Archive for the ‘Writing about Writing’ Category

That Absurd Little Bird: The Topic Sentence

The Topic Sentence

If you want to see my dyed gray hair stand on end, talk to me about the importance of the initial topic sentence.

“My left earlobe is very attractive for three reasons.”

“I like anchovy ice cream more than pizza.”

“Captain Diaperpants is an entertaining book and I highly recommend it.”

Need I go on? ::yawn::

Truth is: The topic sentence is to the paragraph what support hose are to varicose veins. We don’t really want to be aware of the work they’re doing. They offer support, yes, but why announce that fact to the world? The best ones are hidden in the compelling-to-read prose.

I was lurking on the Internet and read a whole bunch of sample paragraphs on a writing site for homeschooled students. The curriculum writer stressed the importance of both the topic sentence and structured, orderly writing as hallmarks of correct writing. She then conceded that this kind of writing would be “stiff and stilted and even boring in most cases,” but it didn’t matter. Didn’t matter? In what universe? The point was to learn to write these orderly, cardboard, stiff, spiritless, uninspired, i-n-s-i-p-i-d paragraphs (::grinding teeth::) with duty and diligence no matter how painful to the reader.

Oh break my writerly heart!

Reverse the curse of the initial topic sentence.

Here’s how:

  • Start in the middle.
    Don’t tell me all I need to know in the first sentence. Once I find out that you are a black belt in karate, what interest do I have in reading how you earned the belt? Start with the struggle, facing the board as you prepare to sever it in half as with a cleaver. Leave me hanging out there, flapping in the breeze, worried and curious.
  • Get me involved.
    Use sensory detail to suck me into the scene without revealing your point until I’m hooked: “I sneezed when I leaned over the basket of cumin to examine it for bugs. The spicy fragrance reminded me of kasbahs and Moroccan stews. Unfortunately, I found myself in a modern Farmer’s Market in downtown Cincinnati instead. I miss North Africa.”
  • Put the main idea at the end of the paragraph.
    Most freewriting will start with a typical topic sentence that generalizes about the subject for writing. That’s fine when getting your thoughts together. To help hide the know-it-all sentence when you revise, move it to the end and see what happens. Like in the sample above—the topic sentence is last to appear. It’s so much happier modestly revealing itself at the end.

I know, I know. I didn’t even talk about the all important topic sentence in academic writing or in subsequent paragraphs. We’ll get to that another day.

For now, hook me, seduce me, scare me, move me, grab me by the collar, and don’t let me go. Lure me into your writing by concealing the point. That’s the point! (And that second-to-last sentence you just read, the one pretending not to be a topic sentence, is the topic sentence for this piece, artfully concealed until the end, incidentally…)

Groovy Grammar Workshop

Posted in Language Arts, Writing about Writing, Young Writers | 6 Comments »

Copywork and Dictation: How Often? (Revisited)

Homework

Julie,

Could you briefly share with us how copywork and dictation look in your home and include the highest grade you’ve had at home? I’ve shared your arrow and boomerang (the concept) with several friends and the common concern is that it doesn’t appear to be enough. Many believe that copywork and dictation should be daily not weekly. I would love your insight on this matter!

Lisa

—

Hi Lisa.

Sure, I can share.

My oldest kids are in college (the oldest two are 21 and 18). I homeschooled both of them through high school, though the second one went part time to our local high school as well. Our third child is a junior in high school and goes full time. He was homeschooled through 9th grade. We have two more kids: 8th and 7th grades – all homeschooled.

Copywork and dictation can be done more frequently than weekly. The Arrow/Boomerang are designed to support the homeschooling parent, not to replace her own good judgment and her skills as a home educator. In fact, when I first designed the Arrow (which came first), I used to always say that the goal was to model how copywork and dictation can be done (how to select passages, how to teach them, how to make them more meaningful). Mothers can learn to do it themselves, if they like.

I included only one passage per week for several reasons:

1) Discouragement: Many mothers set out to do copywork/dictation more than a couple times per week and then when they fail to hit their target, they give up and stop doing it all together. I’ve found that copywork/dictation once per week is way better than not doing it at all while holding the ideal of doing it twice or three times or every day of the week. In fact, I’ve found that once a week adds up to a lot of copywork/dictation if done all year.

2) Length of passage: Some of the passages in the Arrow and particularly the Boomerang are long. They benefit from being broken up into multiple days of work.

3) Personal preference: Kids like to pick their own copywork. Not all copywork has to be selected for them. By offering only one passage per week, your have the freedom of selecting other passages to copy (song lyrics, poetry, passages from a beloved book, refrigerator magnets, a religious text). If I give you more than one per week, you will feel you must impose those passages on your kids to get your money’s worth. But this way, you focus on one passage, really teach it, and then can allow your kids to select the ones that they want.

