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8 Pages·1991·0.2 MB·English
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DOCUMENT RESUME CS 214 293 ED 370 097 Brown, Bill AUTHOR Writing for Publication. TITLE PUB DATE 91 NOTE 8p. Descriptive (141) Reports Journal Articles (080) PUB TYPE Bread Loaf News; v5 n2 p7-13 Sum 1991 JOURNAL CIT EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. Classroom Environment; *Creative Writing; High DESCRIPTORS Schools; Peer Evaluation; Teacher Role; Writing Assignments; Writing Evaluation; *Writing for Publication; *Writing Processes Nashville Metropolitan Public Schools TN IDENTIFIERS ABSTRACT Students at Hume-Fogg Academic High School in Nashville, Tennessee do every kind of writing, have won numerous writing awards, and have published everything from chapbooks to articles in national literary magazines. According to the creative writing teacher, students are first taught to write about things they know--to go back to their own childhood experiences and rediscover who they are. These writing assignments are never graded because once they are graded, they are "finished." Numerous revisions are encouraged and expected before students' writing is published. Peers participate in the reading and evaluating of students' writing. A good end-of-year assignment involves retrospection. The students look back over all their writing and then look in a mirror and ask themselves "how all this makes up the fragmented person that is me." Students then make a mask to reflect their image of themselves and write about that image. Students also write, lay out, edit, and design their own chapbooks. At the end of every semester each students completes a manuscript to be sent to "Scholastic" magazine. The sense of community in the classroom is reinforced--a sense of w:iting together on a shared subject or theme. Ridicule has no place in these classrooms, for students' best writing comes from an emotional center that is dangerous. (Three students' poems are attached.) (RS) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** WRITING FOR PUBLICATION Bill Brown U S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Ortceo!Cchxwor.a.rimea,,,i...oiruprcvment PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION TERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY CENTER (ERIC) /This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it 0 Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES official OERI position or policy. INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC).- 2 Writing for publication Bill Brown in childhood. I have them draw a floorplan This year alone Bill Brown's students at of the first house or home or apartment that Hurne-Fogg Academic High School in they really have vivid memories of. I have Nashville, Tennessee, have won six 1991 them draw that plan in detaileverything National Scholastic Writing Awards, from where the cat or dog peed on the rug, seventeen Nashville Writers' Showcase kitchen where there was an oil fire in the Awards, one National Foundation for the looking for windows, closets, basements, Arts Award, ard one Princeton Univer- things where kids might have specific sity Young Poet Award. And, with the emotions involved, and fears, reflective help of a Bread Loaf in the Schools grant, moments. Where the telephone was is really they've written, edited, typed-set, laid out, important; about a third of the kids have and taken to the Publishercamera some type of disaster or some type of sorrqw readyfive publications. Recently Bill involved with when so-and-so got a call. spent a couple of hours on the phone They know where they were, they know when talking about how he gets his students to it was, they know the date. Almost every kid publish and about his new textbook, co- is afraid of something under the bed or out authored with Malcolm Glass, Important the windowor in a mirror, in a closet. Every Words: A Book for Poets and Writers. kid was told not to play somewhere, but did. So I try to make them draw this floor plan and label it and then to take themselves on a touras if they were museum guides of their own childhoodsand wherever they come up publication in school means everything with a story, mark it, even make some notes from putting things up on the wall to about it. (If they go right into a piece of doing literary magazines to sending things writing because they have a narrative they out. We're an academic school. We do every need to tell, they just go right into it. They kind of writing, and there's a strong focus on can finish the floor plan later.) Then when expository and critical writing as well. But they're all finished with it, I want them to most people see creztive writing as exclusive pick out twenty, thirty minutes for a real fast and don't realize that all writing is creative writing. I quit calling anything a free writing and that somehow all kinds of writing because no writing is free. It's all hard work. support each another. I teach three creative So I don't talk about that. I never tell them to writing classes. Sometimes there are anywhere write freely for ten minutes about nothing. I from sixty to eighty kids signed up. Keeping always place them somewhere or give them up with that much on a daily basis is crazy. I alternatives. But they're not free; they're fast also design writing progiams to go with other writings. So I have them , try to write about English curriculums. I go into every freshman the floor planfirst taking a tour of that class for at least three to six weeks and do a house, from room to f room, giving as much creative-writing-unit-early on-in-the-year.