Tag Archives: writer noodling

September 20, 2012 · 8:25 pm

An unforeseen advantage to teaching US History….

….means that golly gosh gee whiz, that so absolutely means the Abigail Adams biography that I’ve been wanting to read for a few years (but always putting aside because of other priorities) has now become a Priority Read.

(Dramatic hand to forehead).

Oh, the agony!  Oh, the hardship!  To be forced to read….

oh heck.  Yeah.  Right.  Considering the period of US history I’m teaching covers Colonial to Reconstruction, this is so definitely a case of don’t throw me in that briar patch.

Methinks it’s time to get serious about researching that steampunk novel.

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March 2, 2012 · 8:38 am

The madness of the day

 

Yesterday I had a snow day.  While I could have gone skiing, instead I tackled a major marathon of worldbuilding for the Netwalk Sequence.  My editor had pointed out some issues and I realized that I really, really needed to coordinate and plan things out, starting with a coherent timeline and then some filling in of backstory, not just character but historical and outlining what research I needed to do.  After all, the last time I did this sort of planning for Netwalk?  It was still being called Netspider (which changed to Netwalk a couple of years later) and it was 1995.

Not good for a world built around concepts that postulate major political and environmental upheaval as precursors to the recovery I’m writing about.

Well, I have the bare bones outline.  But the process looks something like this.  Above was the preparation layout, with binder and papers from pieces I’d put together both in hard copy and in Evernote editing clips.

Then I went to the easel.  Early takes:

 

At this point, I’d already created the broad outline sheet (pinned to the bookcase) of Things I Need To Build.  I kept on adding stuff.  The sheet on the easel was the dateline posted here on the website (which will need to be updated seriously).

A later iteration of this same sheet:

 

Already you can see the scratch outs.

But wait!  There’s more!

 

And while that’s the last picture version, there were further additions and corrections.

There’s also the third sheet.

 

Like I said, a six hour straight through marathon of worldbuilding work.  I still have a lot more to do, but the bare bones have been laid.  A productive day, IOW.

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January 20, 2012 · 7:55 am

On Writing and Teaching Writing–Part One

This is the beginning of a series.  Today is just a rough consolidation of various thoughts I’ve had over the years about teaching writing and how it affects my own writing process.  I apologize in advance because I’m dashing this off before dedicating some time to copyedit revisions on Netwalker Uprising and then running up the Mountain to do flooding prevention on a rental as well as a quick photo shoot of the Sandy River in flood before going to the Day Jobbe….so it may be discombobulated.  However, this is laying the groundwork for the series.

Anyway.  One concern I’ve had over the past eight years of teaching is that, while there has been a slow but steady improvement in test scores in the areas of reading and writing (in spite of what reform rhetoric would have you believe), there has NOT been a matching improvement in writing.  One study that came out in the state of Oregon several years ago flat out stated that test scores in writing have been static for thirty years.

Why is this happening?  We’re now requiring a more rigorous program in reading and math, to the degree that kindergarten curricula don’t resemble what they did thirty years ago.  Why isn’t writing showing a similar improvement?

I have several theories.  First of all, back about 20-30 years ago, a study came out asserting that teaching grammar did not improve writing quality.  My reaction to that study when I read it was somewhat unprintable (My Masters project focused on a specific writing remediation technique that my group’s adviser was testing out; it was my assigned job in the group to do the lit review and write that section of the paper).  I won’t go into the problems with that study but let’s just say that in general education it got picked up and applied, especially at the K-8 level.  Special ed was an entirely different proposition.  Sped does not agree, and there are many excellent studies which demonstrate the need for grammar and conventions instruction along with other means of writing remediation.  If you want to look them up, I suggest starting with Karen Harris and Steve Graham’s work in Self-Regulated Strategy Development (University of Kansas and University of Nebraska both have excellent linkage and materials).  Cognitive Strategy Instruction is another keyword.

Secondly, many (but not all, definitely not all, I do know some fine writers in this group!)  K-8 teachers admit to an uneasy relationship with writing.  It’s my thesis that in order to teach writing, you need to be comfortable with the process of writing. Doesn’t mean you have to be a professional-level writer or be selling your writing, but you do need to be able to write clearly, concisely, and correctly (I dearly enjoy the exceptions to the rule and had a lovely discussion with another teacher yesterday where we agreed that the use of the Oxford comma would have clarified a murky phrase in a news story affecting our building).