4) Stress: For reluctant writers, it is a lot to ask them to do handwriting work (in a book, for instance), copywork, dictation, freewriting, and any writing project all in a week. The Arrow and Boomerang allow you to feel that you are covering the material necessary to a good language arts program without putting your child through too much pencil trauma.

Brave Writer is different than other programs. I believe firmly in a parent’s role in the homeschool. We are supports to what you do. We offer products that teach you how to teach. Of course you can do more copywork and dictation if you like. I have a son (14) who copied things every day and did special handwriting therapies for his dysgraphia. Yet two years ago, he could hardly write even one passage a week. I have an 11 year old daughter who doesn’t like the passages I pick who writes in her journal and her Greek notebook every day, even in summer. We talk about grammar over lunch or in the car. She is learning spelling through Facebook status updates!

My older kids credit their years of dictation with their punctuation skills (the ones in college). They feel like they learned mechanics painlessly. My junior in high school has successfully gone straight into Honor’s English without having ever done a formal grammar or spelling program. He’s learned it all through less than once per week dictation over his lifetime.

Pay attention to your kids. Do what you believe nourishes them. Let them tell you what is working and what is not. Kids don’t learn as well when they are numb to the subject matter, when they feel obliged to fulfill your expectations without their buy-in. If once a week copywork/dictation is tolerable (even enjoyable) for you kids, they will learn a lot! There’s no reason to think that more is necessarily better.

Image by Alastair Vance

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Copywork Quotations, Email, Writing about Writing | 3 Comments »

Moms Who Write

Q & A for Moms Who Write

Do you offer writing classes for moms?

We have. We’ve done them every couple of years in the summer. But it’s possible to work on your writing on your own. One great opportunity is in November: NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). If you’ve got that romance novel burning in your imagination, or you have the tale of a suspicious murder to unfold, November could be your month to finally tackle it, without intimidation and with the support of a nationwide network. Check it out.

What can you suggest for moms who want to grow as writers?

Write. It seems so redundant to say it, but believe it or not, I need to hear it every day myself. In fact, one of the disadvantages of running a writing business is that I spend more time writing about writing than actually doing it for the sheer joy, satisfaction and creativity of the thing!

  • Step One:
    Make time to write. Read about writing, read good writing, and then go write.
  • Step Two:
    The second step is more difficult. You must find an audience for your writing and you must risk doing it pretty early in your writing development. Why? Because you’ve got to develop this thick, scaly skin that masterfully deflects the darts of critique, all while accepting them into your writing psyche. One of the hardest things to do with your precious writing is to risk sharing it with a dispassionate audience who has the cajones to tell you when your writing is banal, trite, flowery or boring. Seriously, those are the hardest critiques for me.

There’s this habit we fall into that is not good for us: we fall in love with our own words. They float off the page toward us with rainbows and powdered sugar and we can’t believe we, mere humans, thought to write those words – those insightful, magical, melodious words. Then someone points out that there are no powerful verbs, the analogy is flawed and the piece stands up better without your favorite sentence. Suddenly you know you’re a fraud, and will never write well, and what were you thinking when you tried to write?

Yeah, that’s just how it feels for everyone.

So write anyway, take the fiery darts of honest feedback like the tough woman who survived labor and lived to tell about it, and get better at it.

Does it work the same way with non-fiction and article writing?

Yes it does. You gather insights and ideas, put them into lists and then craft those lists into articles to share with others. Start by reading in the exact article-writing genre that interests you. Take notes of insights and novel approaches to familiar topics (mine the areas of your personal expertise: homeschooling, gardening, spirituality, organizing a desk, sharing about the birds and bees with pre-teens, recovering from a c-section). Then begin to flesh out those topics through freewriting alternating with research. You want both your natural voice to come through as well as some sophistication (data to substantiate your intuitive hunches).

To market your work, check out Writer’s Market from the library and page through the magazines that relate to that field. Most likely you won’t sell your first article (or if you do, you will get paid peanuts). But that’s how we all start! So if you want to write, do it and cajole your way into any publication that will have you. Over time, you will develop your resume of published items and that will help you find better paying and bigger magazines for your audience.

More on Awesome Adulting!

Posted in Writing about Writing | 8 Comments »

More about Talking and Writing

The relationship between talking and writing

A Brave Writer mom writes:

Hi Julie,

Thanks for this post. I am challenged to give my children full attention talk time. I am always DOING something while they are talking. I am not sure what they’d do if I stopped and looked them and in the eye!

I found the post interesting as it relates to me though. I feel that I am better able to express myself through the written word. For me, the opposite of what you’ve described seems to be true. When I have let the words come out through my fingers and onto the page, I am a much more confident talker later on. After writing, I have a better idea of how I feel, what I think, what’s important. In fact, I’d like to see how improved writing could improve my abilities as a conversationalist.

Let’s talk (I mean write!) about this.