-I do- 7---detail-as-they-catvforthim minutes, an hour that for sophomores again if I can. Mytime if they can, and to go back after they read it in our school that students turn in essays or and mark places where they know there's a other critical writing, they're supposed to story or an event or a specific emotion come tir, with creative writing pieces as well, something funny, the feeling of fear, a feeling a poc: or a prose excursion or something (an of nostalgia, of joy, of sorrow, and that usually extr- ct from their journals oa literature) is their first four to six weeks' assignments wit'ch is given weight as well as the critical they've already given themselves. All I've wi ling. So that's written into our curriculum done is ask them to map it out. So we write general. on those things. And what I do have (which I believe in incredibly, it's a time honored strategieslooking back thing that we've all done) is emulation and modeling. I go and find previous student Now Low do I get kids to write for publi- woik. Kids emulate and model other kids' cation? l he most important thing is that work. They look at a piece and say, "I can do students need to write about things they that" or "Maybe I can do it better than that" knowwhich is their own experience. How or "I have an experience like that." They'll to get that across to them? I have many start modeling successes. And all of a sudden different strategies. Our textbook (Important they're not left alone with some assignment Words, Bill Brown and Malcolm Glass) starts that is done to them by a teacher. And I give with that, the first four chapters. The first them professior al writers' workwho have 3 thing I try to do is turn to an important point for, and I want the kids to know that there's a looked at their childhoods, at their experi- publication out there that we're looking to ences, at the lives of their own children, get their work intothat there's a place to parents, grandparents, and fictional charac- submit it, there's a contest to send it to. But tersto show how it's been an important part the most important thing is that there are of their lives. I find those that I think are best audiences outside that little, bitty classroom suited for the age group and for the assign- that make their writing important, and an ment. audience they're writing to beyond the It's amazing how early kids can find a teacher. Third, their peers are going to share place, even at three and four years old. I have this work because the teacher can't read and a lot of my own writing where I pull in places evaluate everything. They're going to have to that were important to me. There was a help each other decide what really works and honeysuckle thicket where I was able to crawl what is good. So automatically it establishes a in like a cave. You would think it was a cave, sense of community, which is so important to and just be there and act out different alone, a group of writers. They're not in this fantasies. Closets, attics, especially where facing this teacher who's g->ing to put a red there was an attic fan, are good. Kids have mark on it. And I stress th4c things must be everything from airplanes to spaceships read aloud. These are not new ideas. They're involved. Almost all kids have a tree, that all coming from Ken Macrorie, who is one of they either climbed or sat under. But from my heroes, and from James Moffett and somehow it was important to them. And they Don Murray. can always find it. You can see it light up in In writing for publication, product is their eyes when you ask them to find it. I everything. I want them to share their work, have them close their eyes a lot and visualize, revise it, turn in an anthology of their best actually film this part of their childhood. I works. If I give thirty assignments in a six have them collect as many photographs as weeks' period, I have to grade them. Grading they can. A chapter in the book is on is real whether you're a checker at Sears or a photograph albums of their childhood. The nuclear physicist. So I don't hide that. I may Easter when they had the first dress, the new give them thirty assignments and I may say I shoes. Because I have a lot of Jewish kids and want eight polished pieces. This is another kids who are Islamic as well, I learn the Macrorie thing. I want the anthology, and different holidays. It's the same with the floor that way it's not an individual.piece. I'm not plan, not every kid knew a house. Some never saying it's