A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

It’s easy to put pressure on your kids. Parents are notorious “nudges.” We expect our children to make measurable progress in each area of life every day of the year…or we’ll comment on it, or nag about it, or gently sweetly explain its importance again and again. We measure our own success as parents by how well our children grow up!

Writing doesn’t thrive under those conditions. Nagging, reminding, explaining, nudging – these create anxiety which thwarts the creative process. You need your yogic-self when embarking on writing. Calm, low expectations, quiet, space.

These are conditions that support writing.

Stressed parents make stressed children. You must master your own perfectionism and anxiety first, before freewriting.

In fact, some parents even make freewriting feel like a rule-bound writing excursion. There’s the “right way” to freewrite, which includes obvious mistakes and flights of fancy and urgency. What happens when a child is uptight, careful, and tedious in her clipped short dull sentences? Does that mean freedom in writing failed?

Think back to “free.” Freedom means “not bound.” In this case, not bound by anything! Whatever your child offers in the freewriting excursion can be valued and honored, accepted and appreciated.

Relax. Be there for your young writer as he or she is.  Try again another day. One day, writing will come and flow and all of you will be amazed that it was just behind Door #2 all along.

Check out The Scourge of Perfectionism Video
with FREE transcript!

Image by Rhys A. (cc cropped, text added)

Kids speak in paragraphs. Paragraphs are not magical formulas. In fact, most programs teach the life out of them and we wind up with cardboard boxes of tedious sentences.

What we want—what we aim for—is LIFE in the writing. Paragraphs are the result of indenting when the mood or content shifts—like learning how to stick shift a car. You don’t stare at the gauges, you get a feel for when it’s time to shift. Paragraphing is similar and it’s not difficult to learn once your children feel free to express their natural vocabulary about a topic. You can always read it to see what’s missing or needs to be moved. Far better than preparing the writing by dictating what sequence the ideas must proceed from the mind to the hand (sure to bottle up or rob the writing of its power).

So—in Brave Writer, we focus on that life in the writer—the interior. We help kids discover how to find the writing voice within. As they age, we introduce “containers” for all that robust self expression—sometimes a:

• lapbook,
• journal entry,
• freewrite,
• or report.

We allow the content to help dictate the shape.

By high school, kids who are used to self expression and exploring their mind lives in writing are ready to learn about the academic containers for writing—the essay forms and research papers. But remember: these only get used for about eight years of anyone’s life. The rest of life requires all sorts of writing!

Kids who grew up knowing that writing was as available to them as speech generally can meet any writing demand with confidence and competence. Kids raised on formats tend to feel they don’t know what to write when confronted with a new “container” for writing.

So that’s how we do it! Every project in our program is one I’ve done with students or my own kids. This process works beautifully. You can trust it.

Top image by ND Strupler (cc cropped, tinted, text added)

Writing Tip:
The Trick is to Focus on Content First

How do you correct errors without provoking tears?

The trick is to focus on content first. As we say in the biz, “Content is King!” Someone asked me what was “Queen” and I said, “Meaning.” So do it like this:

1. Start with content.

Focus on the topic, the insight, the great ideas or explanations or details that deliver the idea to the reader. You want to say words like:

“You know so much about roller coasters! It was surprising to read that the Raptor was so tall! I had no idea that the speeds got up to ___ mph. I could feel like I was on the coaster when you talked about the ‘wind whipping’ your hair. Great use of the ‘w’ sound.”

Notice that every comment is on the content – finding what is good in it, noticing it, remarking on it.

2. Now focus on meaning.

Notice if the writing makes sense, if it is conveying what it hopes to convey. So, make comments more like these in the “meaning” portion:

“I’m reading along here, and I notice that I got a little lost when I moved from this idea to the next one. Did you want it to read like this (read the run-on sentence all together with no stopping or pausing) or more like this (pause where a period should go to make it make sense)?”

When your writer chooses the second, you comment like this:

“To help the reader really get what you’re saying, a period here will make all the difference. Let’s put one in.”

This is how you work through the whole text. Punctuation is not just marks on a page, but a way to ensure that the reader gets the right, accurate understanding of ideas that the writer wants conveyed.

For weak language, you can say,

“I can tell that you think the ride was ‘awesome.’ The reader might want to feel what that is like. Can you think of more to say to unpack that word?”

And so on.

If a step in a process is missing, you want to note it conversationally:

“Oops! I got a little lost. Is there a step missing here? I don’t want to miss what you really want me to know.”

So start with content – be prolific in praise.

Then move to meaning – be conversational, friendly, and helpful.

Wish you had a bunch of Writing Tips in one place so that you could easily refer back to them whenever you wanted?

DONE!

We put 100 of our emailed Daily Writing Tips into a single document so you don’t lose them. It’s a digital product, so you can print the tips, put them on your iPad or tablet, or read them from a phone or laptop. Get your copy today! 

Top photo: woodleywonderworks (cc cropped, text added)