Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Leonard's Rules of Writing

Watching the live stream of the National Book Award Ceremony!

The 2012 Recipient of the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, Elmore Leonard, just gave an informative and compelling speech about his writing process.  I have to remember to show clips of it (particularly the part when he discusses learning to "show, not tell" in his writing) to my creative writing students in the spring.



In addition to an impressive resume, Leonard also has a delightful list of "10 Rules of Writing," on which he elaborates in his book by the same name.

  1.  Never open a book with weather.
  2.  Avoid prologues.
  3.  Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
  4.  Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
  5.  Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. 
  6.  Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
  7.  Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
  8.  Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
  9.  Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
  10.  Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

Source: http://mysterypeople.wordpress.com/tag/elmore-leonard/

In less than an hour the National Book Award Winners will be announced.  I'm voting for This is How You Lose Her by @JunotDiazDaily (fiction), Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo (nonfiction), and Never Fall Down by Patricia @McCormickWrites (Young People's Lit).  I haven't read any of the poetry collections, so I won't weigh in on that contest. We'll see if I'm right!


Sunday, November 4, 2012

On Writing Well

Note to self: Read this book over Christmas vacation and purchase some copies as resources for the spring semester creative writing class you'll be teaching!

On Writing Well by William Zinsser

The Table of Contents:
Part I Principles
Part II Methods
Part III Forms
    -Nonfiction, The Interview, The Travel Article, The Memoir, Science and Technology, Writing in Your Job, Sports, Critics and Columnists, Humor-
Part IV Attitudes

This book is a gold mine for writing teachers and writers alike!  Unfortunately, it is due back to my library in two days and I'm in the midst of grading 100+ student essays/research papers, so I don't have time to read it cover to cover.  Here are a few quotations I found by just flipping through the book:

p. 213-2: Let's start with breeziness.  There is a kind of writing that sounds so relaxed that you think you hear the author talking to you.... The common assumption is that the style is effortless.  In fact the opposite is true: the effortless style is achieved by strenuous effort and constant refining."

p. 79: "Keep your paragraphs short.  Writing is visual--it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain.  Short paragraphs put air around what you write and make it look inviting, whereas a long chunk of type can discourage a reader from even starting to read."

p. 13: "Clutter is the ponderous euphemism that turns a slum into a depressed socioeconomic area, garbage collectors into waste-disposal personnel and the town dump into the volume reduction unit."

p. 15: "Is there any way to recognize clutter at a glance? ...I would put brackets around every component in a piece of writing that wasn't doing useful work....My reason for bracketing the students' superfluous words, instead of crossing them out, was to avoid violating their sacred prose.  I wanted to leave the sentence intact for them to analyze."

p. 244: "One way to generate confidence is to write about subjects that interest you and that you care about."


And while I'm thinking of meaningful quotations, I heard this one today on a Taylor Swift E! special:
"My parents raised me to never feel like I was entitled to success.  That you have to work for it.  You have to work so hard for it.  And sometimes then you don't even get where you need to go." -Taylor Swift
I have to remember to share this with my students!


Monday, August 27, 2012

Back to School

It's amazing how quickly a well-intentioned goal can become sidelined when late August rolls around.  I had every intention of blogging about the many books I've read over the last month, but unfortunately back-to-school meetings and plans, along with last-minute getaways and family vacations, interfered. So now I will attempt to play catch up!

I have been dying to write about the following book since I read it in early August. The memoir, called It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine's Path to Peace, was the most inspiring book I read all summer. I heard about it from a graduating senior on one of the final days of last school year. I had mentioned that our department was contemplating a "One Book One School" program, which was exactly what her university was doing. This was the book she was to read over the summer before her freshman year at college.

The most intriguing aspect of this book, by Rye Barcott (@ryebarcott), is the dichotomy between the author's passion for the U.S. military and his commitment to peacefully reconciling ethnic violence, particularly in areas of Africa. His desire to maintain peace in the world--shaped in large part by his anthropology professor mother and his Vietnam vet father--drives him to simultaneously enroll in the ROTC program and pursue an independent research project, which involves semi-annual trips to Kiberia, the largest slum in Kenya.

Throughout the approximately ten-year span of the book, Barcott details his experiences in the U.S., Kenya, Somalia, and Iraq. He describes the extreme patriotism he feels for his country, as well as the compassion he feels for the residents of Kiberia. He emphasizes the importance of helping the poor, downtrodden members of society by empowering them to begin their own community outreach programs, clinics, and small businesses so as to increase a sense of responsibility and ownership within the residents of these communities. Barcott also believes in the necessity of a strong military in order to maintain peace and order throughout the world.

