Flat Kira-Day 2: middle school immersion . . .

Dear Kira,

     You forgot to mention that your grandmommy would make me go to school during my stay at her house!  Not even elementary school, like good old McKee (miss you guys already!). Middle school!

     Her students are BIG . . . and a little crazy too this week before Christmas break.  A couple of them are hoping I'll be able to help them take her language arts exam tomorrow . . . as if I understand all that stuff about "extended metaphors" and "annotated bibliographies", whatever they are!

     It was pretty fun getting to explore her classroom though.  As you can see, I found



another tree to climb

 


and many, many more books (not many with pictures) to read.

 

    I spent most of my day safely perched beside this bird (she said it was an origami crane and to ask your mom why I make so many of these) on top of her SMARTboard.  Not so sure about SMART.  That board didn't have a thing to say to me all day, and your grandmommy and her students spent most of the day answering all its questions . . .

     She FORGOT to take me to lunch with her!  I understand I missed some awesome meatballs in the teacher's lounge, but the chocolate chip cookies she brought back were pretty good (and you know how I love chocolate chip cookies). 



      After school she did take me to a meeting where I got to sit with a couple of her friends.  They had never heard of Flat Stanley and his travels until I filled them in on his story and why I was in town for a couple of weeks.

     Hope you guys aren't having too much fun without me!

                                                           

                                                            Love you bunches,

                                                            Flat Kira

P. S. Please send me some warmer clothes.  It's brrr cold here!

little star . . .

twinkle

twinkle

full circle

I've come full circle, in the last few weeks--immersing myself once again in my post-graduate quest for understanding all things technology (technology and literacy, that is) and in my undergraduate thirst for knowing all there was to know about the story of our world (and, more specifically, about the European history that is my heritage).

The technology stories I'll tell, all this next year, on (one of) my other blogs, thevirtualsandbox. But the world history stories will make their home here, I think.

I spent much of last weekend reading the first half of Volume 3 of Susan Wise Bauer's The Story of the World--fodder for fashioning texts sets to support the humanities curriculum writing going on at my school. It was fascinating reading--stories new and stories I'd once known, but long ago forgotten.

Coming full circle . . .

One story I did not know. All my life I've heard the phrase "Black Hole of Calcutta." I had no idea what it meant, or even that it meant anything worth knowing. A seed of a story in Bauer's book led me to an out-of-print reprint--Noel Barber's The Black Hole of Calcutta: A Reconstruction--a book newly published at about the time I should have read it first, but am sure I didn't. I made the time for that reading this weekend . . . oddly enough on the anniversary dates of that world-changing event, June 20-21, 1756.

I've gleaned two important truths from the story of the Black Hole of Calcutta. I now understand how and why the British came to rule India. Retribution. The second truth validates my valuing of life's simple pleasures. The author concludes his account with this observation: nature has a habit of outlasting history.

Coming full circle . . .

2 years later . . .

It all started so simply--a place where I could post our family photos, my son explained. Blogging was uncharted waters for me. I'd created an award-winning webpage for work several years earlier, using Netscape Composer, but this seemed, somehow, the greater challenge. Those first pictures of Michael were the only trace of this venture/adventure for months . . . until, tasked with creating a multigenre piece of writing around a theme of my choosing, the concept of capturing, of celebrating life's simple pleasures in a virtual writer's notebook took shape.

I have a new writing assignment this summer--a cultural autobiography. Not sure which virtual scrapbook I'll use for that--only that it will be more . . . private perhaps?

I've webpaged (two new sites at work this year), wikied (I'm a rank beginner but learning), Photostoried, and begun moving on to Smart notebooks and Movie makers . . .

In the fall, I'll coteach, for the first time in a long while, a technology course . . .

But writing for this blog has been, is, and will continue to be . . . a simple pleasure.

this should be on my other blog. . .

. . . where I have nothing posted! I did have a letter there--draft mode only. A response to a long-ago episode (being rejected for a freshman creative writing class with a famous author) that deflated my aspirations of becoming a famous author in my own right. . . I did share that experience with colleagues, and the author, last fall.

Enough said on that account!

Writing that letter last June was catharsis. I understand now that the decision not to write was and is mine. Which may be why, the last morning of this week's state conference, I sat among writers and wanna-be-writers to soak in the wisdom and experiences and advice of yet another published author, author of adult novels such as those I aspired so long ago to write.

It's no longer so much about being a published writer as it is about understanding how one gets there--the process. And about figuring out where, at seventeen, I went wrong.

This is some of what I learned.

• Don't base a novel on personal experiences. Who would care except me, anyway? And the danger is that, like in most of my writing, I'd be writing just for that audience of one: me. That's OK in a blog or writer's notebook but would be a profound waste of time over 10 drafts of a 300-page novel, don't you think? I do. . .
• Capitalize on my strengths as a researcher: that was sooooooooooooo validated yesterday :-)
• Make the audience (and, first of all, myself) really care about my characters. That matters more than anything.
• Let the setting lead (a place to use some of that research) and the characters react to it.
• Keep chapters short, even in a long book, and avoid long stretches of description or dialogue.
• Use simile to show the native intelligence and wit of characters whose spoken language is not SAE. Use dialect sparingly, if at all.
• When you don't know what to write next, write about the weather. . .
• When you don't know what to write next, read.
• READ NOVELS WRITTEN FOR ADULTS BY AUTHORS WHOSE CRAFT IS WORTH STUDYING (which means varying my too-longstanding diet of YA novels and professional texts).
• Read a lot of poetry.

I'm sure there's more in my notes, but this is what I still remember, one day and one cover-to-cover professional book later.

Will I ever publish that best-selling adult novel?

Probably not. . .

Do I feel more validated, more empowered, understanding what the process of getting there would (or would have) required?

Yes!