Teaching Writing to High School Students, Frank McCourt Style

I just finished reading Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man. McCourt not only has wonderful stories to tell, but he is able to do so without using all the similes and metaphors that other authors often overuse.

The last section of the book is titled “Coming Alive in Room 205.” These last 75 pages chronicle McCourt’s years teaching creative writing at the famed Stuyvesant High School. I strongly recommend that high school writing teachers read this part of the book, even if that is the only part that is consumed. More than anything, it presents the author’s unconventional philosophical approach to teaching writing. It was also helpful to me as I gather my own material for future stories. McCourt especially helps writers to see the rich sources of material that are around them every day.

Reading (or not reading) the Writing Projects of Others

Grumble, grumble, grumble. I really dislike it when friends ask me to read their latest pieces of writing. I’m selfish and want to spend my spare time reading stories and books of my own choosing. Anyway, the people who ask me to read their stories are usually not serious writers, but individuals who just got a sudden, but temporary, urge to put their ideas on paper. They don’t take the time necessary to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite until the piece is really ready to share. Also, they are not looking for specific feedback such as

• Is the theme clear?
• Are there questions in the story that should be answered?
• Does a specific section need more development?

Instead, the piece is often given to me with a note such as, “I thought you might like to read this story I wrote.” So, I’m telling everyone now...I do not want to read whatever it is that you wrote.

The Mosaic, Segmented, or Braided Essay

Recently I attended another session at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop. This session was on writing a mosaic essay. As I understand it, the mosaic essay is also known as a segmented essay or braided essay. These names for essay types were all foreign to me, yet I realized that this is the style I had already chosen for the memoir writing that I plan to do. I had been calling my writing thematic essays, not realizing there were other names used for the format.

Mosaic or segmented essays are made up of different sections, or segments, that are separated by white space and that have no clearly written transitions between the sections. The sections do not have to appear in chronological order.

Braided essays are separate essays that are woven together.

The thematic essays that I am writing are a combination of all of these. I am basically taking one theme at a time from my life and writing everything I can think of that fits into that theme. There will be many random thoughts for each theme that I will weave together. Some possible essay titles I have are

• Of Mice and Men
• The Northern Lights Have Seen Strange Sights
• I’ve Got Dibbies on Sleeping with Daddy
• No More Ice Cream
• We Named It Norway because It Was So Far Away
• They Never Said, “I Love You.”
• Mom Was a Race Car Driver
• Restricted Clientele

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Here are some ideas for incorporating mosaic, segmented, and/or braided essays into the lessons of teachers of writing.

• Choose a topic that intrigues, inspires or interests you. (When I attended the Lighthouse Writers Workshop we first listened to a short lecture on the art form of mosaics. Then we each chose a mosaic that we liked from the exhibition in a gallery and related it in some way to our lives or experiences that we had each had.)
• Select five to 10 keywords and/or concepts that come to mind when you think about the topic.
• Write one or two paragraphs about each keyword and/or concept, without worrying about how all the keywords and paragraphs relate to each other.
• Edit each paragraph as a stand-alone, as if each paragraph were a mini essay.
• When you've finished revising, decide if you'd like to order them for the most logical flow of ideas, or if you'd like to order them according to tone, or subject matter.
• Decide if you want to leave the paragraphs disjointed or if you want to weave them together with connecting sentences or paragraphs.

Victory! Checked Off Phase One of My First Writing Goal

In my blog entry of August 10, I listed several of my writing goals. The first goal was to sort through the content of 6 ½ years of the Gifted Child Information Blog that I wrote for Prufrock Press, eliminate outdated information, check all the links, and rearrange the material into a form or forms that would be useful for parents and teachers. I just finished the first phase of that goal. I have now gone through all of the material and figured out what is relevant and what is not, what needs to be eliminated and what needs to be updated. I have a tremendous number of valuable resources that need to be shared.

Next I will begin reorganizing the material according to category and figure out the best ways to make the information useful. Some of the publishing ideas I am considering are 

• Individual articles in various consumer magazines and possibly trade journals 
•  A revised and updated version of my book, Raising a Gifted Child  
• One or more books—perhaps a “best of” type book for parent and/or teachers 
•  An online publication with active Internet links

My hope is that, as I begin to shuffle the blog entries around into various categories that some obvious formats will become obvious.

I would love to hear from you about formats that you would find helpful. Perhaps you’ll even come up with ideas I have not considered. Please feel free to contact me at carol@bycarolfertig.com.

Using Old Photos as a Basis for Writing

My older brother has been working for years on our genealogy, recording his findings on ancestry.com. Recently, he discovered and posted some wonderful photos of family members that I had never seen before. Many of them are of my parents when they were very young. Seeing these photos is really stirring up my imagination. I want to fill in all the blanks about what they were like, both individually and as a couple, when they were that young. The things that I do know about might eventually make their way into a memoir that I write. What I don’t know, but wonder about, may show up in a novel, inspired in part by the pictures.

I love the photo shown here of my mother holding a muskie that she caught, probably in northern Wisconsin around 1940. The story goes that one of these fish was so big that they had to shoot it to get it into the boat. I remember that Mom would say if they saw a muskie coming after the lure, they weren't sure if they should let it bite or reel the lure in fast. I can't imagine taking the fish off the hook. This story and photo give a peek at what an adventuresome woman my mother was.

Using similar old photos could be the beginning of a writing assignment for students. If favorite family photos are not available, there are many websites that have old pictures that could be used. Do a search on “historical digital collections” and you will find all kinds of possibilities. Let students choose the photos that most inspire them. Who are the people? What are their personalities? In what ways to they interact with one another? Where is the photo taken? What are the artifacts in the photo? How do they play into whatever story is created? Can a story line be imagined?