The path to peace is not easy for Barcott, and his relationships and investments do not always go as planned. On several occasions he literally and figuratively falls on his face in his efforts to achieve high military honors and large-scale humanitarian efforts simultaneously. One of his most significant obstacles is fundraising and selecting the best local projects in which to invest. He is at times misunderstood by his fellow Marines and does not always attain top honors in his military trainings as he aspires to do. In Kiberia, an area ruled in large part by gang violence as the Kenyan police find it too dangerous to enter, Barcott--the only white person in Kieberia on most occasions--must learn the appropriate greetings and ways of life as to not be targeted by the gang leaders.

What Barcott achieves by the age of 30 is remarkable and inspiring to anyone who reads it. Incoming college students are a prime audience, since the memoir largely describes the author's accomplishments throughout his late teens and twenties. Nevertheless, this book could certainly be a One Book One School selection for a high school population, too. Students reading at a middle school reading level might have some difficulty with the book's somewhat sophisticated writing style, which I would estimate to be written at about a 10th or 11th grade reading level. Reluctant readers might be turned off by the book's length (352 pages).  However, if these students have any interest in poverty, the military, or human rights, the intriguing subject matter might be all they need to persevere through the challenging spots.  Low readers could also read excerpts or perhaps an easier text with similar themes.

Finally, It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine's Path to Peace would be an excellent text to read in conjunction with a service project or a volunteer assignment. When you close the final pages of the book, you will certainly feel an overwhelming desire to make a difference in the world.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Teaching Kids to Tweet Responsibly!

The ongoing Olympic games have been impressive, breathtaking, and record-breaking. But perhaps the most intriguing and unexpected record of all involves the incredible number of people tweeting about Olympic events. According to Bluefin Labs, during the opening ceremonies alone, athletes, spectators, and journalists issued 5 million tweets mentioning the Olympics. Twitter claims that number is in the 10 million range. Regardless, we can only assume that just as many tweets will be tweeted (I'm starting to feel a bit ridiculous using this terminology) throughout the duration of the games.  

These tweets are mostly informative and upbeat, showing a world united through its love of friendly competition. Unfortunately, however, a few athletes have not shared in this spirit of sportsmanship.  


On July 25th, two days before the opening ceremonies, a 23-year-old female Greek triple jumper was expelled from the Olympics for this tweet: “With so many Africans in Greece... the West Nile mosquitoes will at least eat homemade food!!!”

Only a few days later a 23-year-old Swiss soccer player was banned for derogatory tweets about his opponents. Translated, his tweet read, "I want to beat up all South Koreans. Bunch of mentally handicapped retards."

With one more week of the Olympics to go, I can only hope that the remaining athletes have learned a lesson from these fallen heroes and will start filtering their thoughts and words before tweeting them.

Not only do these examples illustrate the necessity of teaching kids to use social media responsibly, a task which should be shared by parents and teachers alike, it also shows a need to teach kids to be compassionate towards others, to accept others' differences, and to be good sports.

I've had several students involved in the Best Buddies program at school attempt to educate their classmates about the negative effects of using the word "retard" or "retarded" to mean "stupid."  I've taken up their cause and have spoken to students who use this epithet, explaining the guilty remorse I felt the time I used the word in front of a classmate whose brother really did suffer from developmental delays. I've had similar discussions with students who use the words "gay" and "fag" to mean "stupid" and "loser."

This past summer, as I was walking into my school, a colleague noticed that I had a bag of arts and crafts supplies from a local teacher supply store and asked if I was planning a fun project with my class. I grumbled to her that I was making a large, colorful sign that said "THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK" to hang in my classroom since I had one class in particular that seemed to lack filters. Her take on this issue, which she also had experienced, was that due to Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, students have a false impression that everything they think is so important that it requires publishing. Nothing supports her argument more than the recent Twitter follies committed by (young) Olympians. 

Not only do students need to be instructed on how to effectively filter their thoughts into coherent and respectful sentences, they also must be required to overcome tendencies to act in a prejudiced manner towards those who come from backgrounds different than their own. Educating my fairly homogenous students about other cultures within the confines of my curriculum has been an important component of my teaching for the length of my career. For instance, when studying Greek mythology, I've also required students to read myths from Asian and African cultures. When studying the French Revolution while reading A Tale of Two Cities, I've asked students to research slave rebellions and other revolutions that have occurred around the world. When reading A Separate Peace, I make sure students know the history of the Japanese internment camps when we discuss WWII, even though this has no direct relevance to the text. Does this take additional time? Yes. Do I have time to do all of these activities every year? No. But, I can't bear to imply to students that Greece is the only nation worthy of having its mythology read in schools, that France and America are the only countries who ever revolted against an oppressor, and that the Americans were unequivocally the "good guys" in WWII. 

