Never Right the First Time or How I Learned to Love Revision

   As long as I can remember, I have loved writing. I turned those "make a sentence with your spelling words" assignments into short stories. My science reports read like episodes of Wild Kingdom ("brought to you by Mutual of Omaha".) Book reports allowed me to pick apart the language and logic of adults who write for children. If it involved putting words on paper in some creative fashion, I was in the Zone (a phenomena I understood long before it had a name.)
    What didn't I love about writing?
     Revision.
   "Revision" meant everything was spelled and punctuated correctly, the nouns and verbs agreeing. All sentences must be complete; no fragments or run-ons allowed.
     I was a lousy speller, in those pre-Spellcheck days.  Teachers liked papers with tidy margins, perfect Palmer Method cursive, and no erasures.  My papers looked like grey Swiss cheese with streaks of not-quite-erased words, and holes where I'd erased a little too hard. I wrote assignments over and over to achieve the required neatness.  No matter how good my writing, it was never neat or legible enough to win the attention I thought I deserved.
     Thanks to my early teachers, I learned to confuse revision with "following the rules"(grammar, spelling, neatness). Because I liked making good grades, I eventually forced myself to check every other word in the dictionary and slavishly follow the punctuation sections of my grammar book.
     There is absolutely nothing wrong with grammatically correct, well-spelled writing.  But in my case, "learning the rules" came at the expense of creative re-thinking. Not once did anyone mention "revision" as a way to make your writing better.
     There are kids who don't mind doing things over and over, and there are kids who would rather eat flies than do something a second time. The former kids are the ones who become Olympians, win the National Spelling Bee, solo with the New York Philharmonic at age seven.
     I was not one of those kids. Since I had mastered the art of being "a teacher pleaser" (ie, spelled right and neatly written), I saw absolutely no reason to re-write anything to make it better.  It was already
"better";  the teacher could read it and I got an A. Good, right?
     I continued my policy of Get it Right the First Time into high school. I won several state and national writing contests by never revising. I was under the impression that "good" writers always got it right the first time. If I got stuck after the first two paragraphs (which was happening with alarming frequency), I would tear up the story. If I couldn't write that third paragraph, the idea was no good, right?
     Then I met the Famous Southern Writer. (Because memories have a way of revising themselves, I cannot swear that this is absolutely the way things happened, so no names will be mentioned.)
     One of my writing contest prizes was lunch with Famous Southern Writer. I was fifteen and had absolutely no idea how gifted and famous this writer was. I was much more interested in the prize money that the Writer was to present me at the luncheon.
    The Writer liked to talk. A lot. Mostly about how hard writing was. "I write two pages and tear three up.  I write the same page over and over."
     I didn't think the Writer was making much of a case for writing as a career, to say nothing of being a monotonous lunch partner. So when the Writer took a break to actually eat, I chirped up and said, "Wow. You really re-write stuff a lot. I never write anything more than once."
     I might have said more, but was stopped by a withering look from the Writer.
     "Is that so?" drawled the Writer.  "Only once?"
      I nodded modestly, trying not blush.
      "Well my dear, when you learn to re-write and re-write and when nothing ever looks right to you...then you'll be a  real writer."
      You would think such direct and honest advice would've been my big "Ah-ha!" moment.
      It wasn't.  I was fifteen.  Fifteen-year-olds are very wise.  Just ask them.

      Not until I was in the MFA program at Vermont College that I learned what true revision is. How to take apart a story and put it back together, using any number of techniques.  Only then did I truly appreciate that a story is never right the first time. I learned to embrace the opportunity to get it right the third time...or fourth time....of the 560th time!
     As William Zinsser said in his book On Writing Well: "Rewriting is the essence of writing well; it is where the game is won or lost.  That idea is hard to accept.  We all have emotional equity in our first draft;  we can't believe that it wasn't born perfect. But the odds are close to 100 per cent that it wasn't."

