrote about a key feature of stories.

Stories have struggles.

It is a truth that stabbed my heart. It's one thing to know this as a technical part of writing. If your story doesn't have a struggle, then it's not really a story anyone wants to read. Fiction writers ensure their stories are ones people want to read by plunging their characters into struggle after struggle after struggle.

For Stephanie, her storyline is plunging into struggle after struggle after struggle. Andy and I, as her parents, aren't stopping the struggles.

It's not an easy gig.

If we only look at the slice of a story that is the struggle, we wouldn't like the story very much. Strong stories have struggles not because readers like a struggle, but because we like it when characters overcome a struggle. The more dire the struggle, the better the story. 

Sometimes we're not sure a character is going to overcome the struggle, but we don't quit reading. We keep going. We press on. We trust that good is going to overcome the struggle.

The same is true in life. If we take just a slice, there is often cause for alarm. It is cause for alarm if we just look at Stephanie's current storyline. The thing about life is we don't quit when it gets hard. We keep going. We press on. We trust that good is going to overcome the struggle.

And so I celebrate that I get to be a momma to these kids. 

The ones who struggle. 

The ones who fail. 

The ones who have been scraped by the ugly of the world. 

They are the ones who fight the good fight and write an impossibly beautiful ending. 

I celebrate that I get to be along for the ride.

Here's to celebrating, even when it's hard. Share your links below.

How to stop hearing I CAN'T WRITE from your students

“I can’t write!”

“I don’t know how!”

“I’ll never be able do this!”

These aren’t the usual quotes to inspire teaching students to write. I could share adorable student writing samples. I could tell stories of successful writing experiences with kids. We could celebrate the small gains of less experienced writers.

None of that changes the fact that more than likely, you still encounter I CAN’T writers.

They might be lurking in the corner of your writing workshop. Maybe they’ve been putting on a good show, but their stamina is waning and they refuse to write sometimes. Sometimes the I CAN’T writer is loud and is looking for others to join the protest.

No matter their modus operandi, all I CAN’T writers need the same thing.

Confidence.

When students refuse to write, it is because they lack confidence in themselves as writers. It is easy to pinpoint students who need confidence as writers, however, it isn’t always an easy need to fill.

We build confidence in students as writers when we build on their strengths. Sometimes this is a tall task, because most I CAN’T writers are a hot mess when it comes to writing. How do we build on strengths when the strengths are non-existent?

Tweet: "We build confidence in students as writers when we build on their strengths." Ways to boost student writers. http://bit.ly/2fwtyTp

Shift Your Mindset

Look for what students are almost doing as writers. Does the I CAN’T writer have some supplies out and ready to use? Is the I CAN’T writer sitting in a good writing spot? Does the I CAN’T writer make it easy for other students to work as writers? Has the I CAN’T writer written a handful (or one or two) words?

When we begin acknowledging the small steps of student writers, we build their confidence. Rather than seeing how far they are from grade level, begin to train yourself to see the things they are doing to position themselves to learn to write.

Take Off the Pressure of Words on the Page

In today’s world, writing is more than words on the page. With more multi-modal messages, students must learn to write using words, images, and sound. Sometimes I CAN’T writers struggle writing words, but they are able to articulate their stories or articles orally. Many I CAN’T writers are willing to sketch an idea and get their thoughts in order. When a student tells me “I can’t write!” I often ask them to talk or sketch their ideas instead. It is always easier to help a student write words when we’re working off of something concrete than when the idea is floating around brain space.

Instead of seeing I CAN’T writers, let’s start seeing NEED A BOOST writers and do things to build confidence. The more confident students become as writers, the more they are willing to write.

I’d love to hear what you do to boost confidence in your student writers. Join the conversation here!

Hard Stuff Isn't the Boss {CELEBRATE This Week: 162}

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! 

Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link. 

Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

*****

This is my celebration: It's never too late to write a new version of the way a story goes. It is also the heart message of my new book.

Hard stuff happens. It doesn't matter where you live, how much you read, what clothes you wear, or when you were born. If you're human, hard stuff happens.

Often hard stuff happens and there's no one to blame. Sometimes hard stuff happens because of the people around you. Other times hard stuff happens because of choices we make. If you're human, hard stuff happens.

It's important not to be defined by the hard stuff.

Just because there's hard stuff, doesn't mean we have to be on a hard road forever-the-rest of our lives. Hard stuff doesn't have power over our lives. Hard stuff isn't the boss.

The truth is, a new version of the way a story goes can be written. We can help kids rewrite the way their stories go. It starts by knowing Story matters. Our stories and their stories. We must own our stories, hold on to them, say good bye to them, and write the version we want to live.

There is hope in revision. Here's to writing through the hard to find a better version.

A Writing Kind of Weekend {CELEBRATE This Week: 160}

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Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link. 

Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

*****

The sky is grey. The rain is tapping. The weekend stretches ahead. I'm in the house alone. 

Tonight.

Tomorrow.

Sunday.

I have a book to finish. 

It is a battle of epic proportions.

I am a gallant warrior.

I wield a brave heart,

a belief in the power of story,

and gritty celebration.

I've honed the skill of whirling words into sentences,

making them line up and

penetrate hearts,

in order to change minds and practices.

This is a book of enticing kids to write...

understanding the kids who need enticing,

setting the stage for kids to be enticed,

and the necessary moves to entice kids to write.

