3 Poems: Revise, Change, Break the Rules!

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Howdy, Campers, and Happy Poetry Friday! (see link at the end)

Before I forget, if you live near Los Angeles, author/illustrator Barney Saltzberg, author Alexis O'Neill and I are once again teaching our one day class at UCLA, Writing a Picture Book and Getting it Published on March 7, 2020.

This class is always a kick and a half.  I hope to see some of you there!

Today is TeachingAuthors final post on "Revisioning 20/20"...and, as usual, we're all looking at this through a different pair of glasses. Bobbi introduces the topic in a post called Unsinkable, Carmela's brings in author Shirin Shamsi for A Wednesday Writing Workout called Befriending the  Revision Monster,  Mary Ann's is Revision: Re-learning to See, Esther's is One Writer's Rx for Achieving 20/20 Vision in 2020!, Gwendolyn's is Revising My Writing Life, Carmela's is called Celebrating Post #1300 and Revision as Re-Seeing, and Esther brings us debut author Mary Sandford in A Wednesday Writing Workout called Seven Ways to Beat Writer's Block.

Today, for your listening pleasure, I will post three poems.

Please give a warm welcome to Poem #1, on REVISION (previously posted here in 2009):

A WRITER ON HALLOWEEN

by April Halprin Wayland

I push open

the heavy door.
I take out the cleaver, the machete,

the switchblade, the scalpel, the penknife,

the X-acto knife.

I plunge my arm into the oily black pile of drafts

and haul one out.

And though it screams a thousand deaths,

I stab it over and over and over with the cleaver,

hacking it in two.

Then I amputate.

I sever. I cut.

I carve.  I slice.

Finally,

I mince words.

I take a breath and step back to admire my bloody work.

Then…I drop it back into the oily depths,

pack away the knives,

wipe the black spots off my desk

and leave.

I close the heavy door.

I will come back.

Tomorrow.

To do it all

again.

Egad! That's a grim one. If my poems have been edited (that poem needs to be even shorter!), I've changed, too. Though it still scares the bejeebers out of me, I don't see revision as quite as grisly these days. My writing (my life) will never be perfect. 

And speaking of being scared, Poem #2, a poem about working with Play Doh, is about the fear of being edited. (For a nonfiction poem and my Play Doh related editing exercise, click here):

CHANGE

by April Halprin Wayland

I pinch a pink pig,

gash a green grape,

coil a coral curl,

roll a red rope,

bend a blue bow,

swerve a cyan swan,

then share what I make!

But...

hey, don't change that!

No pig wears a hat!

No swan puts rouge on!

Oh, wait—that's a squid.

I like

what you did.

In proposing this topic, Carmela brought a thread of tweets from Debbie Ridpath Ohi to our attention. One says: “I'm a big believer in stepping out of one's comfort zone on a regular basis to avoid complacency & getting into a rut. I may fail spectacularly (& have) but picking myself up & persevering makes me stronger. If I succeed, my comfort zone's a wee bit bigger.”

Well!  That sounds good!  To me, getting out of a rut means breaking the rules! This year I am becoming aware of all the rules I lock into my life...and I'm ditching some of them.

photo by stevesphar from pixabay

And so we come to our final poem, Poem #3:

GARDEN RULES

by April Halprin Wayland

She wants one of those adorable gardens

with straight mounds of earth labeled

carrots, radishes, peas.

She wishes her grandmother had made a video

explaining how, exactly, you're supposed to tamp down

all these leaves, sticks, clods, roots flat as a tabletop.

Who knows the garden rules?

What ifshe does it wrong?

drawings and poems © 2020 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved

Thank you, Linda of TeacherDance for hosting Poetry Friday!

posted with love and a little help from Eli (my dog), Penny and Gin (our son and soon-to-be-daughter-in-law's dogs), shown here:

Writing Picture Books (& one last goodbye to Jeanne Marie)

I'm the last one who'll be linking back to a favorite column of Jeanne Marie's as we bid her farewell. I'm choosing her entry from January 30, 2012, Unschooling, in which she talks about the "rules" of writing we're taught – and often need to unlearn.