Perhaps none of my attempts at teaching from this 'world perspective' have made a difference in most of my students' lives. But if even one of these lessons changed one student's tendency to speak without thinking or judge someone solely because of his or her nationality (gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, etc.), my work will not have been in vain.  

The weird thing about the teaching profession is that I may never know for sure if my words and actions changed a student's behaviors or thoughts. What's weirder still? I'm okay with that, as long as I know I've tried my hardest to do my part to make the world a better place.  

For more ideas on teaching @tolerance_org, visit www.tolerance.org. 
For a lesson plan on using social media responsibly, visit teachtoday.edu or click here.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Art and Poetry Connection

As I continued to think about connecting art and writing and nature in my classroom (thanks to the VAST course I took through University of the Arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art!), I thought I might try pairing poems and paintings, so that while we are reading/analyzing a poem in class, students also have a visual accompaniment. The poem's structure and form can serve as a mentor text and the painting can serve as inspiration for student's own original poetry.  Here are a few of the pairs I've discovered, but I hope to find more before the school year starts!

"Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost and 
Poplars on the Bank of the Epte by Claude Monet

Nature's first green is gold, 
Her hardest hue to hold. 
Her early leaf's a flower; 
But only so an hour. 
Then leaf subsides to leaf. 
So Eden sank to grief, 
So dawn goes down to day. 
Nothing gold can stay. 
"The Tree is Here, Still, In Pure Stone" by Pablo Neruda and 
Birch and Pine Tree No. 1 by Georgia O'Keeffe
The tree is here, still, in pure stone, 
in deep evidence, in solid beauty, 
layered, through a hundred million years. 
Agate, cornelian, gemstone 
transmuted the timber and sap 
until damp corruptions 
fissured the giant's trunk 
fusing a parallel being: 
the living leaves 
unmade themselves 
and when the pillar was overthrown 
fire in the forest, blaze of the dust-cloud, 
celestial ashes mantled it round, 
until time, and the lava, created 
this gift, of translucent stone. 


"Night Poem" by Margaret Atwood and Rain by Vincent van Gogh


Philadelphia Museum of Art


There is nothing to be afraid of, 
it is only the wind 
changing to the east, it is only 
your father the thunder 
your mother the rain 

In this country of water 
with its beige moon damp as a mushroom, 
its drowned stumps and long birds 
that swim, where the moss grows 
on all sides of the trees 
and your shadow is not your shadow 
but your reflection, 

your true parents disappear 
when the curtain covers your door. 
We are the others, 
the ones from under the lake 
who stand silently beside your bed 
with our heads of darkness. 
We have come to cover you 
with red wool, 
with our tears and distant whipers. 

You rock in the rain's arms 
the chilly ark of your sleep, 
while we wait, your night 
father and mother 
with our cold hands and dead flashlight, 
knowing we are only 
the wavering shadows thrown 
by one candle, in this echo 
you will hear twenty years later. 
"Warble for Lilac Time" from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman and 
Hydrangeas by Alma Thomas
Philadelphia Museum of Art
  Warble me now for joy of lilac-time, (returning in reminiscence,)
  Sort me O tongue and lips for Nature's sake, souvenirs of earliest summer,
  Gather the welcome signs, (as children with pebbles or stringing shells,)
  Put in April and May, the hylas croaking in the ponds, the elastic air,
  Bees, butterflies, the sparrow with its simple notes,
  Blue-bird and darting swallow, nor forget the high-hole flashing his
      golden wings,
  The tranquil sunny haze, the clinging smoke, the vapor,
  Shimmer of waters with fish in them, the cerulean above,
  All that is jocund and sparkling, the brooks running,
  The maple woods, the crisp February days and the sugar-making,
  The robin where he hops, bright-eyed, brown-breasted,
  With musical clear call at sunrise, and again at sunset,
  Or flitting among the trees of the apple-orchard, building the nest
      of his mate,
  The melted snow of March, the willow sending forth its yellow-green sprouts,
  For spring-time is here! the summer is here! and what is this in it
      and from it?
  Thou, soul, unloosen'd—the restlessness after I know not what;
  Come, let us lag here no longer, let us be up and away!
  O if one could but fly like a bird!
  O to escape, to sail forth as in a ship!
  To glide with thee O soul, o'er all, in all, as a ship o'er the waters;
  Gathering these hints, the preludes, the blue sky, the grass, the
      morning drops of dew,
  The lilac-scent, the bushes with dark green heart-shaped leaves,
  Wood-violets, the little delicate pale blossoms called innocence,
  Samples and sorts not for themselves alone, but for their atmosphere,
  To grace the bush I love—to sing with the birds,
  A warble for joy of returning in reminiscence.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