Thirdly, most consultants who teach teachers about writing can’t write narrative to save their lives.  They can’t write creative nonfiction, and their technical work product, while grammatically correct, isn’t written to clarify understanding.  It attacks understanding and buries it under snowdrifts of jargon.  The moments when they seek clarification are painful because they then trend toward the cutesy end of the swimming pool, complete with perky fontage. There are good consultants out there but again, many of them trend toward a special education background and they tend to minimize the ky00t.

Add all this together and you get major problems.

That’s it for now; must do other stuff.  Let me know if you want more of the same….

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January 10, 2012 · 7:47 am

Sliding back into the groove

It’s surprising how quickly some things can change, almost overnight.  I’ve gone from being completely blocked on writing and professional fronts, flailing about to find solutions to–what is probably making me feel best of all–the ability to be creative again.  Funny how that works.

It’s not that things have magically improved in my work life, which is the biggest negative  at the moment.  Right now everything is conspiring to make this the craziest, most twisted and positively most awful year I’ve ever had in this job.  I got slammed with a couple of things yesterday that, if I’d been hit with them sooner in the year, would have either sent me out the door screaming or dictated a resignation letter.  Instead, I buried my head in my hands for a moment, took a deep breath, then said, “Okay.  What next?  What else can happen that will make this year worse?”

(Because trust me.  This year really is the sum of every bad teaching experience I’ve had on an individual event basis all wrapped together.  I have no illusions that the universe will stop dealing me crazy cards.  Dear Universe: I GET IT.  MESSAGE IS RECEIVED.  I’M WORKING ON IT. KTHXBYE.)

Is the turnaround because I’ve come to a point of no return?  Or is it because I’m finally seeing my way out of things?  I don’t know.  I do know I bottomed out a bit over the weekend, thanks to the utter misery of this damn cold added to whatever is going on with my gut, and then started clawing my way out of it.  I made some decisions and took some actions.  I dumped a bit of the physical chaos in my home office and started making lists and a schedule.  It’s amazing how rewarding the act of being able to cross off things on a list can be.  It’s amazing how forcing yourself to impose structure, to take the time away from the crazy din of twenty different tasks that SHOULD BE DONE INSTEAD OF IMPOSING STRUCTURE and making that structure happen instead simplifies life.  How much the little structural things end up solving all the other tasks.

So yesterday morning I was able to be creative.  I spent the morning writing time productively crafting worldbuilding outlines and plans for Netwalk’s Children.  I think this novella might end up being the best piece in The Netwalk Sequence yet, just because I’m finally able to articulate some of the core issues that have been slinking around undercover about the whole damn thing for so many years.  We shall see if my writing is able to stand up to the ideas.  I know how when I wrote something significantly affects the quality of the story, and the sad fact of much of the Netwalk stuff is that it has not been written in sequential order.  It’s been bits and pieces pulled here and there, and even deft rewriting can’t cover up the differences in craft, at least not to my eye.

And I channeled my inner Sarah Stephens.  I know that character very well, god knows I’ve lived with her for twenty-three years.  I still don’t know all of her life and the things that twisted her into the brilliant but manipulative bitch she became in Netwalk and later stories.  But I know what the initial twist was, her ultimate soul-searching gut check that damned near killed her.  And occasionally it’s helpful to pull on aspects of that personality to help me get through the day (like, say, last night’s snark.  Which was more about work than about the rejection letter.  I can be very good at displacement).  Sarah is a construct but she’s a useful construct for those moments when it’s damn the revolution, bring on the apocalypse.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be things that won’t utterly shred my soul and bring me to my knees.  I know that.  There’s no way escaping how some deaths will eventually do that to me.  One death will do that for certain and is statistically likely to happen before mine (Mocha).  The other is a statistical probability but one of those things that you never know (DH) who goes first (and will definitely shred me to pieces), and the other (DS) would be a tragedy.  Those things just are.

So yesterday was a day for blowing up logjams and getting things done.  For moving on issues I needed to clear out of my head, and facing new obstacles with a grin.  I’m not quite up to a Rolex 4-star cross country course when it comes to the crazies, but it’s getting there.

I know where I’m going.  How that path happens, I don’t know.  But the way is starting to clear.

And meanwhile, it’s off for more plot noodling on Netwalk’s Children.  Oooh, I can hardly wait to start writing this one now!

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