finished. Pm trying to give them lived in a house. They lived in projects, in the opportunity to succeed with their best small apartments. So they're different. An work the way writers do and have the apartment's hallways, stairs, laundry mats, opportunity to fail. If kids haven't had a parking lots, and playgrounds are the places chance to fail, they will never succeed on a that they rememberroofs. Every kid can high level of writing. Their failures teach find an experience in this, because they all them things. One of the assignments will be have it. Most kids have dug for treasure. to go-back-and-find failures-that-they-were Richard_Wilhur has a poem.called 1Digging really involved in, that they may have for China." He comes out and you know he thought were good at first, almost latched never made it. But he comes out exhausted onto because they had some type of commit- and looks at the sky and says, "China, China ment to the writing. But no one else felt there everywhere." was much to itto go back and find the So what I try to do is let kids go back to center of that writing and redo it the way their own exPeriences and rediscover who writers do with their work. They need to they are. It is very important early on that know that rejection is a real part of writing kids understand that they own their own and of life in general. Also when their work words, so somehow this assignment is comes in, the teacher's got to find something something they're doing for themselves, not that removes it from the classroom, and that just for a teacher. I have three things to say is a publication that the kids are involved that I think are really important. First the with producing: a reading in a local book- kids never get grades on a specific piece of store, at a local art center, at PTA meetings, writing like this because once they do, whatever, where student work becomes the "oecause once it's something the teacher's performance. Bookstores are lovely for doing, it's finished. I have to stress there are readings because they're going to have parents three, four, five, eight revisions before I ever in there and the bookstore's going to become send anything off. That's very important. The a family placewhich is what it should be in second thing is if you're expecting a grade on 4 something, immediately the grade is what it's amn , .rI '1,41 Jf --1111.r.-11.11-LXA our country and it isn't. Libraries are good, or heads, and they go directly to the assignment. peer readings. But some kids may spend a week, may make So that's what I do. I move from the house the first one, fool around, laugh at it, try to to the neighborhood to photo albums, and write about it. It doesn't work, but in the from photo albums to family, and I deal with trying to write about it suddenly an idea eulogy right up front and then from that comes for something that might work. So that to animals. I went back and looked at all the may take them two or three weeks. But they got it. different writers. Animals are an important part of their children's lives, their own I want the product. The bags go up on the childhoods, their adult lives. You know wall. They're up there right now. Some of we them are magnificent. I can't even draw a give them funerals when we're kids. It's a way of practicing. stick figure, so I have a bunch of magazines for them to cut up to make collages or put introspection poems together that represent a feeling of who they are. For some of them, the bag We have a chapter in Important Words becomes more important than the writing. called "Growing up in the Nuclear Age" That's all right. I don't have a problem with where we really try to deal with the hard that. It's an assignment that seniors need to subjects. Two keys could turn and in thirty write at the end of their year. It's a transition. minutes we'd be back in the Stone Age. Every It's really good for freshmen, too. It's a good kid has nightmares that deal with that. I deal end of the year piece where anyone is going with the environment, and from there with to grow into another stage. advice instructionshurts that kids deal I don't have a thesaurus in my room. I with. I try to get them back into their lives in think it's important that kids learn new words the present, not just the past. Then I do a and learn to use them in cantext through section on introspection where kids look in their own experience and lives. But they must the mirror. I have them thumb back through start with their own dialect. Sharing so much all their writing to see where they came from, enriches a class. They can pick up on each what they were doing, their fiction, the other's backgrounds, syntax, and verb tenses. characters they found, whether they were real Good writing is kids learning to say important or imagined, and their own childhoods. Then things in clear, honest ways so it touches they look in the mirror and say, "How does all someone's heart or brain or sense of humor or of this make up this fragmented person that is at least allows someone to say, "I know how 1 me?" And this works from middle