The Economy of Words

I just attended a two hour session with author and poet Mary Karr, put on by Lighthouse Writers Workshop. I enjoyed it immensely. I have three of Karr’s books (The Liar’s Club, Cherry, and Lit)—all memoirs. I was very interested to hear about the author’s writing process. She talked about the number of rewrites she did with Lit. After going through about 15 revisions, Karr sent it to her editor and had to cut even more material. Published, Lit is 386 pages long. During the editing/revision process, Karr said about 2000 pages were eliminated from the book. I think this is an example of the hard work that is involved in polishing one’s writing. An author can’t go with a first draft or a second or a third; instead, it is a long, arduous process to mold the book into a final product. Karr says that, in the end, her writing is a finely hewed product. Poetry has helped her to learn the economy of words.

Putting on the Brakes to Maintain Balance

I used to keep a diary in a spiral notebook that was tucked under my bed. Every night I propped myself up on my pillows, climbed under the covers, and began a dialog with myself. It was good therapy, especially when I was going through difficult times. Writing provided an acceptable outlet for airing my innermost feelings. With each stroke of the pen, my thoughts became more clear, and I was always surprised by how much I had to say once I began. After going on for quite some time, I would suddenly realize that it was well past the time that I had intended to turn off the light. Over a few years, I managed to fill up a good sized box with my journals. Presently, the box lies sealed in my basement. Perhaps one day, I will feel comfortable incorporating those thoughts into something I publish, though my ramblings may have to appear as fiction.

I write in spurts and often hesitate to start the process because everything else becomes less important. Beginning this blog was an effort to incorporate some self-discipline into my current writing process. My aim this time is to write on a regular basis, but to limit the time that I spend on it each day. Hopefully, by chronicling the process, I will become accountable to myself and to my followers about my progress.

Presently I am writing one to three hours a day. I am making steady progress with my current project, but still struggle with creating the best balance. There are so many things in life that I want to do and need to do, it is difficult to find the time for everything. I cannot let the writing take over.

How I Wrote My First Book

I am always interested to learn the habits of other writers and how they organize their time and content. Presently I am wrestling with ideas for good systems as I write a couple of new books. The same organizational system will not work for all types of writing.

I can tell you how I created my first book, Raising a Gifted Child: A Parenting Success Handbook. I took the content from the first three years of “Prufrock’s Gifted Child Information Blog,” reorganized it according to chapter topics, and wove it together with narrative. I found it very difficult to organize all this material on the computer. Sometimes I printed out sections so that I could “see” it better.

A fellow writer friend gave me a helpful tip. She told me to create a separate document for each chapter. Doing that made the manuscript easier to manage.

When handling a document as large as a book, it is terrifying to think that it could all be swept away very quickly with the crash of one’s hard drive. I finally took my son’s suggestion to get an automatic backup system for my computer. The system I am using is mozy.com. Now my documents backup automatically on the cloud twice a day. It provides me with emotional security.

I have much larger quantities of content to organize for my current and future projects and will keep you updated as I figure out how to manage it all.

Give a Book to a Teacher

Tamara Fisher writes a very popular blog titled "Unwrapping the Gifted" for Education Week: Teacher. Today's blog entry, Gift a Teacher, presents a list of books that she feels would make good presents for teachers to help them better understand and address the needs of gifted students. I am pleased that my book, Raising a Gifted Child: A Parenting Success Handbook, was recommended as one that would make a good gift to teachers. As Tamara says, "Despite it's title, the book is an excellent resource for teachers, too." Thank you, Tamara.

The Discipline of Writing or “Just Do It!”

Many people tell me that they enjoy writing and they have great ideas, but they never put pen to paper. Or they may spend a couple of days or weeks at it and then give up. Writing is a solitary experience; therefore, it requires a lot of self-discipline. If you really want to write, you have to push on through the difficult parts and “Just do it!”
 

As much as I like to write, I often have trouble finding time. To be productive, I find that I have to discipline myself and commit to at least a couple of hours a day. No excuses allowed.
 

Decades ago I heard Joanne Greenberg (author of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden) speak. She said that she wrote every morning for at least one hour, 365 days a year. I couldn’t understand how she could publish all the books that she has authored by just writing as little as an hour a day. Now I realize that it is the consistency of that disciplined approach that allowed her to be so prolific. Interruptions were not permitted and she never wavered from the time committed.
 

Another writer may work all morning, five days a week for six months, then take the next six months off. There is no one way to accomplish the task of actually finishing a project, but one does need to come up with some sort of plan.
 

In the first entry of this blog, I listed several different types of writing that I want to pursue. Right now, I am seriously working on the first one. Every day, I spend a couple of hours going through all the blog entries I wrote for Prufrock’s Gifted Child Information Blog from March 2005 to August of this year, checking the Internet links, and determining what information is still current and what is out-dated. As soon as I finish that process, which is very tedious, I will begin rearranging the information into a form that is user friendly. I haven’t yet decided which approach I will take: a “Best Of” book, a series of articles, or a combination of the two. I think the best format will come to me as I start putting it all together.

Preparing for Memoir Workshop

I just ordered three books by Mary Karr: The Liar's Club, Cherry, and Lit. Hope to read all three of these memoirs in preparation for a conversation I will attend in late October with the author, titled Inside the "Writer's Studio with Mary Karr." The description of the session sounds interesting. "Gossip could be leaked. Craft secrets uncovered. Deeper truths laid bare concerning: memory's fallibilities, the humidity of Texas, and if Radcliffe is actually a real live part of Harvard."
 
By attending programs such as this, I hope to hone my own writing skills. You may remember that memoir is one of the three categories of writing that I want to pursue.