Archive for the ‘The Writer’s Jungle’ Category

In Defense of the Writing Process

The Writer's Jungle

A Little Love for the Old Battle Axe

When I began Brave Writer (Jan 2000), I had one goal—help parents help their kids to write without fear. My initial scribbled outlines of possible directions for The Writer’s Jungle had notes about paragraphing, descriptive writing, narrative versus expository writing, and more.

One morning, I got up to read my notes and wilted. I knew that wasn’t what was needed and I certainly didn’t want to write it. Kids weren’t struggling with writing because parents had yet to read the definitive explanation of what constitutes a paragraph.

Parents weren’t frustrated by their children’s childish errors in spelling, punctuation, handwriting, and grammar because they didn’t know how to correct the mistakes.

Rather, parents were frustrated because all those explanations in the programs they already owned weren’t resulting in lively, enthusiastic writing from their kids, with visibly improving mechanics. Tears, anger, boredom—a lack of confidence about what the results meant (were their kids writing well enough?).

Meanwhile all the books I read about writing for my adult writing life had helped me become a much better writing coach to my own children.

I realized: The murky process of generating writing had not yet been adequately addressed for parents at home working with their own children.

The manuals I read showed “sample paragraphs” that weren’t even well written (organized, yes; but dull, lifeless). They taught methods like: “Here’s a sentence in three words. Now add an adjective to make it longer.” Some of them gave such a long script of instructions, any chance for the child’s natural voice to show in the writing was gone before the pen hit the page.

As I wrote more and more about writing and parenting, it struck me that this new writing resource ought to enhance the empathetic connection between parent and child (creating emotional safety for writing risks) while giving the parent-child team tools to help them excavate the inner life of the child and get that to paper.

The Writer’s Jungle is my earliest attempt to express all that information—those goals. I wrote it in my late 30s at a point in my writing career where I was working with non-writers every day—growing and expanding their writing for publication. I spent a lot of energy helping adults find their writing voices. I never once explained what constitutes a paragraph to them.

I didn’t envision The Writer’s Jungle being a “curriculum” in the traditional sense. I assumed parents had scads of writing prompts in their various homeschool curricula for English and history, or school assignments they needed to supervise and support at home.

These parents needed a set of tools (like a corkscrew or can opener) to access the language living inside their kids, without prompting tears, resistance, and pain. I imagined a parent reading The Writer’s Jungle a chapter at a time, even moving around it like a reference book, if they wanted to, using it to help them help their kids write their assignments!

  • This piece needs revision; I’ll flip open the chapter on revision and work through the suggestions with Charley.
  • Mary’s vocabulary seems to be evaporating when she goes to writing. Maybe the chapter on word games will help us free some words for writing.
  • I know the revolutionary war period is too big for writing. We can use the Topic Funnel to scale it down.

It never occurred to me that anyone would find it a challenge to use The Writer’s Jungle!

It was designed so simply!

  • Read, do; read, do.
  • No required time frame.
  • No expected pace.
  • Processes to be used again and again, morphing and changing to support any kind of writing you might explore with your kids, or that might be assigned to them!
  • Chapters that could be used in a variety of sequences.
  • Injunctions to grow as a homeschooling parent by reading for pleasure, too, so that everyone in the family became more and more aware of quality prose and language use.
  • A detailed guide to the developmental stages of growth in writing instead of scope and sequence.
  • Sample schedules of writing projects for 10 months a year, all ages and stages.

When anyone suggests that the “program” is not “organized,” it startles me a bit.

Teaching writing is not a program.

It doesn’t follow a specific set of steps. Programmatic writing instruction is the reason so many kids don’t like writing, and so many adults still lack confidence as writers!

Imagine teaching kids to speak via “program” or “schedule.” Imagine helping a child learn to walk with a curriculum, or learn to sew by tackling a pattern and working through each skill without having ever used a sewing machine!

Writing grows organically first, as would-be writers are introduced to processes that help them learn to express themselves.

Play with the processes; grow as a writer.