school all that feels, but I've never said it." And the the way to graduate school. I sometimes copy minute kids get that type of feedback, they a poem by Margaret Atwood called "Paper know they're writers. That's one of the stages Bag." In the poem she puts on a paper bag that's important. When they learn to see their and makes a mask the way she did as a kid, peers as authors, they want to be authors, too. pencilling in the eyes, the mouth, and does it Learning to see themselves as authors is a very so that all of a sudden at her age she wants important thing. That's why you've got to new stories, a new repertoire of stories, words publish, you've got to have audiences, you've ----that-haven't been-said-to.corlz-from-her- got-to have-readings, and-you've-got-to-have mouth. So I have kids bring in the Kroger multiple ways. If kids do taped readings of sacks, Winn Dixie, whatever. I bring in their own work where they use their friends thousands of crayons and scissors and sit them reading their work, they get to hear it back, down in the middle of the floor and say, "Go done by friends, their interpretations. That's at it. How do you feel? Let's make a bag that like a playwright who gets to have a director somehow reflects it." So we do this section on and a group of actors play back what they saw introspection, but they all know that what as a vision and let it have a life of its own, they're doing is finding an audience beyond outside their own private lives. the classroom. The other thing is giving them time. the chapbook There kids are making bags. I've got some kids who have made their bags. They've The last chapter in Important Words has to do with creating a chapbookthey produce already written two poems. They think they're finished. Some of them aren't, and I their own books. I had to keep some coordi- will tell them they're not. Some of them will nators at NCI h in November and in the not make the bag but will write incredible spring from walking out with some of the ones stuff. They have the assignment in their I had only one copy of because they were saying, "How can one kid do this in a 5 because we don't want to hurt you." Well, classroom?" And I said, "With a xerox production upped again. What they found out machine and money enough to buy good was lighting had nothing to do with produc- paper." They learn to lay. it out, edit it, clip tion. It was somebody doing something the art work, do the designthey produce a specifically for their benefit. If you can chapbook. Chapbook comes from the French ccnstantly do thatand try to make it as meaning cheap book. A writer found a honest as possible for the kids, keep shifting benefactor that's what you had to do in the gears especially in creative writingit's 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, so you could amazing what will happen. produce a little pamphlet of your work. Then people could see it; that's how you got to be publishing known. They all produce a chapbook, an anthology of their own work. So they found out in a semester or a year how their work When it gets to the end of the first could be shaped. It works like a poem itself semester every kid I have will make a maybe ten poems work as one unit either in Scholastic manuscript. I tell them that we do theme, image, subject matter, chronology. If not wrife to win contests. That's stupid. This they don't want to do that, they can make a is another important audience outside. To taped reading with music. They play it make a manuscript something perfect, to get themselves; then they have their friends read it as perfect as it can be is an important lesson or they read their work. So it's a fifteen or to learn because when writers send something thirty minute reading of their work that really to an editor, the scmtiny there is just has a shape and an audience. And they make incredibly tough. This may be the most a cassette for me, or they can do a video. But valuable lesson I can teach them. I don't care they have to have one of these products. This whether they go on to be closet writers or year I did it early because I wanted to see writers that send work out or not. Learning to what would happen if they started in midyear get anything right is a lesson, not just in finding a shapewhat would happen at the writing, but in everything else that they do in end of the year wIlen they had to do it again. their lives. So I want that manuscript to be I'm just experimenting and that's important. perfect, and I make their groups and their pals Every class needs to feel that the teacher is and their friends inside the community of not giving them the same assignments over writing responsible for each other because I've and over againthat the teacher's not going got some who are spellers, and some who are back into the folder and pulling out the same technically correct, some who have a sense stuff that was done twenty years ago with for syntax and rhythm. They learn to know their mothers. I walk in and say, "I got this these kids and learn to model them. They're idea. I don't know whether