A new adventure takes off...

My hotel is Nerd Heaven, Nerd-vana, the Book Nerd Mecca of Iowa City! It couldn't be a more prefect locale for my literary journey. Workshops start tomorrow morning and I am looking forward to many hours spent writing at this beautiful desk...

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Workshop Reflections - Part 1

This morning's workshop was enlightening, inspiring, validating... and paralyzing. First off, my instructor is fabulous. She will be a wealth of knowledge this weekend and I hope that I get the chance to pick her brain. This morning was an "Info Dump" of literary terms, steps to reading and writing like a writer, and breakdowns of the elements of craft and narrative structure. I have never taken a writing course before, so it was validating to be familiar with most of her terminology. Also, her "Info Dump" mirrored a lot of what I teach to my middle school students. It is always a comforting feeling to know that you are on the right track! The hardest part for me is now utilizing this information to benefit my own writing. It is relatively easy to analyze a finished novel's plot structure. It is a much more complicated task to create structure in your own writing. My instructor's advice: Come up with your own rules for your work - or borrow others....

Workshop Reflections - Parts 3 & 4

Today marked the conclusion of my weekend workshop. It was my first experience at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and it left me better informed and inspired to write the story that has occupied my thoughts for many years. In class today we deconstructed the novella Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson. As a homework assignment we were asked to look at several aspects of the story and track/note them throughout the book. Then, we worked in groups on one specific category and charted them on the classroom wall with sticky notes: Each color sticky note stood for a different category. I don't recall which color was which, but these were the categories were were tracking: Character introductions and deaths Symbolism (dogs in Train Dreams) Instigating action - the event that sets the story in motion (also referred to as the inciting incident) Protagonist's desires/goals/wants Setbacks/reversals the protagonist faced Mirror moments - times when the protagonist self-reflects ...

A Writer's Dream

On a whim, I applied for a grant from Fund For Teachers to attend the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. You can imagine my surprise when my principal walked in on the morning of April 5th to announce to my class that I had received the grant! My nerves oscillated between excitement and fear, as I realized that I was going to have to put myself out there as a writer for the first time. This July I will be traveling to Iowa to participate in two Writer's Workshops: "Novel Bootcamp" and "Driving Through the Dark - Writing a Story in a Week". My students are my inspiration for this trip. We are adopting Lucy Calkins' Writing Workshop next year and I thought the best way to understand the workshop model of teaching was to first be a student in a workshop myself. Here are excerpts from my grant proposal: Writing is a personal passion of mine. I’ve always felt that my strength lies in my ability to express myself and my creativity through written words instead of ...

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