Once a writer is freely self-expressing, applying those skills to writing projects is as natural as giving an oral report once a child is a fluent speaker.

It’s been 20 years since I wrote the first draft of The Writer’s Jungle. It deserves a revision (fingers crossed: within the next couple of years) if only to add all the amazing writing and experiences our families have shared with us!

Ultimately Brave Writer has widened and deepened over the years—our offerings are vast and there is so much good free information on the website and blog (check the sidebar!), you can get really far with us without spending a penny!

I felt a need to write a little apologetic for our old battle axe: The Writer’s Jungle. Even though there are passages in it that I’d rewrite in a hot minute (clunkers and overstatements, humor that was funnier in 2000 than now), my message hasn’t changed.

Writing is not a linear process of step-by-step instructions.

Writing is first and foremost an interior look—pairing language with thought. Writing is about becoming able and facile in this process—with greater and greater linguistic dexterity. It’s exploring the murky, non-linear process of committing ideas to language and language to paper.

Writing benefits from partnerships—with parents or teachers or friends or editors who give content-centered feedback with the heart and goal of enhancing, enriching, and expanding what is there.

There are pain-free processes that support that partnership. These are in The Writer’s Jungle, all of our products and classes, and 100 other writing books written by other writers, not specifically written for homeschoolers.

It’s my hope that you will spend your money and time wisely—taking advantage of all we offer through Brave Writer for free—purchasing what helps you feel brave and competent to facilitate this non-linear process with your kids.

I still love the heart, message, and methods of The Writer’s Jungle. I stand by them.

To all of you who advocate for Brave Writer out there in homeschool discussion board land, thanks for helping to get the real message out. You humble me and move me with your stories.

To sum up—The Writer’s Jungle is a compendium of processes and wisdom to help parents partner with kids and to help kids find their writing voices. That’s it!

I appreciate you. Happy planning! Happy writing!

The Writer's Jungle

Posted in The Writer's Jungle, Writing about Writing, Young Writers | Comments Off on In Defense of the Writing Process

Why The Writer’s Jungle “costs so much.”

How much is the writer's jungle really worth

Brave Writer started with the idea that a family could grow in writing if the mother felt equipped to coach her children in the writing process without damaging their relationship.

I wrote The Writer’s Jungle to fill that gap—to be the one curricula that focused on the process (both of writing and parent-child relating while writing).

The Writer’s Jungle continues to be the key resource that moves parents from:

  • frustration,
  • apprehension,
  • angst,
  • and insecurity

to:

  • confidence,
  • competence,
  • and compassion for their kids.

Without the shift that The Writer’s Jungle offers (both in how to see writing and how to understand your role in that journey), other tools for writing will continue to lead you down the same paths—writer’s block, messy mechanics, stilted writing products, insufficient development in the writing piece itself, resistance, boredom, and the endless quest to know if you’re doing enough or too much or if your child is “on grade level.”

Not only that, other writing curricula give you a false sense of “writing competence.” Kids may churn out answers to prompts, they may follow the guidelines suggested yet never actually feel proud of what they write (excited by it, invested in it).

Just because a child has written 20 writing products in a year
doesn’t mean that any of them are interesting to read.

Somehow the goal of being an original writer with interesting things to say, written with power and panache, has been edited out of many programs on the market today.

I’ve been asked many many times why The Writer’s Jungle (let’s face it—a three-ring binder with 246 pages and tab dividers) costs so much ($97.00 for the binder edition, $79.00 for the digital version). Why charge so much for this information?

One of the key differences between Brave Writer and any other program I know about in homeschooling is that The Writer’s Jungle spans the lifetime of your homeschool. We don’t offer “The Writer’s Jungle: Grade 1” and “The Writer’s Jungle: Volume 7.” The tools and concepts in it are meant to last you for all your kids, for as long as they are at home with you. I hoped (12 years ago when I wrote the manual) that you would make this one purchase and not have to make any others.

