Write Anyway

When I read Dillard’s quote below, I thought, sure writing is hard, but write anyway.


“…writing sentences is difficult whatever the subject. It is no less difficult to write sentences in a recipe than sentences in Moby-Dick. So you might as well write Moby-Dick.”



~~ Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, p. 71

Meeting a Book

In Thunder and Lightning, Natalie Goldberg says reading the first page of a book is always a little disconcerting for her. Goldberg writes, “I usually have to re-read the first paragraph several times before my eyes take deep focus and the words settle into my brain. I am about to begin a new relationship—wouldn’t you be a bit nervous, too?” (p. 110-111)


This quote offers a teachable moment for a reading teacher like me.

Can’t Write, Won’t Write

I check into the hotel. Enter the room. Pull back the comforter and think, “It’s about to go down now.”

I sit on the bed, but I’m still a little uneasy. “Come on, Kaa,” I say, “you know you can do this. All the great ones have, at least once-- Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, so maybe you can, too.”

There are no dishes to wash or laundry to do. No food to prepare. No e-mail or Facebook.

I review the rules:

1. There will be no blogging.

2. There will be no academic writing.

You are here to practice creative writing.

“You can do it!” writer Kaa says enthusiastically. “Show me what you’ve got.”

What do I do? I reach beyond the Dell the size of a Bible and pick up Thunder and Lightning and crawl into bed.

“No, Kaa, don’t pick up someone else’s work. You are here to create your own.”

I don’t listen. I look for excuses: I can’t write here. This room smells. I want to go home. Where is my son? (I know doggone well where my son is.)

I call my son. I calm down, but I don’t write; I read. In the middle of a paragraph in which Goldberg tells me structure is all I need to get by, I jump from the bed and grab the Dell.

What do I write? A character sketch of a separated couple who are neighbors raising two twenty-somethings.

What will I do with it? IDK

Spilling Ink

Spilling Ink has three parts and a total of thirty-one short sections and an appendix. Though there are two authors, Anne Mazer and Ellen Potter, only one pens each section. The authors interview each other in the end which reveals interesting information about how they got started as writers.


The “I Dare You” activities seem like they’d be useful in my classes. My favorite so far is the one on page 29 that helps you get to your character’s heart desire. Here are the steps:

1. Ask students to list things they want (e.g., a million dollars tax free, to sleep in everyday, to play the X-box until eyes bleed, even on school nights).

2. Pick one thing on the list they want the most (e.g., to play the X-box until eyes bleed, even on school nights).

3. Jot down three or four ways (encourage creativity) they could obtain the item (e.g., get straight “A’s” and try to use this as leverage; play the X-box while parents are working late; play the X-box when your parents think you’re doing homework).

4. Write a story in which a character wants the item and tries to get it several times, but can’t.

What about you? How do you teach students (or your children) to develop stories?

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

I’ve been reading a number of books about writing this summer, and I keep coming across quotes from Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life, so I decided to read the book. Here’s one of my favorite Golden Lines from The Writing Life:


“One of the few things I know about writing is this:
Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now….Something more will arise for later, something better.” (p. 78)

This became so real to me a month ago. I was writing a profile of Allison Whittenberg, but I wanted to save some of it for a piece I wanted to work on later about her writing process. The profile wasn’t working because I was hoarding, holding back. In the end, I had to “spend it all,” and I’m glad did.

Cure the Blank Screen/Page

“Writing begets more writing.”


~~Rebecca McClanahan Write Your Heart Out, p. 209

July 1 at the SI

Usually everything at the Summer Institute goes down in Room 150, but today Lois took us on a Writing Marathon. What’s a writing marathon? It comes from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones.

It’s not about writing well, thank goodness. It’s supposed to be about going out in small groups to different places and writing what you want. You might write about what you see, hear, and smell. It’s also about sharing. No judgment or praise is offered. The person reads, the group members say thank you, and then the next reader begins.

It seems like everywhere I went I tried to write in a form instead of freeing myself to write what I noticed about me. Here’s one thing I wrote about what I saw, well, at least it started with what I saw, at a restaurant on campus.

A boy and a girl. Who are they? Blue for him black and white zebra stripes for her. A table, a smile between them as they type away on laptops and cell phone qwerty keyboards and chatter back and forth about art, literature, and should this relationship move on to the next level or is this it? He wonders if she’ll pack up the laptop and should he close the cell phone case, move the table to get closer or put up a wall instead.

