How one family did it
I promised to share some of the processes our brave writing families went through to produce their lovely collages.
Isabella (9) and I really enjoyed this writing project! We got started when you first put it up, so we had lots of free writing, simmering, writing, simmering, writing time. Sometimes we worked on it when we were at home listening to Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” – very cliché, I know, but we both love it.
Sometimes we worked while eating pumpkin loaf (Isabella) and drinking hot tea (me) at Starbucks. We wrote side by side, individually, but then shared what we had done. So then, our next round involved taking off on something the other one had done. At one point, Isabella got out the rhyming dictionary to find some rhymes for fall and decided she wanted to do a whole piece that was just a bunch of words that rhyme with fall.
Once we had written a lot, we did some selecting, and I did a lot of revising and editing of mine. Isabella did some revising and editing of hers. We spent a long time talking about and playing around with how we would present our collage. Isabella loves collecting things on walks and she loves drawing, so we decided to intermingle our poems with both drawings and collected things.
Also, Isabella is the one who decided to change the font colors on some of her poems and meticulously decided which colors were appropriate for each thing. Then I was obliged to do the same with my poems from that group. Though Isabella handled the font color detail, I handled all the photographing and fiddling with the technical details of getting photos and drawings on the computer.
A few things I want to point out. Notice how long the process took. When you work on writing, it is a process that occurs over unhurried time. The best work is the result of simmering, talking, simmering, writing, simmering and gathering of more ideas, words and experiences. Writing will the flow out of that immersion in the material and language.
I also enjoyed hearing that the writing happened at home, at Starbucks, over hot drinks and pumpkin bread. Why not? Who wouldn’t enjoy writing more is treats were involved?
Thanks Isabella and Susie.