While Brave Writer offers other products too (because so many of our fans have asked for them and appreciate how we teach, and want to marinate in our philosophy and practice), it is possible to simply own The Writer’s Jungle and teach your own kids for the rest of their lives using that one resource.

I did. I used the methods I share with you and never bought a single stitch of writing curriculum. I created my own writing assignments for my kids based on what they were studying and where they showed curiosity. I didn’t buy into the schoolish notion that kids were supposed to produce a “set” of writing assignments at each grade level. I focused instead on the liveliness of their communication, capitalizing on their interests, helping them to express those insights in writing.

We fit the form to the content,
not the other way around.

Over time, they emerged as wonderful writers (all of them, even the resistant ones).

I realize now that not everyone will feel this level of confidence in coaching writing. I also know that what I do naturally doesn’t come naturally to others (you’ve all told me that!)—hence, our 100s of products 12 years later.

But the original thought was that you could use The Writer’s Jungle and be done with this endless quest for “the perfect writing curriculum.”

I still feel that way.

I remember overhearing two moms recently say that The Arrow, for instance, seemed unnecessary because anyone can pick passages for dictation—Why should Julie Bogart do that for us? I laughed. I agree! I say so in Chapter 1. If you open any novel you own, you can use any passage your finger finds, to good effect. They all work. Just do it. Be consistent. Get it done.

The Arrow and The Boomerang grew out of a cry from our customers—they wanted someone (me) to pick the passages and help them know what to say about the literature that would make copying the passage a rich experience in language arts. They wanted an “open-and-go” program. These are busy moms with lots of kids. I understood!

So in 2002, I started creating monthly products with the goal of keeping the instruction simple and easy to use (less is more). Clearly this approach (one small piece of curriculum per month, not overwhelming, not overly demanding) fit that bill beautifully because we’ve had nothing but success with those products.

Likewise, our new line of writing program products attempts to meet the other need—writing projects based on the developmental stages of growth in Chapter 14 of The Writer’s Jungle. You don’t HAVE to use these. But sometimes it’s nice to let someone else do the thinking. My goal is to provide HELP—not to replace you and your creativity, your intimate knowledge of your kids, or to hijack your family’s style of education.

When I wrote The Writer’s Jungle, I committed myself to helping families when they get stuck. That’s part of the price—my tangible help.

We have a website with hundreds of pages of free, useful material on it. I answer email, chat messages, and phone calls all day every day giving detailed, personal help to any customer who asks for it. Sometimes I’ve been on the phone with Australia at 3:00 a.m. on a Sunday night! (Time zone calculations are tough!)

My point is this: Brave Writer isn’t like other companies. We’ve relied on word of mouth and the laws of attraction, not promotion. I want to grow at a pace that can provide the support families require to be successful home educators. We are smaller than you might think. And to me, that’s a good thing. I love the way we’ve grown and I love our customers. And we’ve grown—tremendously—without sacrificing our commitment to you.

Many of us happily spend $97.00 on:

  • 2 video games,
  • 1 dinner out as a family of six,
  • 3 piano lessons,
  • a helmet for lacrosse,
  • 2 hours of tutoring,
  • 1 boxed curriculum for one single grade level,
  • 24 cups of Starbucks!

What price would you put on transforming how you understand writing and teaching it? What if you could re-route the trajectory of your homeschool’s future? This is what Brave Writer families tell me—that writing changed for good, once they waded into our waters.

Brave Writer doesn’t sell curriculum. It sells transformation—the essential skills and ideas you need to become the effective writing coach and ally to your kids that you want to be. Not everyone needs what we offer. Some moms are already there, naturally. But for those who do need what we have, The Writer’s Jungle is the place to start and may even be, the end of your search.

My goal is for your family to be set on a new,
freeing, transforming path,
one that takes you all the way to college with your kids.

We aim to help you get there through timely, generous support, and to keep you writing, however we can.

Brave Writer intends to meet the needs of families who want to create lively, powerful, competent writers while fostering a nurturing home environment.

Peace and progress, in the writing process.

