http://writebadlywell.blogspot.com/
I'm sure by now we've all come upon this site. It's a fun blog to scan through, even if the earlier posts are better than the recent ones. Anyway, the site has posts demonstrating, in a ludicrous and over-the-top manner, ways to write poorly, focusing each time on someone's (indeed many people's) writing pet peeves: spell check reliance, mixed metaphors, excessive dialogue tags, et cetera.
I have an as yet untested idea for how to use it as a template for a writing prompt. Simply, take one of these posts (some surely will work better than others) and let students have a go at replicating the bad writing. Students, if this lesson works, will first be able to then identify what exactly the problem is, and then, by doing it in an over the top style, identify why they are problems. I imagine this would be a fun activity. A natural follow-up could be fixing/revising to eliminate the issue.
The closest thing I have done to trying this involved revising cliches with my Eng15 class. It didn't go over perfectly, and I was put in a tough spot of trying to encourage creativity and participation while also explaining why many of the sudents' offerings were not much better. Having good examples of revision ahead of time would be good. For example, "his heart fluttered in his chest" could be "his heart smacked his ribs like a bumblebee at a window." (I think that was Chabon).
So there are potential problems with this idea: the age of the group, level of comfort between the participants and the teacher, participants being so ingrained with bad habits from trash books that they like writing badly more than correcting it. There's also an issue, perhaps, in so resolutely and concretely designating something as "wrong." I'm not saying it would be an easy lesson, but for the right group, I'd imagine it would be useful. At the very least, the writingbadlywell blog outlines some of the more irritating writing errors, things for which you can then write your own lesson.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Finishing Thoughts?
Now that the semester is just about over, our group has finished working at the youth center. And so I’ve become, as one tends to at the end of things, introspective and retrospective. Outrospective?
I’ve been thinking about the words we use. “…our group has finished working…”
“Finished” has such a finality to it, along with an implication of a task being completed. As in, I finally finished that paper. I see the word there and, for me specifically, it lacks an appropriate sense of accomplishment. I recall racing through tests as a kid and slapping it down on the teacher’s desk, saying, almost yelling, “Finished!” I would do that smiling and happy, but the glee was more from completion than the journey. “Finished,” then, strikes me as a combative word. What else could I say though?
I’m done working…
I’m through working…
I’ve terminated working…
I’ve ceased working… That might work, but the sentence then feels like we faded away, like an over-irrigated stream fades into the desert. “Concluded” could work, but it’s awfully sterile. I know I’m being picky, but the though process is the point.
“Working” has been more problematic all semester. I resist using the word “teaching” because that carries more weight than I’m comfortable with, and often what we’ve been doing resembles leading them through activities. Some might say that’s teaching, or even better, facilitating. That’s better (the kids, by the way, will not like the idea of the group being a class), but it still feels off. I’ve been having a lot of feelings lately.
I’ve settled on calling them, generally, “sessions.” Not classes, meetings, or otherwise. People have asked what we do at the youth center.
We have sessions…
We do sessions…
We have a writing group…
We lead a writing group…
I had to stop myself several times from saying “volunteering.” We don’t get paid, of course, which is the main definition, but we do this work for a class. Even though one we elected to take it, there work is ultimately mandated.
The kids (students? members? attendees? So many word choices!) understand this, I believe, in a strong but unspoken way. Ultimately, the method for getting the writing group to work was simply showing up continually. This raises more questions, especially with continuity and the end of a semester.
But I want to talk, only briefly, about the last activity/thing/lesson/work we did. We did a Pass-around, six simultaneously. Each person wrote a line or two to start, and then passed the paper to the left. Each person added a line or two, and this process continued until we got our originals back. Then we each finished/ended/whatevered the story we began.
It rocked. It was a great way to end, as it reinforced the idea of a group, even as we prepared to leave. It also mirrored how we began 10 sessions ago, which was a communal poem about Pennsylvania (see earlier post). It was also, finally, the right balance of levity and work. Even the unevenness of having 6 different writers of different ages and style and skill added positively to it. It’s an exercise I wouldn’t recommend for an introductory or early session—people need to be comfortable, and the kids need to trust you. Once again, those things don’t happen at the beginning, even with a true volunteering relationship. But it’s a great way to finish.