The White Tiger

Today, on my journey to and from my beach book club meeting, I finished listening to The White Tiger. Since I 'read' the novel by listening to its audio version, I have no concept of chapters, only of discs--seven of them. Disc one introduced the narrator, White Tiger, as a wry and witty murderer who, from a secret hide-out, tells his life's story through letters written to the Chinese Premier who will soon be visiting India. At first, I enjoyed White Tiger's sense of humor, and both his situation and the novel's epistolary structure piqued my curiosity. Unfortunately, my interest in his tale deteriorated throughout discs two and three. The protagonist's recollections of his childhood and young adulthood rarely sustained my interest. The needlessly long-winded details of his life growing up with a rickshaw-driver father intrigued me, but as the story went along I found most of these elaborate childhood stories to be largely irrelevant.

Luckily, the novel's pace picked up in disc four and I found myself hesitating to turn the car off when I arrived at my destination, so that I could discover how the White Tiger--a cunning, illiterate, low-caste, and loyal servant--got his name on a wanted poster.

This novel would not be an appropriate whole-class text in a unit on Indian literature due to its profanity, references to sex and prostitutes, and slow pace. Offered as an optional text, it might garner some interest with a particular type of student who will not be turned off by a loquacious first person narrator with a dry wit and a criminal background.

Next up, I'm looking forward to continuing The God of Small Things and ordering Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil (@jeetthayil), which recently made the #ManBookerPrize long list.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Human Rights Issues in YA Literature

Sometime in the mid-1990s, when I was around 10 or 11, my grandmother gave me a book called Zlata's Diarywritten by a young girl (@ZlataFilipovic) living through the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Around the same time, two new students arrived in my school; they were Bosnian refugees. After reading Zlata's Diary, did I fully grasp the recent trauma my new classmates had experienced? No, but neither can I say that now, as an adult, I understand their experiences. However, reading Zlata's Diary did open my eyes to the experiences of a girl my age half a world away. It made me curious--not cruel--towards the new kids at my school. It did not traumatize me or give me nightmares, but instead put my life and "problems" into a broader context; suddenly, not being allowed to have my ears pierced seemed unimportant. It sparked in me a curiosity about people in other areas of the world. It caused me to question the evil that exists in the world, but it also inspired me be a source of goodness.
As an adult, I continue to be drawn to literature about people living in places and times that are not my own. Reading Never Fall Down (@McCormickWrites) was both a horrifying and inspiring experience for me. As I read, I continued to have flashbacks to Beah's A Long Way Gone and Wiesel's Night. Like Beah and Wiesel, the protagonist, Arn Chorn-Pond, suffers greatly as he endures the Khmer Rouge's violent reign over his homeland, yet he also rises out of that hopelessness and, as an adult, works tirelessly as a human rights advocate.

Never Fall Down is a fairly simple read for high school students, yet its subject matter is complex and challenging, making it a perfect read for both reluctant readers and high-achieving students. In an English/language arts classroom, discussions of novel text might include the literary themes of war, perseverance, and the will to survive, or the writer's process of turning a true story into a work of fiction. McCormick's choice of voice for her protagonist would be a valuable lesson topic, as well. Finally, this book beckons a discussion of the role of the arts in a people's cultural identity. Why did the Khmer Rouge find it so important to wipe out all traditional Cambodian music and art? What is the value of traditional songs, images, and stories?

Social Studies teachers could also use this text to teach about a variety of historical eras. Never Fall Down not only gives readers insight into the Cambodian Genocide, but also provides a platform for discussing other mass killings such as the Holocaust and those in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sudan, Rwanda, and the massacres that are occurring in Syria even as I type these words. The innocence of McCormick's child narrator and his at-times naive perspective on the atrocities he witnesses help students to comprehend an otherwise overwhelming topic.

Although it might be tempting to censor books that contain graphic war imagery and violence from middle and high school students, it's also important to remember that living in a bubble disadvantages everyone--victims and bystanders alike. Students should not be prevented from learning about historical or current events just because they paint a picture that not everything in our world is all roses and butterflies. If we want students to become agents of change, we have to show them what needs to be changed. At the same time, we cannot simply hand students books about tragedies and expect them to feel empowered. Opportunities for empowerment--community service projects, food and clothing drives, petitions or letter/email-writing campaigns--should be an integral part of students' experiences, too.

A few of my favorites:
Kiva @kiva
Habitat for Humanity @Habitat_org