That’s what Brave Writer is all about.

Learn more about Brave Writer products

Posted in Arrow, Brave Writer Philosophy, The Writer's Jungle | 2 Comments »

Follow up to yesterday’s post

Hi everyone.

I heard from two of our instructors yesterday with excellent feedback related to our post and discussion about writing between parents and children. Here’s what Rita has to say:

Julie,

I think one reason parents freak about spelling is they don’t follow the entire Writer’s Jungle process. They never take a child-selected writing piece once a month and work through the editing process you outline. That is where kids learn about all the picky stuff and they see that they can have a finished piece that people look at and praise.

Without the whole process over the course of months, parents give up on trusting the freewrite and kids don’t understand that a freewrite is about getting ideas on paper for a selected “big finish.” That big finish is where it all comes together and kids have an opportunity to care about how it looks or how it’s spelled–and to show it to someone with pride! The whole process encourages everyone to embrace and trust the freewrite. Parents whose kids are afraid to write are more afraid of that once a month editing process. Then everyone spirals downward again when the freewrite loses its steam. I hear this over and over again in Dynamic Revision (one of Rita’s classes that she teaches for Brave Writer).

Also, introducing kids to electronic dictionaries–now on phones and easier than ever with Siri–can really help the kid who is picky about spelling. They are more willing to just underline words that they don’t know how to spell, while they freewrite, once they can see how easy it is to go back after and electronically “fix” their perceived errors–before anyone else sees it! Their need to be perfect is easily met, so they are able to trust waiting.

Lastly, be aware of this: kids who can’t deal with the misspelled word may have no strategies for spelling. Kids who rely on how words look and don’t attend to phonemes and the default graphemes have no clue how to “just write how you think it’s spelled.” They may have to be taught how to write what they hear. Again, the electronic/on-line dictionaries help here: write what you hear, then check it by inputting those letter choices into the search. Spell-checkers reward those efforts in a way the old tomes never could.

Just some thoughts.

I would add: The Wand (created by Rita) gives parents the tools to teach spelling strategies to your kids. For older kids, The Arrow and The Boomerang give your kids practice with spelling through copywork and dictation. Use someone else’s writing to work on mechanics.

For kids struggling with handwriting, one of our instructors, Susanne Barrett, recommends Dragon Speech-to-Text Software:

Hi Julie,

Keith bought me the Dragon speech-to-text software; he found it at Costco for half price ($40). It’s wonderful; I can speak into the headset, and my words magically appear on the screen; I can even punctuate, capitalize, italicize or bold, even open files all by voice commands. The advantage for me is that it saves my swollen hands from painful typing.

However, I was thinking that because it’s dictation-based, it might be an option to mention for some of our families, either with kids in the partnership stage of writing or for students with dysgraphia or dyslexia.

It took about half an hour to set it up and train it to my voice. And we’re off and running! I’ve had problems with dictating in e-mails (I’m typing this), but I wrote half my new fan fiction chapter in Word with it Saturday within an hour of opening the box, and I can dictate responses to students within Brave Writer after setting the cursor at the right place. Yay!! My hands have really been bothering me lately, so this software is helping immensely.

Just wanted to let you know….

And there you have it! Our instructors have great ideas to keep you and your families writing. You may want to sign up for a class this spring. Just sayin’! 🙂

 

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Dictation and copywork, Homeschool Advice, Language Arts, Learning Disabilities, The Writer's Jungle, Young Writers | Comments Off on Follow up to yesterday’s post

Email: Beginning Writing Advice

Skip to Second Half of the Story if you’ve landed here from the Brave Writer ZipLine e-letter.

The following is a wonderful email exchange between one of our Brave Writer moms and me. I share it with you because these questions, so beautifully and honestly articulated by Sharon, are common to many home educators. Brave Writer is not like other writing “programs” because it focuses more on the writer, than writing. We are Brave Writer not Brave Writing for that reason.

