U.S. Children's Poet Laureate, a Poetry Line Generator, and Packin' Up for Camp

So little to say and so much time.

Scratch that. Reverse it.

(Did you catch my nod to Gene Wilder's version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Love it.)

First, a poem.

Did you know that a long time ago I dug myself into a big debt-ridden hole to get an MFA in poetry? Did you also know that I probably haven't written a real live, workshopped poem in about six years? Poetry is so....difficult now. Writing MG adventures and sending my characters up a beanstalk is...well, it's not difficult.

But the past week and a half, I've pushed the kids in Creative Writing Camp to write poem after poem and I miss it. Just a little.

And when I went to pen my own grand opus, the poem just didn't want to flow. I happened to find this handy dandy line generator at Poets Online. The lines are a bit stuffy and packed full of words like lovers, death, ocean, and regret. But whatever. So are poets.

Here's the line I pulled: In the air of the soul the leaves echo,  

Good Riddance

In the air
of the soul
the leaves echo
dry, crackling
pops
as they burn in
the white fire of my heart.

it beats
flames
and the leaves
are reminders
of you
and you are an echo
but soon you will
finally
be
gone.

--Megan Applegate (2013)


In other news, Kenn Nesbitt was named Children's Poet Laureate this month. Can I just say "Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!??" He's such a giving writer in person and on his web site. It's packed FULL of poems and ideas for writing with and for kids. I'm super happy!

And then, we're less than a week from Camp Nanowrimo. Which is basically NANOWRIMO in July. I've signed in and picked a virtual cabin. All ready to being a spastic sprint to 50,000 words on a YA idea I've been brewing.

Hope the words are free in your world!

m.a.

meet "mouse hugo"

there are many reasons i am not an artist. 

i'm too influenced by cute illustrations i like. i don't have the patience to learn to illustrate on computer. and i'm a writer. i'm too old to learn to draw well enough to complement the words at this point. but sometimes, a character will not come out on the page until you give him a face. thankfully, it's only been picture book characters so far and not real, adult characters. that would creep me out a bit.

i call him "mouse hugo" and i have no idea why he's got himself an outrrrrrageous french accent. he's holding a flower, but maybe a pastry of some sort would have served him better. but i cannot draw pastries or cakes or muffins of any sort. so gerbera daisy it is.

do you know another reason i am not an artist? have you ever seen the supplies of professional artists? they are not afraid of getting things mixed together and untidy. i, on the other hand, have a conniption when my watercolors run together. i have to pull paper towels out and clean the crevasses between paint pots before i can rest easy.

 and did anyone else notice that mouse hugo has no whiskers?

poor mouse hugo.

writer it is...

National Poetry Month and Poem a Day

I follow a great blog called Poet Mom, who just so happened to remind me that today kicks off National Poetry Month annnnnd the Poem A Day (PAD) challenge over at Robert Lee Brewer's Poetic Asides Blog at Writer's Digest.

So who's excited to write a poem a day for 30 days?? This girl!

I haven't really written poetry since I compiled my MFA thesis back in 2004. Life got in the way. Middle grade fiction got in the way. My laziness got in the way. But when poets all around the world are jumping into the party, why not?

What about you? Are you up for the poetic challenge?

I hope so!

lesson plan: muhammed ali and voice

the fourth graders i adore and am lucky enough to teach creative writing to each friday are heading into mandated testing season. i feel for them AND their tireless teachers. so much rides on their performances. so much rides on how they score on a test written by imperfect, anonymous test writers. they've been working on instilling their own voices into the required writing exercises and asked if there were any way for me to help AND give them their much needed creative break.

tall order, right?

the thing about ten year olds is that they like to identify with things. you. famous people. justin bieber. video games.

i also knew that they all probably had an idea of who muhammed ali was. AND i knew there was an audio/video clip out there i watch when i need to get motivated about something. (the jiu jitsu video i love to watch is located here. the plain, non-jiu jitsu version of his speech can be found here. the "poem" part of the speech starts at the 0:58 second mark.)

the clip is ali before the rumble in the jungle in 1974 against a younger, faster george forman. the kids loved this. they love underdogs and they LOVE how poetically ali can wax about himself and his abilities.

after having a few of the kids read the "poem" aloud (it's great to hear their different takes on it), i have the teacher play the shortened version clip so they can hear the man themselves. it's pretty powerful.

and then? i set them free to write their own version of a poem touting their skills.

i emphasized exaggeration, hyperbole, metaphor, and simile.

i emphasized voice and that this is NOT about putting someone else down, but about building yourself up. this piece of writing wasn't about anybody but themselves.

some chose sports. some chose their voracious reading abilities. fashion design, dancing, and rhyming all found their way in there, too.

there's an endless amount of writing ali's voice can inspire...see what it unleashes in your students!

I’ll Show You 

by Muhammad Ali

I have wrestled with an alligator.

I’ve done tussled with a whale.

I done handcuffed lightning,

thrown thunder in jail.

That’s bad!

 Only last week I murdered a rock,

injured a stone,

hospitalised a brick!

I’m so mean

I make medicine sick!

Bad, fast! Fast! Fast!

Last night I cut the light off

in my bedroom,

hit the switch

and was in the bed

before the room was dark.