 Writing Workout
These are some of the things I do when a story isn't working. I can become so focused on what doesn't work, I can't think of constructive ways to "fix" it. For me, the trick is to distance myself from my work by using some of these ideas. Removing the "emotional equity" helps me to be more objective (always a problem for me.)

Re-write changing one basic element. It it's in first person, change it to third. Or change the narrator to a different character. Switch the tenses; if it's in present tense, try it in past, or vice versa.

Sometimes I write what I think is a picture book, and discover it is really a novel. I just finished a book that I thought was a chapter book, but turned out to be a picture book. You can't force a story into a format that doesn't work any more than you can cram your size 8 foot into size 6 shoes (even if they are really cute and on sale.)

Sometimes when I am having trouble with voice, I re-write a section, consciously copying the style of another writer. I have used J.D. Salinger (R.I.P. to the father of Holden Caulfield), Charlotte Bronte, Hemingway, Faulkner, Dorothy Parker....and Beverly Cleary. Writing in someone else's style somehow helps you discover your own.

Share with us your own ways of handling revision.

BTW, it's not too late to enter our latest Teaching Authors contest. Read JoAnn's last post for details
http://www.teachingauthors.com/2010/02/book-giveaway-and-guest-teaching-author.html 

                     Mary Ann Rodman

Book Giveaway and Guest Teaching Author Interview with Bobbi Miller!

The Teaching Authors are tickled to present a book giveaway and interview with our dear friend, Guest Teaching Author Bobbi Miller! Bobbi is the author of the picture books One Fine Trade and Davy Crockett Gets Hitched. She lives in a log cabin, loves the outdoors, and spins tall tales. Of course, she also teaches.

To celebrate Bobbi’s appearance on our blog, we're giving away an autographed copy of Davy Crockett Gets Hitched. To enter the drawing, see the instructions at the end of this post.

How did you become a Teaching Author?

I am one of those nerds who knew how to read and write by kindergarten. I have always read and written stories. I studied hard to hone my craft, too. As an undergraduate, I studied writing and anthropology. I went to Simmons College, the Masters of Children’s Literature Program, where I studied the folklore process in children’s literature. I investigated voice and perspective, and most of all, the language of the storytelling process! I also went to the Vermont College (now the Vermont College of Fine Arts) MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults Program. To tell you the truth, I think everything I learned up to that moment was preparing me for this experience at VCFA.

But the real surprise in this journey is that after graduation, I became a writer who teaches writing. While I was a student, I worked as an editor, a bookseller, and just about anything to pay the bills. Once I became a teacher, however, I discovered that I really enjoyed the connection to the students, to my colleagues, to the process of teaching. This teaching of writing keeps me connected to language itself. I find that in the teaching of writing, I engage more in understanding and expanding my knowledge of writing.

What's a common problem or question that your students have, and how do you address it?

I teach composition and advanced composition as well as all levels of writing for children. In all of my classes, the primary question becomes the use of language. It’s more involved than simply using a thesaurus. Language is more than mere words; it’s not only the rhythms and patterns, the musicality and the poetry of language, it’s a character in its own right. Writers talk of voice, but it’s a metaphorical application, because writing has no voice! Voice is grounded in the organic nature of language.

In my tall tale retellings, for example, the tall-talk of the tall tale is as wild and unabashed as the frontier. The language, like the characters that inhabit these tales, is rambunctious and bodacious. The language of the tall tale defies the tidy and restrictive, even uptight structure of formal grammar. It mocks it, in fact, using pseudo-Latinate prefixes and suffixes to expand on the root. The result is a teetotaciously, splendiferous reflection of a frontier too expansive for mere words to capture. By creating such a grand language, the frontier storyteller found a means to make an unknown frontier less scary. More than this, the grander language captured the bigger ideas.

In this day of truncated text-talk and quick fixes, we take reading and writing for granted. The crux of this is that we take language for granted. So, in my classes, even as we discuss character, plot and setting, we explore how language reflects character and plot; how language reflects the bigger idea.