The paradigm shift occurs when you become more aware of your child and your child’s vocabulary, insights, and stories than rules and formats for writing/narrating. You must start there, or you’ll create a blocked, reluctant, or pedantic writer. If you want to see life and power in the writing, you need to value and activate the original writing voice of your child… today, and every day. Keep reading. Like all paradigm shifts, it will feel unnatural and “wrong” at first. But over time, you’ll realize this is how you always wanted to teach writing.

I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have in the comments below.

—

Hi Sharon.

How great to hear from you! I love feedback and you certainly gave me a lot. Thank you. I have commented throughout your original below.

On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 10:00 AM, Sharon Jones (MD) wrote:

Julie or bravewriter staff

Want to first say a big thank you – I got the Writer’s Jungle two weeks ago and it is already making a huge difference in our homeschooling.

Music to my ears. Glad to hear it.

My ds is 9 years old and I was beginning to fret about his lack of writing skill – and we have been doing [another writing program] but I was finding the narrations in there were killing both his and my 1st grader’s desire to narrate anything.  I wasn’t listening to their play just worried that they were not with joy telling me a good summary of the short story in the curriculum.

It’s subtle, isn’t it? You think you are “doing something” that is “important,” and then miss enjoying your kids which is THE most important part of narration. Narration (as a word) is such bugger anyway. It feels like it’s from another century (and is). We’re really just talking about, well, talking—what I call “Big Juicy Conversations.”

While my son is able to dictate very well as long as I am there to feed him how to spell the words – he would know what word came next but not how to spell it. [This other program] does say to just spell the word for them.

But even more, he needs to discover that it’s okay for him to misspell the word. Here’s the flip—the change you want him to make in his own thinking. He gets to take writing risks. Just like he took “talking risks” to learn how to speak. Can you remember a funny word he used to use to convey something? For instance, my daughter called our bedroom, the “dreadroom.” She called “magazines,” “mazazines.” One of my kids routinely said, “waterlemon” and “magah” instead of “watermelon” and “Gramma.” We understood them. We even used their funny words as adults because they were “adorable.”

Eventually, over time, our kids self-corrected with exposure to the “conventional” ways of saying these words. Likewise, your son will grow as a speller if he feels free to get his thoughts into writing in any form and continues to read, do copywork, and slowly discovers how to edit his original writing by looking for his own spelling errors. But that comes later. Right now, the original writing impulse is far more important than his proper spelling. You need to let him know that no one ever complimented an author on her “fabulous use of commas” or “perfect spelling.” Editors can supply those. What we are looking for is his fabulous vocabulary, insight, and experience shared in his most natural voice, even if he doesn’t yet quite know how to spell everything.

Have this conversation with him (he’s old enough and smart enough to get it). If he is utterly flummoxed (can’t even find a way to get a word down incorrectly without paralysis), he can then ask you to spell it. But what you want is an uninterrupted flow of ideas to come from him. For a little while, you may need him to dictate to you while you transcribe his original thoughts so he can get back in touch with having them without the frustration of handwriting and spelling getting in the way.

My ds is hitting a wall – where he refuses to study spelling words, and yet wants to spell perfectly to the point where he won’t write anything because he is afraid he will spell wrong.  I am not sure how to address this issue except that through reading the WJ, I realized that we really had not been talking.  We, I should say I, was just saying okay do this, now do this, okay time for this, your (sic) not done with that yet?  Now do this, okay now your (sic) done as soon as you get that done.  Yeah, not much fun!

Look at how much you are already changing your thinking. He hates writing because he can’t spell. But you have been requiring him to write without support and you have him focused on spelling programs as though those will cure his paralysis. It’s the other way around. Drop the programs, focus on talking, jot some of his ideas and thoughts and words onto the page for him, share those with his dad at the dinner table, laugh about his funny jokes, admire his thoughtful ideas, probe his facts, and then do it all again.

Do this for awhile.