I’ve been thinking about the words we use. “…our group has finished working…”
“Finished” has such a finality to it, along with an implication of a task being completed. As in, I finally finished that paper. I see the word there and, for me specifically, it lacks an appropriate sense of accomplishment. I recall racing through tests as a kid and slapping it down on the teacher’s desk, saying, almost yelling, “Finished!” I would do that smiling and happy, but the glee was more from completion than the journey. “Finished,” then, strikes me as a combative word. What else could I say though?
I’m done working…
I’m through working…
I’ve terminated working…
I’ve ceased working… That might work, but the sentence then feels like we faded away, like an over-irrigated stream fades into the desert. “Concluded” could work, but it’s awfully sterile. I know I’m being picky, but the though process is the point.
“Working” has been more problematic all semester. I resist using the word “teaching” because that carries more weight than I’m comfortable with, and often what we’ve been doing resembles leading them through activities. Some might say that’s teaching, or even better, facilitating. That’s better (the kids, by the way, will not like the idea of the group being a class), but it still feels off. I’ve been having a lot of feelings lately.
I’ve settled on calling them, generally, “sessions.” Not classes, meetings, or otherwise. People have asked what we do at the youth center.
We have sessions…
We do sessions…
We have a writing group…
We lead a writing group…
I had to stop myself several times from saying “volunteering.” We don’t get paid, of course, which is the main definition, but we do this work for a class. Even though one we elected to take it, there work is ultimately mandated.
The kids (students? members? attendees? So many word choices!) understand this, I believe, in a strong but unspoken way. Ultimately, the method for getting the writing group to work was simply showing up continually. This raises more questions, especially with continuity and the end of a semester.
But I want to talk, only briefly, about the last activity/thing/lesson/work we did. We did a Pass-around, six simultaneously. Each person wrote a line or two to start, and then passed the paper to the left. Each person added a line or two, and this process continued until we got our originals back. Then we each finished/ended/whatevered the story we began.
It rocked. It was a great way to end, as it reinforced the idea of a group, even as we prepared to leave. It also mirrored how we began 10 sessions ago, which was a communal poem about Pennsylvania (see earlier post). It was also, finally, the right balance of levity and work. Even the unevenness of having 6 different writers of different ages and style and skill added positively to it. It’s an exercise I wouldn’t recommend for an introductory or early session—people need to be comfortable, and the kids need to trust you. Once again, those things don’t happen at the beginning, even with a true volunteering relationship. But it’s a great way to finish.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Writing resource: the Favorite Poem Project
http://www.favoritepoem.org/
Based at Boston University and run by former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, the Favorite Poem Project culls poems and commentary from people all over the United States. In the three books that the FPP has published, the poems appear alongside the commentary, which usually consists of a memory or personal attachment that draws the submitter to the poem. As a teaching tool, the FPP presents poetry in an accessible and comfortable way--I think reading the chosen poems alongside the comments of the submitter would show new poetry readers an entryway into poems otherwise confusing, cryptic, or new. The website also includes a magnificently rich section just for teachers (and publishes a teacher's guide to one of its books, An Invitation to Poetry): http://www.favoritepoem.org/forTeachers.html. Here, you'll find lesson plans for students at both the middle and high school level, some of which are written by American public school teachers. The DVD/audio recordings of Americans reading their favorite poems are also available online in parts.
I'd recommend this resource for any teachers/community instructors working with writers new to poetry. Though the lessons are written for adolescent students, I think they could be easily adapted to suit an adult audience.