How does your love of folktales and storytelling inspire your writing?

It’s a natural fit, folktales and storytelling and writing. Traditional tales are a genre defined by its oral nature, and language becomes as integral to the package as the story and the illustration. In fact, language becomes as much a character as the protagonist. Think Eric Kimmel, Virginia Hamilton and Ashley Bryan, Verna Aardema, Julius Lester, Jane Yolen and Gail E. Haley, to name a few whose use of language creates storymagic.

This language is crucial in all genres of writing, and is reflected in the best readings. Science fiction and fantasy tend to use the formal language as found in Grimm’s fairy tales. Historical stories worth their while tend to reflect -- without falling back on cliché -- the language of their times. Two books I recently read that exemplify this marriage of language and story: Kathi Appelt’s book, The Underneath, and Grace Lin’s book, Where The Mountain Meets the Moon.

How can teachers use your books in the classroom?

Obviously, the first connection is with language. My website includes links to lesson plans created by teachers who have used my books in their classroom. Studies suggest that language acquisition is keyed to youth, and we can infer that language appreciation is similarly keyed.

Another concept: Yana Rodgers, of Rutgers University Project on Economics and Children, suggests using my book, ONE FINE TRADE, for teaching the importance of self-reliance, bartering and trade to young readers.

Then, at its core, ONE FINE TRADE is a process analysis, reflecting how one man achieved his goal. And DAVY CROCKETT GETS HITCHED is a cause and effect, reflecting what happens when a burr gets stuck in the bum. These two organizational strategies, process analysis and cause and effect, are at the core of most academic writing and analysis. Learning these strategies is key to successful writing in school and higher learning.

Would you share a favorite writing exercise for our readers?

In my writing for children courses, we use poetry -- continuing our study of language -- to recreate a character from one of the stories we read. They cannot name the character, of course, and then the class has to guess which character is reflected in the poem. We repeat this exercise, using a secondary character from our own stories. Because poetry by definition reflects the emotive element of language, students often discover some emotional element of their character that they could not see before the exercise. The exercise clarifies their process in unseen ways. Sometimes, they discover -- to their utter surprise -- that the secondary character often make a stronger protagonist.

Thank you, Bobbi! The Teaching Authors appreciate your stopping by!

Contest requirements:
For a chance to win an autographed copy of Bobbi Miller's Davy Crockett Gets Hitched, post a comment to today's blog post telling us the title of your favorite folktale. Be sure to include an e-mail or blog address so we can contact you if you win! To qualify, your entry must be posted by 11 p.m. on Wednesday, February 10, 2010 (Central Standard Time). The winner will be announced by 11 p.m. on Thursday, February 12, 2010.

Before entering our contest, please read our Giveaway Guidelines here.

We look forward to reading your entries. Good luck!

JoAnn Early Macken

Start Spreadin' the (New York SCBWI Conference) News!

As your luck and mine would have it, I met up with three members of SCBWI’s 11th Annual Winter New York Conference Team Blog - Jolie Stekly, Jaime Temairik and Lee Wind, at the Friday night Faculty/Industry Cocktail Party.  Over a glass of Chardonnay, I shared my angst concerning the writing of my blog posts.
“I’m the Slowest Writer East of the Mississippi!” I lamented. “I’m a wordsmith, not a blogger. How do you three do it?”
All three smiled their knowing smiles.
“Act like you’re talking to a friend,” CuppaJolie blogger Jolie told me. “It’s not about writing a perfect sentence. It’s about sharing.”
CocoaStomp blogger Jaime seconded Jolie’s advice.
“Quality is awfully good but so is quantity. If the blog is good, I don’t care if it appears once a day or once a month.
Jaime’s Final Words? “Whatever floats your boat!”
Then Lee Wind (I'm Here. I'm Queer. What the Hell Do I Read?) kindly photographed the smiling Jolie, (on the left), me (in the middle) and Jaime (on the right) to share with you, my post-Conference readers.