Then when you introduce freewriting (a practice we teach in The Writer’s Jungle), make it VERY short and focus all his energy on never stopping the pencil—even if he just writes Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hellllllllppppppppp across the page for 3 minutes. He needs to breakthrough by letting himself defy the rules. Tell him: You get to be a rule breaker. Write whatever you want, in any way you want, but don’t stop that pencil. Ready set go! (And you freewrite too – at the same time, at the same table, with the same impatience and anxiety.) Stop what doesn’t work. Give permission to take risks. Enjoy whatever results you get (don’t scrutinize them – enjoy them).

More…

I figured I should go slow even though I was very excited and well my children are still very young.  I have a lot of time I realized – so I decided the first thing was to get out of the room that is our “school” room away from the table and the white board.  Oh we might go back there for some things but for now I wanted homeschool to be more about home and less about “school.”

Brava to you! Wonderful.

We have a blanket we lay on the carpet as the wrestling mat – the kids connect it with fun with Dad and time to WRESTLE so I brought it out and said in the day time it is the conversation mat.

You’re clearly a genius. 🙂 I love this in a hundred ways.

 We spent a week just talking.

I hope now you’ll spend a lifetime just talking. 🙂

 I found out a lot of really neat things about my kids.

Isn’t that incredible? Pause and really notice – you found out a lot of really neat things about your kids. That’s all you need to be a great writing coach and ally—you need to value THEM as they are.

 I also really started to listen to them when they are playing and it is pretty funny the amount of things from school that gets incorporated into their stories.

Because school isn’t separate from life. In fact, at home, it is life.

 After talking and sharing stories and letting my daughters put on a play with pet shops and stuff animals – not all in the same day mind you.  The craft products that were sitting unused suddenly were remembered and they are becoming very creative.

This week I put out a copywork table with books they can choose whatever they want to copy and there is no set amount after the first one.

Wonderful.

 My dd in 1st grade has decided to copy a book of poems, my ds 3rd grade is doing random things, my 4 year old is drawing photos which I then write whatever she asks under the photo – she is pretty proud of the books she is making.

Of course! Books, by her? Wow. Put those books in a little basket on the table and read them to her often. Read them to her dad. Have her dad read them back to her. Do this for all your kids. When they share something that you jot down for them, but it in a little book. Later, take that book back out and read it at story time, just like any other book. They will start to value their own writing.

Math is still getting done and Science and History.    I see my kids doing more school willingly then we were doing while I was pulling teeth to get it done.  Only know they seem to think that they are doing hardly any “school” at all.  Funny how that is.

Exactly – because it has to do with them now.

I realize now how much time I have.  One day I think we might take one of your on line classes.
My ideas for the rest of this year is to continue the talking and the copywork.  Adding in a jar of quotes to do at some point to change it up.  I also need advice for what to do with a child who is afraid to write anything least he should spell it wrong?

I think I addressed this above. But stop all the programs. No more. They aren’t working because they are enslaving you. I can hear it in your descriptions of trying to find the right one. The goal you have can’t be fixed with those programs.

His spelling isn’t bad if he tries.  We had been using [another program] – but the time comment for that was just getting too much with two children it takes at least 45 mins per child.  Lots of people are trying to convince me that AAS is the way to go.  (SWR-Spelling to Write and Read and All About Spelling).  I have Spelling Wisdom – I have thought about using that for the quote jar for copy work.  I also have Sequential Spelling – okay so maybe my problem is I want quick results. =)

I guess I am a little afraid to just use the copy work –  well this really teach him to spell.

Yes. Combined with reading, some dictation, and his own writing. But it takes ten (10) TEN years! 9 is so young. Of course he’s an awful speller. All 9 year olds are. Give him time.

 I think it will teach the first grader – she is reading on a 4th grade level if not higher and is my creative, language person – she was using full sentences at 18 months old.  But I am not sure about my ds who is reading a bit below grade level doing math at a higher level.  He is my history buff, loves science and anything factual.  He only got interested in reading through Magic Tree House books.  He is very particular – he likes to put his clothes on the same way each time to the point where it is almost not funny.

I am wondering about how to get someone like him to try to write.

