"I Hate Writing," and Other Lies

I'm a proselityzer, I admit it. And my Gospel is Creative Writing.

Last week I was invited by a Parents Association to bring Writopia Lab to fifteen classes of sixth graders and I'll be doing another fifteen this week. I had met with all of the English Language Arts teachers beforehand so they would know that I wanted to support what they were doing in the classroom: that I was friend, not foe.


Middle school is where you may both find and lose your voice. Where you often start developing and trying out different personae not only to be socially accepted, but to become individually defined.


Who doesn't remember that?


So, my mission was to get the kids to write their own short story, and to inspire them to start thinking of themselves as writers. To help them see that they can use writing as a tool for discovery, for thought and for fun.


I had forty minutes each class.

I started these classes using myself as an example of a "secret" writer who was too ashamed to admit it, who didn't think she had the right to write, to have a voice. I had loved writing, but until recently lacked the moxie to call myself a "writer". Then I asked the students what their experience with writing had been.

Here's a crazy statistic: over half of my students claimed to "hate" it. Yes, and this is at one of the better public schools in the state! Add to that some crazy statistics my dad quoted to me over the weekend from a book he was reading: After high school, 80% of students never read another novel.

When I asked the kids why, the a common answer (along with hand cramping and being intimidated by grammar) was that they had trouble thinking of things to write. 

"Do you like stories?" Most nodded their heads, but there were of course, a few kids who gave me the hairy eyeball. 

"I don't like to read."

"Well, there are other ways of ingesting stories. How about TV shows? Movies? Video games?"

We talked about story, and how TV shows, movies and books all have the elements of character, plot and setting. (The rest can be debated another day.)

I had them. "If you like TV, then you like story. If you like story, then I guarantee that you can tell one."


I gave each class a different first line and last line. Then it was up to each student to write the middle, and it could be as silly and/or weird as they wanted it to be, as long as the main character had an objective. ("Every character has to want something - even if it's a glass of water," - Kurt Vonnegut.) The teacher and I would go over to the students who were stuck and write a line in their story to "unstick" them, or ask them for more details if they had "finished" before the fifteen minutes of free writing was up.  I talked about story structure, asking questions of them to ask their characters.

Every student wrote. Some were brilliant: true diamonds in the rough. Invariably, the writing-"haters" all wanted to share, and were gleeful about it. Some thought they were just being silly, and were going for laughs, but I was able to point out that even stories about CIA agents in CandyLand can make a certain kind of sense. And more than a few said they would be willing to change their attitude toward themselves and writing.

I encouraged everybody to go home and type up their stories - to add, revise, continue, and I am certain some will. 

The teachers are amazing - they are all so dedicated and genuinely fond of their students, so open and creative in their own teaching practices, and I tip my hat to them. They have their hands full with large classrooms, a mandated curriculum, and testing to prove that indeed they have taught that curriculum. It was awesome of them to let me disturb their classrooms last week, and again this week where I will bring in another, completely different fun writing game that will focus on showing vs. telling.

Just don't tell me you hate writing!

In BeTWEEN Book Clubs and Open Mic Events

Oh yes, I am playing with words on this rainy morning, before I get ready to train into the city with Judy Blundell for a meta lunch with writers Rebecca Stead, Deborah Heiligman, Carolyn Mackler, Rachel Vail, Elizabeth Winthrop and Jeanne Betancourt. At Henry's - my grandmother's favorite restaurant.

(What happens at lunch, stays at lunch!)

And I am inbetween book clubs and Open Mics - last Sunday we hosted an Open Mic for my Writopia kids in Larchmont and packed The Voracious Reader to the gills, and last night we had our InBeTWEEN Book Club at the Bedford Hills Free Library, where we discussed this month's pic, A Mango Shaped Space by Wendy Mass.

Later in the month there will be another Open Mic (at the Mt. Kisco Library), and there will be the first meeting of our new book club that my friend Erika insisted we start. (Since we both, you know, like to read and stuff.) We will be reading and discussing Swamplandia (Karen Russell) with four other people. (If you want to read it too, we can start a discussion on here!)

And in February, I have been invited to one of Wetchester's longest running book clubs, comprised of TEACHERS to discuss Edges.

Our InbeTWEEN Book Club members, ranging in age from 11 to 13, (okay, I'm almost 44, but I can pretend, can't I?) all thoroughly enjoyed the book.

From Booklist: For 13-year-old Mia Winchell, the world has always been filled with a wonderful, if sometimes dizzying, sensory onslaught--numbers, letters, words, and sounds all cause her to see a distinct array of colors. She keeps her unusual condition a secret until eighth grade, but then her color visions make math and Spanish impossibly confusing, and she must go to her parents and a doctor for help. However, this is more than a docu-novel. Mass beautifully integrates information about synesthesia with Mia's coming-of-age story, which includes her break with her best friend and her grief over her grandfather's death. The episode where Mia fabricates an illness to try out acupuncture for the color visions it produces is marvelously done, showing Mia's eagerness for new experiences even as it describes a synesthete's vision.

We were all fascinated by synesthesia, and most of us wouldn't mind having that special condition ourselves! I couldn't help but see a correlation to addiction, especially in the acupuncture scene where she goes because she heard that it can enhance her experience of colors. For an adult reading this, we see Mia go on a hallucinogenic trip. The boy she meets on-line, another synesthete, hints that alcohol and kissing can enhance the colors as well.

If I were Mia, I would probably be doing anything to enhance my colors, but that's me. It would have been a very slippery slope indeed.