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!

Writing Nature

I've already fallen off the wagon. My goal to blog each day was thwarted by a spontaneous camping trip to Lums Pond State Park in Delaware. Since my laptop spent the weekend on my coffee table, all blogging ceased. As my yoga instructor said last week, "Sometimes it's good to get away for a bit.  Sometimes you just need to hug a tree."

Several weeks ago, I had the pleasure of participating in a course for teachers called VAST (Visual Arts as Sources for Teaching) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (@philamuseum). This year the course was titled "Nature through the Lens of Art and Science." As I enjoyed nature during my weekend of camping, I continuously thought back to discussions and lessons I learned in that course, several of which are recalled below. Since only one seminar was dedicated to exclusively to writing about nature, I must attribute all of these writing lesson ideas to the seminar instructor @BethKephart. (Much thanks!)




Quick Collaborative Poetry
-->Make several pieces of art available for students to view.  
-->Give students 2 minutes to jot down descriptors (words and/or phrases) of any or all of the art.  
-->Students then return to their seats, preferably in a circle, and pass their descriptors to the person on their right. (Don't tell them in advance that they'll be handing them off to another student!)
-->After taking the list of words from the person on their left, students have 3 minutes to create a poem using some or all of their classmate's words. 
-->Share! (Take volunteers or have everyone share.)


What I like about this activity: 1) The short time constraints instill a sense of urgency in students and force them to write on the spot. No time for writer's block! 2) Using art as inspiration for writing is often a more comfortable starting point than requiring students to write about a more personal topic. Before long, the personal topics will surface in their poetry! 3) I like the idea writing poetry using someone else's words-particularly when first starting out. It reminds me of 'Found Poetry.' Experimenting with word choice and arrangement can be less intimidating when the words do not 'belong' to you.

Nature Walk:
-->Read aloud poetry and prose by authors (including by you the teacher!) writing about nature. Potential authors include Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, Pablo Neruda, Mary Oliver, and Margaret Atwood.
-->Send students out into a natural space (gardens, fields, etc.) to collect words about their observations of the natural world.
-->Reconvene to create group and/or individual poems based on words collected during the nature walk.


Art/photography connection: Ask students to use their camera phones to take photos of objects they find intriguing. The objects in these photos can become inspiration for their poetry or prose.


A Change of Scenery:
-->Share excerpts from Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River 
-->Invite students to write from the perspective of an inanimate object (perhaps one they took a photo of during their nature walk--see previous activity)


Extension: A related lesson plan with a socially conscious emphasis by Bill Bigelow @RethinkSchools: The Human Lives behind the Labels


Love Hate Relationship:
-->Read this Kate Northrop Poem to students.
-->Ask students to write their own "Three Things Loved, Three Things Hated" poem using Northrop's as a model.


Extension: Students choose one "thing" from this poem to become a topic of a longer poem or writing piece.  

Garden Memory:
-->Display a piece of art depicting a garden or other natural scene.
-->Read 2-3 models of writing about nature. 
-->Ask students to recall a favorite memory of a garden or nature and write about it for 4 minutes.  
-->Share! (Volunteers or everyone)  Ask follow-up questions requiring students to reflect on their process of recalling their memories and composing their piece.


The Color of Your Life:
-->Read the following lines from Gerald Stern's poem Eggshell:
"The color of life is an almost pale white robin's green
that once was bluer when it was in the nest,
before the jay had arranged the straw and warm flesh
was in the shell."

-->Give students 4 minutes to answer the question "What is the color of your life?" and share. This would make an excellent icebreaker.

Here's mine:

Freckles and bronze skin on sand;

Crisp pizzelles, chocolate (milk and dark), espresso

Adorning oak, lace-covered tables;

Dirt from gardens, back yards, wooded paths.

Extension: Write about a color without ever naming the color.

The Essential Nature of Collaboration

Favorite quotation from VAST: "It's an illusion that we're ever working alone. We're always collaborating and the more aware of that we become, the better off we are."  -Landscape Sculptor and Artist, Winifred Lutz