Based at Boston University and run by former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, the Favorite Poem Project culls poems and commentary from people all over the United States. In the three books that the FPP has published, the poems appear alongside the commentary, which usually consists of a memory or personal attachment that draws the submitter to the poem. As a teaching tool, the FPP presents poetry in an accessible and comfortable way--I think reading the chosen poems alongside the comments of the submitter would show new poetry readers an entryway into poems otherwise confusing, cryptic, or new. The website also includes a magnificently rich section just for teachers (and publishes a teacher's guide to one of its books, An Invitation to Poetry): http://www.favoritepoem.org/forTeachers.html. Here, you'll find lesson plans for students at both the middle and high school level, some of which are written by American public school teachers. The DVD/audio recordings of Americans reading their favorite poems are also available online in parts.
I'd recommend this resource for any teachers/community instructors working with writers new to poetry. Though the lessons are written for adolescent students, I think they could be easily adapted to suit an adult audience.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
911 Writer's Block!
A great online resource for writing (and writing exercises) can be found here:
http://www.webook.com/911writersblock
The only disadvantage is that it requires a computer and internet to bring it into a writers' group, but I intend to show it to the youth of our group, anyway--using saved internet tabs if necessary.
The link above goes to the directory, which offers 'help' on the following subjects, many of which can be used to generate random writing prompts or assists, others of which are just fun:
http://www.webook.com/911writersblock
The only disadvantage is that it requires a computer and internet to bring it into a writers' group, but I intend to show it to the youth of our group, anyway--using saved internet tabs if necessary.
The link above goes to the directory, which offers 'help' on the following subjects, many of which can be used to generate random writing prompts or assists, others of which are just fun:
Dial 1 for Settings
Dial 2 for Characters
Dial 3 for Dramatic Entrances
Dial 4 for Dialogue
Dial 5 to Commiserate
Dial 6 for Verbs
Dial 7 for Calisthenics
Dial 8 to Kill a Character
Dial 9 for Endings
Much of this can (and should) be used on your own; dialing five repeatedly brings up a variety of quotes from famous (and less well-known) writers concerning writers' block--many of them less than sympathetic. 6 will over you a random verb. Keep dialing to cycle through. Dialing 8 will offer an option such as the following for the death of a character: 'Deep-vein thrombosis on a 22 hour flight to Bombay.'
Buttons 1,2,3,4, and 9 can easily be the basis for a writing exercise in-class. Take whatever results you get from the button and write a story based on it. If necessary, you can press the button and copy down the results beforehand, but it would really be best if the writers could bring up their prompts in real time. 7, Calisthenics, is specifically designed as a writing exercise ('Bring these elements together to make a story').
I'd recommend you check it out. Regardless of everything else, just cycling through the offered story-components is fun.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Online Resource
http://writingthelifepoetic.typepad.com/writing_the_life_poetic/2009/10/the-write-direction-october-poetry-prompt.html
I thought this website looked a little different than most of the other websites advertising writing prompts. This website has a lot of links which lead to other poetry resources. If you click prompts from the the list on the right hand side, you will get two prompts and one invitation to an e-zine. I'm hoping the e-zine has more of the concrete exercises and less of the fluff that also seems to haunt this site. Still, it is full of poems and aspiring poets talking about poems and it seems to be a place that gets enough regular traffic where people might continue to post prompts of superior quality. As I've been searching the web, I've found that there are a lot of sites out there promising prompts, but the exercises they provide are not very helpful, or their origins are suspect. Since some of my peers already found some great sites that offer useful prompts, the potential pool of resources has been diminished. But I think the prompts from this website might be of a higher quality, since it is a community of poets and writers. I think it has potential at least. Snoop around. See what you think.
I thought this website looked a little different than most of the other websites advertising writing prompts. This website has a lot of links which lead to other poetry resources. If you click prompts from the the list on the right hand side, you will get two prompts and one invitation to an e-zine. I'm hoping the e-zine has more of the concrete exercises and less of the fluff that also seems to haunt this site. Still, it is full of poems and aspiring poets talking about poems and it seems to be a place that gets enough regular traffic where people might continue to post prompts of superior quality. As I've been searching the web, I've found that there are a lot of sites out there promising prompts, but the exercises they provide are not very helpful, or their origins are suspect. Since some of my peers already found some great sites that offer useful prompts, the potential pool of resources has been diminished. But I think the prompts from this website might be of a higher quality, since it is a community of poets and writers. I think it has potential at least. Snoop around. See what you think.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Finding Purpose
When working with the Creative Writing Group for International Women...