This is especially true in picture book writing. Authors of published picture books frequently use:

          contractions
          incomplete sentences
          sentences that begin with A
          one word sentences
          complicated words kids probably won't know
          improper grammar

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Some of my former English teachers would definitely not approve.

                                                           Wikimedia Commons

Think of picture books as performance art. How a story sounds, how page turns move it forward, are huge factors in its success. A certain elementary school librarian I know is the most masterful picture book reader I've ever heard/seen. She's also an actress in local stage productions, so that may be why timid is not in her vocabulary. She'll use multiple voices and volumes, dialects and intonations. Crazy faces. Dramatic pauses. Body language. She'll sing, crow, growl, or bring props from home, when necessary.

That's the kind of reader I'm writing for. One who brings a story to life for the kids who are hearing it, makes them feel a part of the action and empathize with the characters so deeply that they forget they're hearing a story somebody made up. We can only write stories to the best of our abilities and hope there are adults out there who will throw themselves in to the reading of them half as completely as my librarian friend.

When I was starting out, most of the manuscripts I submitted were "safe," meaning that I was careful not to break any rules. It wasn't until I loosened up that editors began to show interest.

Still, I remember dropping certain submissions into the mailbox and immediately wishing I could pull them out again. I worried that the down-home jargon in Stink Soup wouldn't be allowed. That I'd be asked to simplify some of the complicated (but era-appropriate) words in Ste-e-e-e-eamboat A-Comin'! and correct the improper grammar used by the characters in To the Big Top.

More recently, I wondered if a scene would be cut from I Hatched (Jan. '14). This book follows a newly-hatched killdeer chick as he delights in discovering his neighborhood and himself. At one point, he is surprised by ... well, the first time he poops. His story would have felt less authentic, to me, if he didn't poop. Still, I couldn't help wondering if the publisher would put the kibosh on that particular scene.

None of those things happened. Not one. Which freed me to stop worrying about rules and just tell stories the way they need to be told.

Jeanne Marie's final words regarding unschooling were these:

"While most of us can agree on the general precepts of 'good writing,' the first and best rule is ... there are no rules!
find your voice
find your truth
be true to your voice
always.'"

Amen, sistah.

Jill Esbaum

A Likely Story

Back in October, I posted about the three elements – rhythm, rhyme, and story – that have to work together in character-driven rhyming picture books. In that post, I addressed getting a story's rhythm exactly right.

That leaves rhyme and story, so I thought I'd get back to those today. You all know how to rhyme, so I won't waste an entire post on the topic. Two things to keep in mind, though:

      - Use proper syntax. If you have to twist a line for the sake of the end rhyme, find another way to get the thought across. Lines should read the way a person normally speaks.

      - Talk "up" to your readers. Don't shy away from complicated words now and then if they fit the story, if kids will be able to glean meaning from context (and, most likely, an illustration), and especially if they're fun to say. In my Ste-e-e-e-eamboat A-Comin'!, which takes place in the 1800s, I rhymed songs and shouts with roustabouts; silk cravats with cowboy hats; and coffee, spoons with brass spittoons.

Rhyming stories have been my favorites since I was 5 or 6 years old (and was introduced to Horton).

Of the 16 books I've sold so far, 6 are rhyming picture books. So these days, I critique a lot of rhyming manuscripts – as a volunteer judge at Rate Your Story, in private and conference crits, and in summer workshops (note: my pb workshop is Aug. 2-4 this year). The number one problem with the stories I see is . . . well, the stories. It's pefectly natural. We get so caught up in perfecting rhythm and rhyme that story takes a backseat. Because boy, once we get those rhyming lines working together, most of us would rather undergo a root canal than make changes.