Jolie, Jaime and Lee joined Alice Pope, Suzanne Young and Paula Yoo to tweet and blog the weekend away.
Speaking of which, it’s not too late for you to vicariously attend the conference through their tweets and posts. I promise you a semester’s worth of Writing and Illustrating for Children.

Our luck continued as Good Ol’ Serendipity introduced me to Quinette Cook, SCBWI Minnesota's Regional Advisor, as well as writer, designer and talented illustrator.

Quinette’s business card image so captured my attention, I invited her to share conference sketches on today’s post.

So, just between you and me?

This was the 11th Annual SCBWI Winter New York Conference I’ve attended.
I’d been lucky enough to have heard each main stage speaker numerous times, with the exception of agent Tina Wexler and author-illustrator Jim Benton.
Yet like a good children’s book which invites revisiting, so did each of the conference speakers.

I needed to hear Prinz medalist Libba Bray compare writing to an extreme sport.

She quoted Leonard Cohen’s lyrics when she spoke of the courage and vulnerability needed to tell a story true.

“Everything that’s beautiful is cracked,” sing Cohen’s words. "That's how the light gets in."
“Find the cracks that let in the light,” Libba ordered.

I needed to hear Newbery medalist Jacqueline Woodson remind us, “Each of us has a story worth telling. Each of us has the right to tell it.”

I needed to hear the award-winning author and poet Jane Yolen share her writer’s story, cracks and all, to illuminate for us the writing truths she’s gleaned.  BIC.  Butt in chair.  HOP.  Heart on the page.  P not F.  Passion, not fashion.

And, to my surprise, Jim Benton’s spirit should be bottled like medicine. "Writing and illustrating children’s books is fun!" he repeated.

Conference folders included My Networking Tips – “Confessions and Secrets of a Veteran SCBWI Conference-Goer (Or, Do As I Say, Not As I Did). My final reminder:
“Pack extra film and save photo album pages for those Kodak Moments you hadn’t even imagined.”

So again, between you and me, picture:

• Rushmore Kid Tina Nichols Coury video-taping me in my Grand Hyatt hotel room as I shared a  Conference Writing Tip to be posted on an upcoming blog.
• Baltimore writer (and client) Claudia Friddell sharing the f and g’s of her gorgeous May Sleeping Bear Press picture book Goliath, Hero of the Great Baltimore Fire
• an end-of-the-day-over-wine catch-up with my moved-to-Vermont fellow Writing Group member Sharon Darrow, at the conference to sing the praises of Vermont College’s MFA in Writing for Children Program.
• Too-many-to-count in-the-elevator, on-the-escalator, across-the-room-or-crowded-lobby-or-Saturday- luncheon-table sightings of shiny Lincoln pennies inside fellow Illinois members' badges.
• Client hugs and student high-fives, welcoming embraces from long-time friends, editor hand-shakes and non-stop introductions, to the person on my right, to the person on my left, to the person behind me, to the person in front.

Throw in a tour of the Century Club, courtesy of Leonard Marcus, (successful) shopping in Nolita and a finally-realized visit to the Tenement Museum.

My Monday morning breakfast with Lee Wind at a chic French Bistro was yet another Kodak Moment. I’d met Lee five years ago, when I critiqued his very first children’s book manuscript at the LA Conference. And there we were, thanks to SCBWI, friends, colleagues and fellow Kidlitosphere neighbors, talking writing and sharing our writer’s journeys.

In welcoming the Conference's 1047 attendees, from 45 states and 14 countries, founder Lin Oliver spoke of SCBWI as family.

Kin and connections.
The two words say it all – for this past weekend’s 11th Annual SCBWI Winter New York Conference, and for SCBWI.

May this blog float your boat.

The Conference sure floated mine.

Esther Hershenhorn

The Rules

Congrats to Ticia, first grade teacher, mom of three (including twins -- wow), and winner of our Teaching Authors book givewaway contest!  She will receive, per her request, a copy of the wonderful Sing-Along Song, by JoAnn Early Macken. And thanks to all of you, including Ticia, who so generously shared your own teaching and homeschooling experiences.