Don’t “get him to write.” Catch him in the act of thinking. The next time he’s explaining something to you, jot it down. Grab any piece of paper handy (even the back of an envelope works) and start writing. THAT’s his writing. No more contrived methods. Capture the real words, real mind life of your child in writing.

Yes, it’s that easy. I mean it.

You can try freewriting once you are at the point where he is not pencil phobic and he really believes you that he can take writing risks. Until then, you transcribe his thoughts for him, you talk to him, you have poetry teatimeswith him, you read his thoughts aloud to his dad, you read aloud to him, he reads…. Get it?

 I was thinking of getting Story Starters and Rory cubes as a fun way to do some oral stories during the mat time.  Then getting something like rummy root cards to work on Latin roots in a fun way for language.  Maybe getting a game like cooking up sentences to help work on some of this fear of writing sentences.  Not that I can get those all at once but over time.  Then maybe by half way through 4th grade my son would be ready for me to start freewriting on Fridays.   I am trying to think outside the box and outside the workbook mode.

Don’t cook up sentences. Your kids are already fluent in the English language. They are amazing sentence generators. Don’t confuse them by making them think they don’t know how to write a sentence. They do. They’ve been saying sentences for YEARS. 🙂

Any advice or encouragement on this would be well taken. Thank you again the change in my school day has been 100% for the better!

I’m so glad. You are doing an awesome job of changing your paradigm. Keep it up!
Julie

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Email, General, Homeschool Advice, Poetry Teatime, Spelling, The Writer's Jungle, Young Writers | 1 Comment »

Collection of Happy Thoughts

I know, I know. Why has this blog been so dormant over the last year? Truth be told, in addition to some personal challenges, Brave Writer has been growing! My time and attention had to be turned to other pressing concerns, such as curriculum development (more on that soon, I promise!), website building, improving our online classroom, preparing for and traveling to three conventions in a month, speaking in various parts of the country for workshops, teaching classes myself and all the usual stuff that a kitchen-table-growing-like-gangbusters-into-a-grown-up-business experiences in year 11.

We are improving contact between you and me, and between you and, well, you, too! Here are a couple of ways we are making headway:

  • You can now chat with me via a live chat widget when you visit the website! This live chat function will be open when I’m online. I look fwd to being able to serve you all better, particularly our overseas customers who find the phone a difficult means of communication with me.
  • We are releasing a brand new discussion/message board for the Brave Writer community so that you have a place to talk about the Brave Writer Lifestyle. You can use it to get feedback from other moms and dads who are in the trenches helping their kids, just like you! I’ll pop in to answer questions as well.
  • We’ve just created a twitter identity as well as a facebook page to make it easier for me to send out short snippets of insight and writing support, rather than having to commit to an entire blog post every day. My hope is to update the blog once per week while using the other tools for daily support.
  • We’ve enabled podcasting for Brave Writer as well. Look for my convention workshops to be posted some time next week.

These are all ways I hope to enrich your experience of Brave Writer over the coming months.

In the meantime, listen to these happy thoughts shared by our fabulous families!

Just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your seminars. I’ve been homeschooling 22 years, and writing has been one of those things I’ve felt like I never did a good job teaching, because we never seemed to get around to doing any of the “curriculums” I purchased. The kids did write–they wrote what they wanted to write, or type, when they wanted to, so I knew they could write, sort of, but I always felt like I should be doing more. Your seminars reminded me that writing can be just as relaxed and part of our real lives as reading good books. Your ideas about the way to help children write are so much more in line w/ my way of homeschooling, than any of the canned programs I have, that I just felt a giant sigh of relief while listening to you. Thank-you. I feel like your seminars were worth the cost of the conference all by themselves. I purchased the Writing Jungle and read the first chapter that evening in my motel room and enjoyed it so much. I’m looking forward to making writing a part of our lives in a more relaxed and natural way.

Dawn

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Hi Julie!
I met you yesterday at your booth. My son, Luke, is currently in Jean Hall’s expository essay class and enjoying it immensely.