This is a book of embracing Story (yes, Story with a capital S)...

it cracks open the stories of my own children who have hard histories in foster care,

it taps the power of writing to make sense of the world and to give kids' voices power in shaping the world,

and calls educators to action in helping  students to rewrite the way their life stories can go.

It is a privilege and an honor to write this book.

I never understood the term lifework...

until now.

This book is my lifework. It blends my storylines of momma, writer, and teacher into a guide for teachers in the trenches. It corrals brain research, stories, and practical strategies for enticing students to write. The purpose isn't just to teach kids to write. The purpose is so much bigger.

It's about empowering all children (and their teachers) to believe their stories matter. Each life is worthy. This is a book about learning to write (and rewrite) our lives into powerful forces of good.

I can't wait for it to be in your hands.

The problem is each time I begin to get a little traction, things go haywire in our home. Right now is no exception.

I'm going to fight the good fight by writing.

Revision: CELEBRATE This Week {152}

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! 

Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link. 

Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

*****

Summer ends this week. I scroll through my camera roll to see where it went. I search for a single image to capture this season, an image I can tug with words to see if it will lead me to understand why my favorite season felt a little nonexistent this year.

The memories are here in photos -- a rich summer of laughter and runs and made-from-scratch meals, family and friends and work and play, new adventures and old traditions -- the photos stack in rows, and I know summer existed.

I pause at one of the first pictures of the summer. I am writing, working on revisions, Andy snapped a picture without me knowing it. I looked up and he said, "It's just so you." I smiled; Andy never takes pictures. 

Of all the pictures of summer, this is the one I choose to capture the season. Words don't usually line up the first time. They wander and stir and sometimes dance. In this book I tried to corral the words, but it didn't work. Just like storylines, words don't want to be contained. They want to run free. 

And I let them.

Then I took the parts and chopped them up, moving them, and mashing them together again. I wrote the third section, and I thought it behaved.

It didn't.

I'm in another round of revisions. 

It might not be right when I'm finished. 

I'm moving forward anyway.

This is the season I'm in. It is not behaving; not following the rules. Summer knows it is for lazy days and long books. Summer knows it is for picnics and naps. Summer knows it is for un-schedules and following whims.

Summer changed the rules. Now it's ending and I feel like I'm just catching on to the way this season's storyline is going. I'm in deep revisions, trying to make sense of the way things are running wild and unabashed, while at the same time organize and mash them together into this one little life.

Mostly, I'm learning that I have a limited amount of time, energy, and capacity. This new season of living is demanding. It is highly scheduled. The kids no longer go to bed early. And they need me for much more than a bandaid, a hug, and a sippy cup of milk.

Just like I'm revising my book again, I'm revising the way I live again. I can either wallow and allow the frustration of finding my footing again to cast a dark shadow over this season, or I can choose to celebrate.

It is through revision that the story begins to glimmer. As much as I wish my book were complete and you could hold it in your hands right now, I'm thankful I'm revising. It's not ready, yet. And as much as I wish I didn't drop the ball, as much as I wish I didn't disappoint people, as much as I wish I could get this parenting-gig right, I'm thankful I have a chance to revise and shift the way I live.

This is what I celebrate: Getting to adapt to each season in order to live the best life possible.

Thanks for hanging in there with me and sharing your celebrations.

Writing Small {CELEBRATE This Week: 147}

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! 

Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link. 

Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

*****

Andy and I celebrated our 17th anniversary last week. My goodness, we blinked and 17 years flashed past. One of the craft moves I've been practicing in my writing is to write small and specific. It is often the seemingly insignificant details that make the strongest writing. To celebrate while practicing, I've decided to make a list of small and specific details about 17 years of marriage.

• When Andy's mom suggested we go out to dinner for our anniversary, we looked at each other and shook our heads. "We'd rather stay here, with the kids, and you," Andy said. His mom lifted her eyebrows, "I guess that's just how we roll," Andy chuckled, "This is how we want to spend our time, with people."
• Anytime something spills or breaks or makes a mess, Andy is there to clean it up. When I dropped the spaghetti sauce and it covered the floor, cabinets, counter, and even the ceiling, Andy cleaned it up. When someone snaked lines up and down the carpeted upstairs hallway with an entire bottle of hair gel, Andy cleaned it up. Those years when milk spilled every single night at dinner, Andy cleaned it up. When coffee spills in my car, when I drop an egg, when a drink is spilled during movie night, Andy cleans it up -- and never makes anyone feel stupid because of the spill
• When I'm overwhelmed, stressed, and think the world is coming to an end, Andy pats my knee three times, squeezes it, smiles and says, "I'm pretty sure it's all going to work out." When I insist that it won't he laughs and says, "You might be being extreme."
• I make grocery lists; Andy does the shopping. Andy puts away freezer and refrigerator items; I put away the rest.
• I fold laundry; he does dishes.
• I get up early; he stays up late.
• I write; he watches baseball.
• I read; he plays video games.
• I put dinner on the table; he picks up kids from school, practices, and friends' houses.

A marriage is a conversation that goes back and forth, back and forth, for a lifetime. At the end of the day, you'll find us on the couch, with mugs -- maybe frosty, maybe steaming -- choosing to love and being grateful for another good day. Those days line up and you blink and you're collecting days toward 18 years.

Thanks for celebrating....

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