And speaking of contest winners...
The Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour takes place next February 1-5. The schedule is posted at www.jewishlibraries.org/blog. Please stop by to read our own April Halprin Wayland's interview, posted February 1st at http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/practicallyparadise.

As a kid, I read the All-of-a-Kind Family series at least 20 times and cannot tell you how thrilled I am to know TWO Sydney Taylor Award winners (hello, Esther!). I am now craving a midnight snack as I think of Charlotte regaling Gertie with stories while eating chocolate and crackers in bed. I only recently learned that the character of Sarah was, in fact, based on Sydney Taylor herself.  Knowing the stories were autobiographical, I was always sure Sydney would turn out to be Charlotte, the storyteller, Henny the "spirited" one, or Ella, the star.  Did anyone else ever guess Sarah?

***

So, I was just on the elliptical reading a fantastic mystery by Ayelet Waldman, the premise of which was basically that being an overwhelmed mommy is completely and totally normal. The relief I felt from reading this affirmation in a light work of fiction is, honestly, indescribable. My 20-minute workout also somehow spurred a plot idea to emerge, fully formed, in my tired brain. Takeaway message -- reading and exercise feed the soul and should be performed with utmost regularity. Of course I might have to engage a babysitter in order to do so, but that's another story.

"The rules" of society tell us, it would seem, that we cannot be good parents if we don't cherish every moment spent with our children. The truth is, I deeply cherish every pleasant moment spent with my children. But today, my husband and I had a rare afternoon date. When our wonderful baby-sitter texted: Where is the toilet plunger? and we returned home to a list headed "Patrick's Accidents," (five items in three hours) we were gladder than I can say for our temporary escape. Our babysitter might never return, but again, that is another story.

My composition students this semester -- and most semesters -- are all about "the rules." By the time they get to my class, most of them have been drilled mercilessly about topic sentences, thesis statements, and the five-paragraph essay format. When I tell them that they may indeed begin a sentence with "but" or use a sentence fragment as long as they do so in a purposeful manner, many honestly don't know what to do with this freedom. While I certainly believe that it is important to learn the rules before we break them, sometimes it seems that breaking them is the hardest thing to do.

I was a very conscientious child who burst into tears if mildly scolded. It wasn't until high school that I became conscious of my secret identity as a rebel. No, I didn't smoke, drink (though I sure do now -- thank you very much, Kate and Patrick), carouse, skip school or even a single homework assignment. But I was, (a trait I proudly recognize in my daughter now), a bit feisty. If I was assigned to write an essay on a "mythic hero," I tried to make it a little bit different. But I still wanted my "A."  Some teachers, I learned through the years, reward and applaud what they see as creativity. Some do not recognize or appreciate what they see as failure to follow the rules. The latter kind of teacher crushed my spirits but, I realize now as a teacher and parent, would have helped others to flourish.  The trick is striking an appropriate balance out of respect for our diverse learners.  But (yes, I chose this word on purpose) --  is this ideal remotely possible to achieve? Experienced teachers out there, you tell me. 

Writing Workout

In honor of the rule-breakers among us, I am linking to an article about William Safire's "rules" of writing.  Have your students do their own takeoff of this exercise based on the great Strunk & White. They can learn the rules at the same time they discover for themselves how (and when) to break them.

http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/On-Breaking-William-Safire-s-Great-Rules-of-Writing/931717

Jeanne Marie Grunwell Ford

Writer: Creator. A poem. Two boys. And a book giveaway!

Happy Poetry Friday!

Hi there!  This is the last of six blog posts about how we got the idea for one of our books.  (And speaking of our books, Saturday, January 30th is the last day to enter the contest to win one--see below for details.)

And since the book I'll be talking about is a novel in poems and since it is Poetry Friday, let's start with a poem:

Writer: Creator

I want to

make something

                          beautiful.

Peaches.