But the same rules apply to a rhyming story to one written in prose. So, a checklist:

     - Does my main character have a goal to reach or some kind of problem? Did I get to it right away? Does he solve it himself?

     - Do things go WRONG?

     - Did I include believable/necessary dialogue? (Yes, this is tougher to do in rhyming stories. You thought this would be easy?)

     - Does every word of every line move the story forward and convey a precise meaning? This is a biggie. Go through your story line by line. Are any lines/stanzas merely restating in a different way information already given? Condense or cut.

     - Have I used specific verbs, vivid language, fresh similes and metaphors, alliteration, onomatopoeia? (If you have fun, your reader will, too.)

     - Is my word count as low as possible? (Little pitchers have big ears, yes, but they also have short attention spans.)

     - Is my POV consistent? (Try to avoid 1st person in rhyming stories. It can be done, but it's extremely tough to do without sounding overly-contrived.)

     - Has my MC shown growth or changed somehow by the end of the story? (And am I not hitting the reader over the head with it?)

When it comes to crafting rhyming stories, practice really does make perfect. Examine a variety of published rhyming picture books. To get a feel for meter, read them aloud. Type them out. Study their plot structure. Learn to recognize and correct problem areas in your own work.

One final tip that gets its own line and bold print:

     - Embrace revision. (Because, truly, there's NEVER only one way to say something.)

And before you know it, you'll be on the track to publication. Note that I didn't call it a "fast track." This IS publishing.

Jill Esbaum

P.S.  Remember to enter our book giveaway for a chance to win Tamera Wissinger's delightful Gone Fishing!

Unschooling

After the flurry of exciting awards-related activity this week, I know many of us are looking forward to (variously) the Superbowl, the Academy Awards, Valentine's Day... I, in my third week of classes, am already looking forward to Spring Break.  January/February/March is a long stretch for teachers and students alike, yes?

I've had a particularly rocky start to the semester with campus construction and new computer systems, locked doors and snow and, oh, getting stranded on the wrong coast one Monday morning.  I had to give extra credit to the student who could magically make my projector light up.  (What will I ever do if he is absent?)

In Week 1, I gave my typical spiel -- "Now that you have mastered the five-paragraph essay format, you are going to have a little more freedom to try new things, to build on the structure you've learned but to break the rules a bit."  Typically, I have many students who balk at the idea that an essay does NOT (gasp) have to be five paragraphs long.  Many also have incredible difficulty with the notion that the introductory paragraph, the body paragraphs, and the concluding paragraph of an essay should NOT actually repeat the same thought three times.

One of my rule-loving students (of whom I am already quite fond) raised her hand this week and said, "Since we're doing everything differently from everything I've been taught... what about contractions?" 

We are, mind you, writing a narrative essay based on personal experience.  We have already talked about audience and tone.  I said, 'This is an informal essay.  Of course you may use contractions.'  Students were shocked.  'We were taught never, ever to use contractions.'  'We were SCORNED for using contractions.'  I asked them to raise their hands if they were told never, under any circumstance, to use a contraction.  Fully 90% of students did so.

Goodness gracious.  Contractions are the least of the problems I typically see in student writing.  I understand that we are trying to prepare students for a wide variety of writing tasks in life: literary analyses, drug trial reviews, briefs, summaries, business memos, nursing intake notes, police reports, textbooks, articles, novels.  Encouraging students to assess the genre and the necessary conventions is the FIRST thing we should be teaching. 

And so I wonder about the "rules" that are being drummed into students in high school and developmental writing courses.  I remember wondering the same as a student.  If I am supposed to be writing in clear and complete sentences, why does Faulker get to write a five-and-a-half-page run-on?  And why can I understand only every third sentence of the jargon-stuffed journal article that I must read for my psychology class?

While most of us can agree on the general precepts of 'good writing,' the first and best rule is... there are no rules!
find your voice
find your truth
be true to your voice
always
-- Jeanne Marie
  

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