Here’s a little background about Luke (14) and my daughter, Kallan (12). We have been using another program for several years . We struggled quite a bit to get writing done. OK, we struggled a LOT. I believe the things the kids learned do a good job of helping them when they are editing, but the actual act of putting the pencil on the paper and writing something wasn’t happening. I was becoming very worried that my 8th grade son was not going to be ready for high school writing. I was also worried about my 12 year old dyslexic daughter who would not write, because she is self-conscious about her spelling.

I finally bought “The Writer’s Jungle” and proceeded to carry it and a highlighter around for several months. At the beginning of February, we curled up in front of our wood stove in Colorado and I read several of your descriptions of other attempts at freewriting. We discussed how it felt when we sat in front of a piece of paper. It was almost as if a wall would appear and absolutely no words would appear. Even I would have a problem and I love to write. After several years of the other program, I would even freeze. I set the timer for ten minutes and my daughter decided she would write about her new (and first) American Doll, I decided to write about airports (love them) and my son said he would just “write what comes into his head”.

Here is what came out of my gangly 6’1”, 14 year old who is constantly walking around with his nose in a book. I no longer worry about his creativity.

THE BLANK PAGE SYNDROME (Luke Brumfield)
The page is as white as a dove, the plumage snowy white, the subtle wind currents lifting it above the clouds. Perhaps, it is like snow, the glistening water dripping like a faucet, or perhaps like a cloud floating below the stars. The incandescent stars and fluffy clouds matching together in a dance eons old. This is how I think of Blank Page Syndrome. The white abyss of a writer’s block, the paralyzing fear buffeting his brain. The fear of failing making him cry out in frustration. Needless to say, right now this writer has no qualms about such matters for his pencil is light, his mind active, his resolve solid. Blank Page Syndrome is like the Niagara Falls icing over. It’s luster gone, replaced with a blank wall of impenetrable ice. The reader may or may not have experienced this syndrome, but the writer has. This essay has been written in ten minutes and the writer is done. Now there is no more blank page.

This has not been revised other than a couple of periods, one misspelled word, and some capitalization. THANK YOU! They both see for the first time that writing can be fun!

Leslie

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Hey Julie,
I wanted to share something with you. My daughter and I attended the Cincy. convention this past weekend. We were coming from north of Dayton on Friday morning and were planning to attend two separate workshops at 10:30 – I thought! The workshops actually started at 10:00, not 10:30 and we encountered Cincinnati, morning traffic (we’re not used to that out in our boondocks area). So we arrived late. Once inside the convention center we sat down and tried to figure out our plan B for the day. I was planning on coming to your booth at some point. We’ve been using “Brave Writer Jungle” for about a year and a half, but I was feeling a lack of confidence in my ability to go forward.

Well, anyway, we both ended up coming to your workshop – and all I can say is “God was takin care of me that day!” You said exactly what we needed to hear – thank-you for being you. We came to your booth and one of the gals spent quite some time with me. We’re going to start using the Boomerang next year, but have already started to use some of the concepts in our school stuff this week.

I went back and read a blog that you had posted last year in January – I kept it in my emails because, again, it was what I needed to hear, and obviously what I needed to reread now. It was about homeschooling through grief. The last 5 years have been hard years for me – a lot of really sad stuff and some really great life moments. We’ve done: illness, graduation, college, death, marriage, a lot of change and a lot of emotion. Your blog helped me to realize that our family is still trying to get our gears re-machined, and forcing the issue can sometimes end up with a lot of overheating and smoke.

I just wanted to thank-you for doing what you do, to thank the people that help you do what you do, and to encourage you – you do make a difference.

Have a grand spring day!
Warmly,
Robin

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These last two years have been intense ones for me personally and in the business. I’m grateful whenever I hear from you—sharing how your families are learning to write and love each other every day. Makes all of it worthwhile. You’re all doing brave, meaningful work. Brava to you and your dear families!

Julie

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Contacting Me, Homeschool Advice, The Writer's Jungle | 5 Comments »