If I could

make peaches—grow them

from my pen…

or stretching my palms

up to the sun, watch as

they grow from my lifeline,

that

would be something

                             beautiful.

© From Girl Coming in for a Landing—a novel in poems by April Halprin Wayland 

When I was eleven, we began house-hunting in a quiet suburb of Los Angeles.  “I have dibs if there's a small, blue room in our new house,”  I said.  Mom and Dad said that they would keep this in mind.

The house we bought did, indeed, have a small blue room. It was downstairs, while the other two bedrooms were upstairs. And though my sister was two years older than I was, I got the downstairs bedroom.

I’m not saying that room was where this book came from...but that's when I began typing late at night while everyone else was asleep upstairs. (When my mom would come down to check on me, I’d snap off the light and freeze. As soon as she went back upstairs…I was tap-tap-taping again on that portable Corona typewriter.)

What was I typing?  Love poems about a boy who played viola in orchest. Tap-tap-tap.

The beginning of a novel about a white girl and an African-American boy stranded on an island.  With only one can of tuna.  And no can opener. Tap-tap-tap.

Bits of dialogue.  Musings.  Dreams.  And every joke from the weekly T.V. show, Laugh-In. Tap-tap-tap.

Gary Owens and Lily Tomlin on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In

Junior high was all about poetry.  Poems of passion about the outside world (the agony of napalm, poured out of planes onto human beings during the Viet Nam war) and poems of passion about two boys, both budding actors, best friends. One, that same violist, was a brooding black-haired freckle-faced boy with a deep voice and a scar across his chest from open heart surgery. The other, who looked like a 14-year-old James Dean, was off-the-charts smart, theatrical, funny, ridiculous, loud and completely crazy. He rode on my bus, belting out rude, witty comments, gleefully stopping all conversations.

They're both characters in Girl Coming in for a Landing—a novel in poems (exquisitely illustrated in collage by Elaine Clayton, published by Knopf), which is my story, of course—but it’s tweaked and fictionalized and finally, not my story.

It’s the school-year-in-the-life-of a ‘tween. Her first period, first crush, first date, first kiss…and first published poem. It’s about those two boys.  And about coming to terms with her sister and coming to accept herself…and her passionate need to write.

That was me, Girl Writer, and that's where the seeds of this book came from: journals from junior high, high school, college and beyond. Journals were a place for love poems, a place to lean into, a place to record my history.

Do I still keep a journal?  You betcha.  I’ve been emailing it to a dear friend, one day at a time, for years—I call it my blog with one reader.  And she actually reads it.

Now that’s a friend!

Writing Workout / Lesson Plan

As Carmela, Mary Ann, JoAnn, Esther and Jeanne Marie have emphasized in the past five posts, finding the heart of the story is the key and for me, the biggest challenge.

Sometimes condensing an idea makes it more potent. More powerful. Years ago, I thought that I had to write every single thing that happened in my journal every night. It takes a long time to write a historical account of the day. I got tired just thinking about it! Finally, I stopped writing in my journal altogether.

Then, one of my friends, a screenwriter, shared her journal writing secret. Her rule is this: she only has to write for one minute each night.

One minute! I tried it—it's wonderful! It's freeing! Writing for one minute a night forces me to figure out the essence—the heart of that day—it helps me focus: what do I want to remember? The low cooing of a mourning dove? When a friend hurt my feelings? When the janitor winked at me and made my day? How a black cat swished her tail patiently by a pond? How slowly the classroom clock moved right before three o'clock?

Condensing the time I have to write is similar to fitting my words into a poetic form. My day as haiku.

Okay, it's your turn.
1) Date your page.
2) Look at the clock and write down the time.
3) Now, think about something you want to remember from today. You may write for only one minute.
4) Ready? Go!

They say it takes 21 one days to make a habit...so, do this for 21 days. Then read back over your One-Minute-Journal entries. As JoAnn suggested in her last post's Writing Workout, “Explore your idea collection. Choose two or three ideas that don’t obviously fit together. Try to find a way to connect them into one story. Be open to surprises. Trust the process. Have fun!”