You and George Foreman,

all you chumps

are gonna bow

when I whoop him,

all of you,

I know you got him, I know you've got him picked,

but the mans in trouble,

Ima show you how great I am.  

kid lit chronicles: this moose belongs to me by oliver jeffers

it's like oliver jeffers (website) has been to my house or something...

with four kids (three of them four years or under), i find myself the mediator of epic ownership battles of cosmic proportions. and by  mediator, i mean throw the offending toy into "toy jail" until everyone forgets about it and fights about the play doh. or the crayons. or mom's left flip flop (true story). and when it comes to books (especially picture books!), we tend to proclaim all books as "house" books

ownership and possession are huge in our world and jeffers' book "this moose is mine" came into it at just the right time.

it's a sweet concept. wilfred meets a moose he names marcel. he believes he is marcel's owner and sets about laying down the rules of this "ownership." marcel wanders away. hilarity ensues. other "owners" surface and other names for our hero moose find their way on the page. it's all one beautiful circle of un-ownership.

nana sent them the book because although alexander dzigurski's artwork (fully featured as amazing story backdrop) depicts the american midwest, it looks so much like alaska. we moved from alaska last summer and the boys sometimes miss seeing big river panoramas and city moose ambling through downtown on a daily basis. pretty sure they don't miss the cold, though. i know i sure don't!

it's a beautiful book and i think we're on night number 6,709 straight of reading it before bed. it's even made it to the hallowed "bathtime book" status...you know, the books they ask for when they're dumping water on hotwheels cars and want a book read to them. again.

this is one special book. thanks, nana.

title: this moose belongs to me
author: oliver jeffers
age: 3 and up
published: november 2012
list price: $16.99

Middle Grade Voice

One of the biggest struggles I face when writing MG is voice.

I mean, the voice in my head is pretty clear...it never shuts up. But when my narrator is a 12 year old boy, sometimes it feels like my voice is a bit...off?

I gloss the language up a bit. I tidy it. I make my characters think bigger, more profound thoughts than I probably would on a given day.

I read a lot. Right now, I'm nose deep in "The Wind and the Willows" and even KG manages to keep his voice even and unrecognizable.

That's the trick, I guess.  Your reader should go about his or her merry way without realizing somebody is telling them a story. The trick is to make them think they're in the story.

Phew.

Too bad it's easier said than done, right?

Here's to the journey.

Happy writing...

3 Tips for Writing With Kids

I sat here for a few minutes pondering what my first post on this new space should be. Do you find "first" posts as intimidating as I do? As long as I've been in the blogging business, you'd think it wouldn't be a big deal, but that big blank blog template with no other "previous" posts to bolster it always gets me a little anxious.

Should I write about writing for kids? What about writing with kids? Both are a big part of my daily life these days and if I do it correctly, both will be a big part of this site. So where to start?

Well, a few weeks about I got to be a part of a local Writers in the Schools (WITS) program here in Alaska and I spent an entire week in various classrooms teaching fiction writing to kids. It was an awesome, life-changing experience and I walked away learning more from it all than I had planned.

Funny how life works like that, isn't it?

The more I thought about that time working one-on-one-on-one with so many different kids with various levels of ability and interest, the more I realized I'd come away with a few techniques that I didn't have going into the classroom.

Here's what I came up with.

1. Manage Your Expectations (And Theirs)
I deal with this regularly now, the more I try to work with my own children on their writing. Are you expecting a 20 page masterpiece with multiple plots and character arcs? Or should you narrow your expectations to a more reasonable level? I keep pushing my own son to go deeper, but really, he just wants to write about an Orc's walk to the Zombie King.

That's it.

No more. No less. The more I see the intrinsic value in just that small effort he wants to put forth, the more he'll be willing to expand next time.
Let them start small and, to the best of your ability, do not dampen their spirits when their first efforts are less than Tolstoy-ian. They're on their way, and so are you.

2. Be Flexible with Who Comes to the Party
I worked all week with the kids on fairy tales and their elements. (I love Fairy Tales. So. Much.) When I explained the activity that we'd use to develop characters and get to know a little of their backstory, I set them free at their desks and waited in anticipation with who they'd come up with. Imagine my shock when at least three Spongebobs, Lilo and Stitch, and Perry the Platypus found their way to the pages. That was NOT what I'd had in mind and my first instinct was to correct them and send them back to the proverbial drawing board to come up with original characters. But these were third graders.

 And though they hadn't developed their own characters, they were excited with story ideas for the ones they did write down and I knew that poo-pooing the momentum at that point would work against me and would discourage my young writers. So, when it comes right down to it, be flexible with what your young writers come up with. It's a start and that's always the beginning of something beautiful.

3. Put Yourself Out There
Kids are discerning and its my guess that they can tell right away if you're holding back. When I teach adult workshops, I start with a toe in the proverbial waters. As they warm up to me, I warm up to them and I expose more and more of my personality and my own details about my writing career. When you're working with kids, you need to hit the stage warm and completely open. Be as silly and "present" as you can make yourself and understand that "stage fright" is not a forgivable personality tic. If you're soft spoken and shy, you won't make that crucial connection. Bottom line: they may take a minute or two to warm up to you, but you're not given the same luxury. You love them just as they are the moment you meet them. It's a good lesson for life, really, though I'm not always so great at that when it comes to meeting other adults!