A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

There are tips, practices, tools, and helps that make writing easier. Don’t believe for a minute that your kids are lazy!

Ten ways to encourage writing today:

1. Put out gel pens and black paper
2. Instant Message or text with your child
3. Light candles and listen to music while writing
4. Write a sentence on a white board that is provocative yet unfinished, like: “If I could do whatever I wanted today, I would….”
5. Write together (at the table, everyone at the same time)
6. Write at the mall, jotting down fashion observations
7. Give a shoulder massage before writing
8. Comment on 3 status updates on social media
9. Rewrite the ending to a favorite movie or book (make it melodramatic, sad, angry, happy, or include aliens!)
10. Write on a clipboard, under a table, lying on a trampoline, up in a tree, with sidewalk chalk on the driveway

Writing is about freedom to express without the pressure that comes from straight jacket formats. Formats are only helpful once kids feel FREE to write.

Let me say it again: You can’t produce good writing that fits a format until you’ve spent hundreds of hours writing without caring one whit about format. Once you feel as easy writing as you do talking, formats are a snap of the fingers to teach and follow.

So play with words today.

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