Remember to breathe. And as always, write with joy.

Drawings by April Halprin Wayland

Reminder: for those of you who are teachers or homeschoolers: there's still time to enter our contest! The prize is your choice of one of the six TeachingAuthor books we've been discussing. Entry deadline is Saturday, January 30. Read all about it here.

A Story I Never Expected to Tell

I never planned to write Rosa, Sola. And I never would have if I hadn't gone to graduate school.

You see, Rosa, Sola is based on events from my life that I never expected to share in a published story.  I originally enrolled in the Vermont College MFA program to complete a YA novel based on something from someone else's life--a story my sister, a medical intensive care nurse at the time, had told me. But not long into the program, I realized that I didn’t yet have all the writing skills I needed to make that particular story work.

"Plan B" was a middle grade novel about a 12-year-old boy whose best friend moves away. When my advisor, Marion Dane Bauer, critiqued the opening chapters of that novel, she said it lacked “emotional core.” I was devastated. I knew what my character was feeling, but apparently those feelings weren’t coming across on the page. Marion suggested a writing assignment: she asked me to write a short story about an event from my childhood that still aroused emotion in me. It could be any emotion, so long as it was something I could still feel in my gut. I chose to write about fear—the fear I’d experienced at age ten, after my mother nearly died in childbirth.

Me, in fourth grade

That short story, “Rosa’s Prayer,” was about losing and regaining faith. It focused on only a few weeks in the life of Rosa Bernardi, an Italian-American girl growing up as an only child in 1960s Chicago. (There are many parallels between Rosa's life and mine, but I am not an only child. See the photo of me with my siblings on my website.) At the beginning of the story, Rosa's mother is in the hospital. Like my own mother, Rosa's mother nearly bled to death due to complications from delivering a stillborn baby. Ten-year-old Rosa had prayed fervently for that baby. As "Rosa's Prayer" opens, Rosa is angry at God for letting her baby brother die, and she refuses to pray. The pivotal scene occurs the day Ma comes home. She is still so weak that she can barely walk. The sight of Ma frightens Rosa--she fears her mother will die. Rosa's only recourse is prayer. The story ends with Rosa on her knees, praying for her mother.

The scene of Ma's return from the hospital is very much like what actually happened to me. However, when I sat down to write the story, I found I couldn't remember many of the details. For example, I couldn't recall what happened either right before my mother's arrival, or right after. So I made up scenes and dialogue to create a story arc. After revising the story several times, I submitted it for critique at the next residency workshop. My workshop group provided terrific feedback for improving the story. They also encouraged me to expand “Rosa’s Prayer” into a novel--they wanted to know what happened to the fictional family I had created. Did they ever recover from their loss? How were their relationships affected by it?  Would Rosa always be an only child--sola?

Over the next 18 months, as I expanded the short story into a novel, the story's time span went from a few weeks to a full year. The novel became a story about facing grief head-on instead of trying to hide from it. Although the novel was truly fiction, I found I could not tell Rosa's story without reliving some painful parts of my own childhood. As I reexamined those memories, I made an important discovery: in their attempt to protect me, the adults around me had never allowed me to mourn the loss of my own brother. Thirty years later, I was finally able to forgive them.

As I worked to find a way to bring Rosa's story to a healing conclusion, the floodgates opened. I sat at the keyboard with tears streaming down my face. I was surprised at how much grief I still carried within me. At times, the writing process was so emotionally exhausting that I had to take a nap after finishing a scene. But there were fun times too, as I added touches of humor to counteract the sadness. In the end, guiding my character through the stages of grief finally allowed me to resolve my own feelings.

While I never intended to write Rosa, Sola, I am so glad I did. And I will be forever grateful to Marion Dane Bauer for assigning that initial writing exercise. It not only helped me learn to portray emotion on the page, but it gave me a tool I can use over and over to find story ideas. It's a tool I've shared with students of all ages, as you'll see from the Writing Workout below.