it's going to work, learning not only to write but to critique but you are guinea pigs, and if you will help other people's writing. me make it work, I might turn this into an I keep the 1990 or '91, whatever, Poetry article so that other teachers can use it." All Market and The Writers' Market. Those are I of a sudden they feel importantthe expensive. That's fifty bucks right there. One audience outside the class again. is twenty dollars; the other is thirty. Mine are That's what I'm alwayspushingfor. usually &year Ixhind because you can get Writers have to project an audience of them half price that way. And they're usually readers, and if it's one teacher they're out of fairly accurate. The kids probably need to luck. Then it's nothing they're doing for start with regional publications. Most writers themselves and they don't own it. Years ago need to start regional and then move out. I'll in a factory, I think in Connecticut or say, "But dream." I've got a bunch of Jewish Massachusetts, these people decided if they kids who write a lot of ethnic stuff that is had better lighting they would have better absolutely dear and wonderful about Hanuk- production. So they told all the workers that kah and the Celebration of Lights. They don't they were going to spend some money to put need to send that to a Christian publication. I in better lighting so that these workers could have them look, and when they're ready I have better vision. It would help their eyes. It have them come to me with more than one was a lie. What they weke looking for was poemmaybe three manuscripts, three to production up. But they found out that even four pieces a rnanuccript. So they may have though production upped, the lighting was twelve pieces (maybe out of thirty) that they too expensive. They went back and told the feel good about. And I have to warn them, people, "Look, this lighting is actually being "You're going to want to pick your last work harmful to you, and we're going to cut it back communities Some kids can't write in class. Learning to because it's the closest to you. And you're be a writer is learning how you write, and tired of the other stuff. But the early work when, and where. If the kids learn to set it up may be the thing that has the biggest so they know when to write, that's great. audience; it may be the tightest. So I want to Even though i think, periodically, a creative see it all. I want you to clean it up. You've got writing teacher looking for a publication has to get it the way you want it to look on the got to come in two or three times a six weeks page. You've got to have your name and and say, "The first three days of this week address and phone number in the upper, I'm going to warn you nowstarting upper left hand corner or stamped on the Monday, we're going to put everything else back of every page. If there's a two-page you're doing aside and write in class, so you're manuscript, you've got to have break or no going to have to get that on your calendar." I break at the bottom of the page so the editor think it's important to write as a community knows how to interpret it." That's a lesson. together, as Ken Macrorie would have us do. That's what they have to do. I want that done Special things happen when we write right. TheY spread these out on the table for together. That sense of community has to be meall of the poems, all twelve. We'll go reinforced over and over again, and not just a through and pick groupings that I think work. sense of critiquing and sharing, but a sense of I suggest publicationsbecause I'm a writer. writing together on a shared subject or theme I've got five or six manuscripts out right or idea. I always give them three or four ideas nowand I tell them I have enough rejection in a lesson, never just one. That's the one notes to paper a wall. Writing is not particu- thing Macrorie got on to me about several larly successful to them as far as getting good years ago when I tried some of these ideas out feedback. But there's one thing that writers with him. He said, "What if a kid has never do: They live examined lives. They may not had insomnia?" I said, "Well, he can create be overhappy lives, but you know who you are the act of sleeplessness or the idea." And he and what your experience is better than other just said, "Well, I'm not buying that." So I people. And that is valuable as a human always have three or four ideas, and always being. It just is. I will go through and say, tell the kids if there's something right on the "This publication likes to have several top of their heads that's important to them different types of writing, so you may send that is what's going to come out anyway. And one abstract image poem, a narrative poem, a if they try to force my assignment when their poem that tells a story that is very personal. dad just lost a job, I'm an asshole. They might This publication wants artsy stuff so we're want to write me a note on the piece when going to look for a poem that is surrealstuff it's finished to say, "Remember this assign- that I would not normally