At first I thought that our workshops were important because writing is important in its essence—it's fun, makes us think, helps us learn. But then I thought our workshops were particularly important because the women need practice with English. After a few weeks passed, I had to reevaluate. It was hard to judge if we'd brought writing into anyone's life in a meaningful way, if anyone had become friends outside of class, or if we'd improved anyone's English. All this kept leading me back to the questions, What are we doing here? What are we accomplishing?
I couldn't answer these questions, but I thought our experience with the blog might have something to do with our overall purpose. In our last post, Lucy wrote about our blog, mentioning how two of our writers' poems can be found there. The women were very excited about the blog. When we asked for permission to post their poems, one wrote, "it's my pleasure! It's a big encouragement." I started to feel something more significant in our purpose, but I couldn't articulate it.
On November 2nd, I attended a lecture on immigration by Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco. He is the Courtney Sale Ross University Professor of Globalization and Education and the Co-Director of Immigration Studies at New York University, Steinhardt School of Education. He has received millions of dollars in grants for his research. His brief NYU faculty biography states, "[h]is basic research is on conceptual and empirical problems in the areas of cultural psychology and psychological anthropology with a focus on the study of immigration and globalization."
At one point in the lecture, he talked about interviews that had been conducted with immigrant children living in the United States. When asked who the most important people in their lives were (besides their nuclear family [and God]) they'd say someone like a godparent. And if you asked where that person was, you'd find (s)he was back in his or her native country.
All of a sudden I realized how heavily I rely on a network of people who are local. I thought of how much time I spend thinking about people in this network, talking to people in this network, and talking about people in this network to people outside of it. And so I realized that maybe these women, when asked what is important to them right now, might respond saying our group is important. When asked what happened this week, they might mention attending our group in a list of activities. They might say their poems were posted to a blog.
Not only does this reaction to group seem worthwhile, this seems more worthwhile than my initial desires for a writing group. Writing is wonderful, English proficiency is necessary, as are friendships, but being able to claim something local as a thing that is important to you, that's truly valuable. Understanding this value reinvigorated me for our workshops. We have been pushing all the women to share their work with us in writing, so we can make a booklet. We want them to have something tangible that they can keep at home and feel proud of. I know we are proud of them.
(For more information about Professor Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco's work, visit this site: http://www.academicwebpages.com/preview/pathways/ )
At first I thought that our workshops were important because writing is important in its essence—it's fun, makes us think, helps us learn. But then I thought our workshops were particularly important because the women need practice with English. After a few weeks passed, I had to reevaluate. It was hard to judge if we'd brought writing into anyone's life in a meaningful way, if anyone had become friends outside of class, or if we'd improved anyone's English. All this kept leading me back to the questions, What are we doing here? What are we accomplishing?
I couldn't answer these questions, but I thought our experience with the blog might have something to do with our overall purpose. In our last post, Lucy wrote about our blog, mentioning how two of our writers' poems can be found there. The women were very excited about the blog. When we asked for permission to post their poems, one wrote, "it's my pleasure! It's a big encouragement." I started to feel something more significant in our purpose, but I couldn't articulate it.
On November 2nd, I attended a lecture on immigration by Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco. He is the Courtney Sale Ross University Professor of Globalization and Education and the Co-Director of Immigration Studies at New York University, Steinhardt School of Education. He has received millions of dollars in grants for his research. His brief NYU faculty biography states, "[h]is basic research is on conceptual and empirical problems in the areas of cultural psychology and psychological anthropology with a focus on the study of immigration and globalization."
At one point in the lecture, he talked about interviews that had been conducted with immigrant children living in the United States. When asked who the most important people in their lives were (besides their nuclear family [and God]) they'd say someone like a godparent. And if you asked where that person was, you'd find (s)he was back in his or her native country.