When Criticism “Occup[ies] the Space Reserved for Writing”

“It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.”

~~Audre Lorde qtd. in Write Your Heart Out by Rebecca McClanahan, p.208

Golden Line

"A Writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." ~~Thomas Mann

qtd. in Lee Gutkind’s Creative Nonfiction: How to Live It and Write It

Golden Line

“I don’t think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories—of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die.”


~~Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones, p. xii

So You Want to Write: Marge, Ira, and *Me

Marge and Ira (authors of So You Want to Write) are now my colleagues. I feel like we’ve been in this long conversation. We laugh. We argue. We high five. I skipped all around the book. I started the “beginnings” chapter only to quit it half way through because I needed to know what was in the chapter about things writers shouldn’t do. And then of course I had to go on to the humor chapter. I eventually went back to beginnings and was glad I did. I am still wondering why I saved the technique chapters for last. I want to know about characterization, plot, and dialogue, don’t I?


I think I became attached to Marge and Ira because they said, “Do not quit your day job if you want to write.” They said all you need is one hour of focused writing. They said if you have more, you will only goof off. They know me well. I spend all of a typical day that I do not have to teach or attend meetings reading, sleeping, exercising, worrying, cleaning (OK, this is on rare occasions), planning, corresponding---until that magic hour. The magic hour can come at anytime. All of a sudden I feel this urge to write and I have to do it. I have to do it until something stops me, like picking Z up from school. If the magic hour is still there when we return, I get back to work. If not, I don’t. I like Marge and Ira because they tell me to stop feeling guilty about all that time I spent reading and sleeping (OK, I’ve also been known to visit a movie theatre during nonmagic hours) and run like the wind (or write like it) when the magic happens.



Other things I got from So You Want to Write: How to Master the Craft of Writing Fiction and Memoir by Marge Piercy and Ira Wood:



• If you want to write about someone you know, change the setting, time period, description of the person, but keep the essence of the feeling.

• Don’t worry about your first line. Instead, focus on the initial situation. Focus on what’s going on in the beginning that will keep readers reading.

• Don’t forget to put a header on your pages and number them before submitting to a publisher.

• Even when an author gets $100,000 dollars for a book, by the time everyone gets their cut, she might be lucky to get $5,000 per year based on the number of years it took to produce the book. In other words, the writing has to be about more than money.

• Writing is a business.

• If you want to be read, you must share your words and your time.

*I think “me” sounds alliterative.

So You Want to Write by Marge Piercy and Ira Wood

Yesterday I drove up to the Bayside Library Drive-thru window and gave the kind librarian the South Park DVD and the latest Usher CD that Z borrowed in exchange for a copy of the second edition of So You Want to Write: How to Master the Craft of Writing Fiction and Memoir by Marge Piercy and Ira Wood. I could not stop reading this book. As soon as I got home I started it. I stopped to Skype with a friend in Korea and then got back to it. I stopped to cook something for Z, call my nephew, and call my mom, and I went back to it. I sat in the parking lot with a flashlight while Z practiced basketball, missing the coach’s important message to parents afterward, because I was with Marge and Ira. I stayed up until 1:00am with them, but I can’t tell you a thing I learned. What made me want to read that book until I fell unconscious and it slipped through my fingers? What was I looking for? What did I find? I don’t know, but I can’t wait to get back to it.

Have you read Zing! by Pat Mora?

As I think about celebrating El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children's Day/Book Day), known as Día, founded by author Pat Mora to celebrate family literacy, I am reminded of the excerpts from her book that my friend Joseph sent me. This is the last day of National Poetry Month, too, so I plan to enjoy some Mora poems.


Mora’s new book is titled Zing! Seven Creativity Practices for Educators and Students (2010).

I latched on to writing while reading Zing! because it’s as creative as I can get, but Mora is also talking to artists, gardeners, musicians, and so on. I was encouraged by the book. Here are a few of Mora’s gems that I keep thinking about:

*Writing is a complex act.

*Not having time to write is an excuse. (I read the other day that YA author Randy Powell had a full-time job but still got up at 3:30am to write before work.)

*Writing is risky.

*Name your fears and face them.

*Find a place (kitchen table, closet, corner, wherever!) and use it (read create).

*Develop an Idea Book. (Ever sit down to write but don’t know what to write about?)

My favorite: Mora writes, “Look around you. What messages have you left for yourself in the places where you do your most inventive work? …How are you nudging yourself in the directions you want to be moving?” (p.7)