let you get awa? ment. This is what I needed to write about. with, but this publication likes that. Most of This is what came out." I'm doing what Ken your friends like it even though they can't tell calls good writinghonesty. He says it you what it means." There may be an doesn't matter whether it's a lie or not, but audience for that, but I don't encourage that it's whether you're honest about it or not. at all. But we go through the_work And I don't care whether it's a college or a laugh. Then I say, "OK, take a risk with this middle school, and I do workshops every- one. You pick a place. If it's got a three on it, where, I tell them ridicule has no a place in that means it's like New York Times, or my classroom and if I find it, they're out of Poetry, or Ploughshares, or one of the big ones. there. They'll be reading their work to a brick And that's stupid to send there. Why would in the wall somewhere. Once you set up that you do that?" stricture, they're all so glad to hear you say it, They prepare the manuscript, and they whether they tell you or not, because our best send them out. I teach them how to get the writing comes from an emotional center that spacing right. I teach them the realities. is dangerous. You have to care about These are life messages. Also they learn something for it to turn out good. Or you instead of sending once to Scholastic, here can't write about a parent's divorce, a pet that they are sending five times, ten times. You'll got killed, the &nth of a grandparent, or be surprised. I already have several people someone who did something to you and accepted in ART/LIFE out in California, Z didn't apologize. If they can't write about Miscellaneous out of New York. But there are these things with honesty, then they'll never a lot of ways to publish. Postcards are great. write anything that's worth readingthat You can buy card stock (it only costs ten doesn't have an emotional center. You have cents apiece). Have kids lay it out, use high to start there.0 quality xerox, black and white pencil with 7 poetry. 10 BREAD LOAF NEWS Vampires at Midnight Father Old Man Jacob In my bedroom It used to be I would wait an Old man Jacob, Every night extra hour at your store so I could you walked, With the moon ride home with you. cane in hand, Making shadows We'd stop by McDonald's and listen over that bridge With its silver light, to a sports talk show. for the last twenty years I lay in my bed If we disagreed on who was of your life. With the sheets going to win a game, we'd bet. Everyday, Pulled up to my chin You made it fun to win, damn the weather, To protect my neck cause you acted like losing a you made that trip downtown From the vampires. dollar really bothered you. to the post office. "Every dog has its day in the sun," But one day I knew they were there. your frowning face would say, the mail went unanswered. They came through the hole as you threw a wrinkled up dollar at me. That was boarded up Sometimes I'd test your strength The paper said they found your body In the back of my closet. by hitting you and then running away. snagged on a tree Behind that hole in my closet You'd catch me and put me in a "pickle." five miles down Harpeth river, There was a bare room You'd roll me up into a ball where near Wheaton, With only small table I couldn't move my hands or legs. floating in the water And ^ few chairs Usually I was crammed in the corner of you danced in as a child. Clustered around it. the couch with my face pressed against In that room the cushion. "Mom!" I would scream Jacob, Lived ghosts hoping she would come and tell you to free what's drowning like? And vampires me. That played poker You'd take me across the street No one heard Until it got dark. to the field and pitch baseballs to me. your silent screams And then they came out Snowball fights in the winter as you choked For me. were great even though you always won. on each new breath, As I lay in bed The one good shot that hit your gaping mouth Holding my breath, face or the back of your head, and eyes. Waiting, made my entire week. Did you see the light I reasoned in my mind All that's past now. above you, That the vampires We may watch a football game on reflected on And the ghosts T.V., but that's about it. your upturned face, Would see my sister first I call you "Old fat guy," and feel the numbness And they would kill her; you call me "Young nerd." settle on your brain They wouldn't even know You say you can't wait for mc like a summer's heat? I was there. to leave so you'll have another room, Did you let yourself go, And with that reassurance, while I say I can't wait to go. give the current I slept. Neither one of us can tell the your poor body other, "I love you." for its amusement, Carolyn Koch We probably never will. feel your spirit The understanding is there, though. shed its husk I say, "You're wrong old, fat guy." and fly away? You say, "What does a young nerd know." Shawn Brown I slap your shoulder and we go our separate ways. Kenny Hirt SUMMER 1991

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