All of a sudden I realized how heavily I rely on a network of people who are local. I thought of how much time I spend thinking about people in this network, talking to people in this network, and talking about people in this network to people outside of it. And so I realized that maybe these women, when asked what is important to them right now, might respond saying our group is important. When asked what happened this week, they might mention attending our group in a list of activities. They might say their poems were posted to a blog.
Not only does this reaction to group seem worthwhile, this seems more worthwhile than my initial desires for a writing group. Writing is wonderful, English proficiency is necessary, as are friendships, but being able to claim something local as a thing that is important to you, that's truly valuable. Understanding this value reinvigorated me for our workshops. We have been pushing all the women to share their work with us in writing, so we can make a booklet. We want them to have something tangible that they can keep at home and feel proud of. I know we are proud of them.
(For more information about Professor Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco's work, visit this site: http://www.academicwebpages.com/preview/pathways/ )
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Resource for Creative Writing Prompts
http://www.creativewritingprompts.com/
This website provides 329 creative writing prompts. They employ techniques such as sensory visualization, listing, word sets, first lines of stories, mini-plots, word-play, and prop-based activities. They cover poems, short stories, and non-fiction. Some are very cheesy, but others are really creative. Most of them are open-ended enough that they could fit any age group (or be easily modified to the needs of a particular group). Some of my favorites are:
Prompt 41: Write about a time you hid from someone, or a time you disguised who you really were.
Prompt 4: Fairy tales have happy endings. All of us know what happened in that mushy fairy tale, Cinderella. Yeah, it’s romantic, the prince actually finding Cinderella. They lived happily ever after. But happy endings can sometimes be… well, boring. No zing. So predictable. So…happy. What if the shoe fit one of the sisters? What happens then? Play with your imagination here. Be funny if you like. Or serious if you feel like it. Or be an Alfred Hitchcock. Whatever you are into, write your ending to the Cinderella story—but this time, make it so she shoe fits one of the icky sisters. What does Prince Charming do? How does Cinderella cope with it? And what about the Fairy Godmother? Start your story here.
Prompt 11: Below are three sets of words. Use all the words in each set to write mini-stories of 300 words or less:
Set 1: paper clips, principle, lunchbox, swing, girl with a pink ribbon
Set 2: biology, class card, foreign student, leaf, blood sample
Set 3: typewriter, filing cabinet, puncher, clerk, carbon paper, janitor
If you’re in a pinch for a writing activity, this website seems like a good place to start.
This website provides 329 creative writing prompts. They employ techniques such as sensory visualization, listing, word sets, first lines of stories, mini-plots, word-play, and prop-based activities. They cover poems, short stories, and non-fiction. Some are very cheesy, but others are really creative. Most of them are open-ended enough that they could fit any age group (or be easily modified to the needs of a particular group). Some of my favorites are:
Prompt 41: Write about a time you hid from someone, or a time you disguised who you really were.
Prompt 4: Fairy tales have happy endings. All of us know what happened in that mushy fairy tale, Cinderella. Yeah, it’s romantic, the prince actually finding Cinderella. They lived happily ever after. But happy endings can sometimes be… well, boring. No zing. So predictable. So…happy. What if the shoe fit one of the sisters? What happens then? Play with your imagination here. Be funny if you like. Or serious if you feel like it. Or be an Alfred Hitchcock. Whatever you are into, write your ending to the Cinderella story—but this time, make it so she shoe fits one of the icky sisters. What does Prince Charming do? How does Cinderella cope with it? And what about the Fairy Godmother? Start your story here.
Prompt 11: Below are three sets of words. Use all the words in each set to write mini-stories of 300 words or less:
Set 1: paper clips, principle, lunchbox, swing, girl with a pink ribbon
Set 2: biology, class card, foreign student, leaf, blood sample
Set 3: typewriter, filing cabinet, puncher, clerk, carbon paper, janitor
If you’re in a pinch for a writing activity, this website seems like a good place to start.
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