When I say that talking helps kids write, I mean it. But I want to acknowledge that:

Writing helps us think better than talking.

It is perfectly natural and right that when you want to figure out what you really think about a topic, writing is more likely to draw it from you than talking or chatting. A good conversation with a supportive listener can have a similar effect, but the truth is, there is something about putting those words down onto a page where you can sit back and reread or observe them that causes you to identify the thread, the thought, the idea in its concrete form more effectively than chatting or talking.

So I want you to know I agree with you. That fact (that writing leads to clarity of thinking) is what has made me a chronic journal-keeper and now blogger for my entire life. It’s what made me love essay writing and research papers. It’s why I tend to take notes when I listen to a great talk or seminar. I recognize that my ideas become more crystallized when I write.

Talking and Writing

So what did I mean, then, that
talking leads to better writing in kids?

Here’s the subtle nuance I want to emphasize. Before a child feels fluent in the mechanics of writing, before a child has had success with writing to the degree that he or she discovers the magic and power of the written word to unveil that next layer of insight, talking is the means by which a person develops a vocabulary of personal value. In other words, talking is the primary mechanism that establishes “writer’s voice.” Conversation, reporting, sharing, narrating all lead to a growing confidence and competence in language – the very stuff that will lead to more satisfying writing, more ease in writing eventually… which will then lead to better thinking.

To nurture that development as your children share, then, you will:

  • listen,
  • reflect back,
  • mirror and support the development of speech.

You’ll notice their flourishes, their senses of humor, their attention to detail, their surprising word choices and your job is to affirm these.

When they go to write, perhaps you will even remind them of that “so funny thing they just said at dinner” to include in the writing. You might jot down their words as they fly out of their mouths for them (and naturally this will happen when you are nursing the baby and making dinner at the same time). If you can “catch your child in the act of thinking” (i.e. talking) and capture the words on paper, you’ve given your child a huge headstart in the writing process. Suddenly that natural voice, those easy to find words are available for writing! Such a relief!

As you support that process, you are actually giving your child a chance to see just how connected the interior life, conversation, and writing really are: which is the strange and magical mix that informs all good writing.

Brave Writer Online Classes

Header image by Brave Writer mom Christa

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Writing about Writing | Comments Off on More about Talking and Writing

Freewriting Works

Freewriting Works

So I was sitting under an umbrella on my blue yoga mat on the concrete and soaked stands watching Liam play lacrosse. This is what mothers do. We sit in the cold rain and wind to watch our kids get blindsided by a high check to the helmet and slammed to the AstroTurf so that they only play five minutes of the 60 minute game. It is reassuring to have the coach call today to check up on Liam who is certain he cracked a rib (I’m still not sure, but he didn’t play again).

Powerless to mother Liam, once he was off the field sitting on a wet bench in the whipping high winds recovering from strep throat and dizziness (I know – ugh!), I took up a chat with the mom to my right. She’s a reading specialist in our local elementary school. Quickly she discovered that I homeschool and run a business that teaches writing. I so appreciated her next question:

“So do you have a philosophy of writing?”

Brilliant! I don’t think anyone in casual conversation has ever asked me that. I dove in: Peter Elbow? Freewriting? Nurturing your writer? Supportive, validating feedback?

No on Elbow, no on freewriting, but yes on nurturing and supportive feedback. Thus a discussion ensued where we compared notes on how to encourage kids to talk, to express thoughts, to get their ideas out of their heads and onto paper. As I explained how freewriting works, a mom two wet bleachers below us, wheeled around to interrupt.

“Excuse me, I couldn’t help over hearing you. Please don’t mind me. It’s just that freewriting changed my son’s life.”

“Oh really,” I replied, excited to hear her “testify”!

“In third grade, my son had a teacher who completely changed my son’s life. Well, his writing life anyway. She taught her students how to write to a timer, how to put their thoughts to paper regardless of how they came out. Suddenly my son who had been a reluctant writer found his voice! He learned to write!”

She went on, as only moms can. She let us know that today, in junior high, when he has an assignment to complete at home and is stumped by it, she only has to say the name of that teacher and the word “freewriting” and suddenly he will check into himself and start writing. She was utterly blown away by how powerful that one practice has been in his life for the last four years.

Needless to say, the reading specialist next to me took note! She followed this testimonial with questions for me, comparing notes on how she might improve her students’ freedom in writing and thinking. I loved her comments that while she spends a lot of time helping kids to “read aloud,” it occurred to her last week that what these kids really needed was someone to talk to about what they were reading. We brainstormed some questions she could ask and how she could encourage better comprehension.

Despite the freezing cold rain, the whole space felt warmer simply from savoring the idea that children are valuable and can be led into greater and greater self-expression through supportive, friendly conversation and, of course, freewriting.

Freewriting Prompts

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Friday Freewrite, Writing about Writing | 3 Comments »