Reminder: for those of you who are teachers or homeschoolers: there's still time to enter our contest! The prize is your choice of one of the six TeachingAuthor books we've been discussing. Entry deadline is Saturday, January 30. Read all about it here.

Writing Workout:
Mining our Memories for Story Ideas

I regularly teach workshops in "Transforming Life into Fiction" for students in grades 3 through adults. The first step in the process is "mining for memories." The key to powerful writing is to choose memories that arouse strong emotion in you--that emotion will help the story feel authentic to the reader no matter how much you eventually change the actual facts of the story.

Note: if you're doing this exercise with children, you may want to first talk about emotions in general and brainstorm a list of a variety of emotions.

Steps:

1. Prepare a notebook and pen/pencil. (I recommend you do this exercise by hand and not at a computer, but you can try both ways.)
2. Set a timer for ten minutes.
3. As quickly as you can, brainstorm a list of events from your childhood that still arouse emotion in you. It can be any emotion: anger, fear, joy, jealousy, etc. Note: If you're using this with younger students, you may want to "assign" a specific emotion. For example: "Make a list of times you felt scared." 
4. Write just enough about a specific event to identify it, then go on to the next event.
5. Try to list as many events as possible before the time is up.

Using the timer and writing quickly helps to quiet your inner critic. When you're done, you should have a whole list of possible story ideas. I suggest repeating the process periodically because the list you generate may vary greatly according to your mood and where you are in your life.

Happy writing!

Carmela

Clueless in Atlanta: A Writer's Search for a Heart

     How do I begin a story?  Usually, with an idea that jumps on my shoulder and shouts "Pick me, pick me." Sometimes the idea seems so ripe and whole I think the Muses have send me a full blown picture book, characters, plot and all.
      Then I sit down to write, and discover that I have almost everything. 
      I have a series of events, an anecdote. That magic thread that weaves the events into a story, isn't there. That magic thread is theme, the heart that drives the story. 

   Such was the case with A TREE FOR EMMY.
    My daughter Lily's first real friend, Emme, lived across the street. As pre-school BFF's they shared a love of anything pink, stomping through mud puddles and flowers (especially pink ones.) Emme's mother was an easy going woman who allowed the girls to dig and plant in her yard.

   Because Emme and Lily loved wildflowers, dandelions, wild daisies and Queen Anne's lace had free reign in the yard. The neighbors were not amused.
     It was no big surprise when Emme announced she wanted a mimosa tree for her birthday. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of living near a mimosa tree, they produce lovely fluffy pink blossoms and big stringbean-like seed pods. The tree also sheds those blossoms and pods, leaving an untidy yard. This bothers some people.  
     I am not one of those people. Neither was Emme's mother. A TREE FOR EMMY sticks closely to the real-life events. Girl wants tree, girl meets resistance, girl gets tree. Real-life handed me characters, plot and conflict. What more could a writer ask for?
     A heart. I had written a story, but I didn't know what it was about. 
     Over time, I've discovered I have to write the story first and hope that by the next time I read it, I'll have an idea of what is flowing beneath the surface.
     I literally don't know what I am writing about.
     I wrote EMMY and put it away. I read it six months later. . .and I still didn't know what it was about. Another six months, another reading. Nothing. Six more months. Still clueless.  So much for a "complete story" bestowed on me by the Muses.
     In the interim, I wrote another picture book in which the main character was a dead Christmas tree (no kidding). A critique that story received was "A dead tree doesn't do anything. If it were a living tree, it would at least grow."
      The Big A-Ha Moment.  Trees grow!  A TREE FOR EMMY was about growth, both plant and human. At last my story had a heart.
      It only took five years to find The Missing Heart. Like Emmy and her tree, I discovered that writing requires time and patience. 

      P.S.  The "dead Christmas tree" picture book eventually became a middle grade historical fiction, JIMMY'S STARS.


                                   Mary Ann Rodman


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