Writers: Know Thyself

If only this would work!

Just as there are many ways to outline a novel or memoir, there are many ways to set up a writing routine.  Finding the time to write can be daunting.  Not many writers can afford—whether it’s time or money—to go away to write.  That is for the lucky few.  Most writers carry many pens…and lots of paper.  I know I do.  Writers are parents, teachers, caregivers, or executives.  Some writers are doctors, lawyers, chefs, or small business owners.  The fact is that most people have too much to do.  

            So what should writers do?  First and foremost, a writer needs to know thyself—intimately.  What works for you?  Do you like to get up early to write, before your regular day begins?  Or rather you could be like me and be awake anyway so you may as well get up to do something constructive.  One of my favorite writers, Mary Higgins Clark, who also has five children, would get up at about 4 a.m. to write before her children stirred in the morning.  Some writers come alive at night when the house is quiet and dark, the only illumination coming from their computer screens and faces.  Some writers are lucky and can tuck in what I call “writing chunks of time” throughout the day and thereby rack up the word count and storyline.     

            However you can find time to write is good and right for you.  Then try and make it a routine for yourself.  Like exercising.  In fact, when I’m exercising, I’m usually writing in my mind.  Sometimes, I work out scenes and passages in my stories or essays, so I always keep paper and pen nearby.  I use exercise tapes, or rather DVD’s now, an old habit from the days when my children were too little to leave alone to go to a gym, so I can pause the DVD to jot down ideas for my writing.  Walking or hiking outdoors is a good exercise to help me clear the mind of all my obligations and think about my writing.  Sometimes, I carry a small tape recorder.

The most important thing is not to get too discouraged if you miss a writing session.  Tomorrow’s a brand new opportunity to get back into the computer seat and start creating.  I’ve written about 13,000 words this first month of my Write Your Memoirin Six Months course and have many thousands more to write.  This is only the beginning.   

Creating the Outline for Memoir

Supporting book structure with scaffolding
 

            The opinion is divided about whether or not to create an outline for a creative writing project.  Which side are you on and why?

The mentors of my “Write Your Memoir in 6 Months” course, Linda Joy Myers, Ph.D., President of National Association of Memoir Writers, and Brooke Warner of Warner Coaching call the outline “scaffolding.” This makes sense to me, for just as scaffolding supports the workers as they construct a building, scaffolding can support writers as they complete a writing project. Especially with chapters and book-length material, an outline—or scaffold—can assist with organizing your thoughts and thereby your writing. It can also show a writer what material was covered already and where to go from there.

The trouble I had, prior to this memoir course, was organizing my material. Which memories to keep in, which to leave out. What to write first, what to write next. And, of course, what does it all mean. Outlining first gave me a chance to think about my memoir in its entirety.

There are many ways to write outlines.  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  Some writers want lots of notes and guidance [like me]; some writers are more skeletal in their needs.  Outlining allows some writers to write out whole scenes if the scenes come to the writer during the outlining process while other chapters can be simply memory prompts or ideas to be fleshed out later.  Outlines keep writers moving forward in their work.  But they are merely suggestions for the final product. 

Outlines or scaffolds do not need to be followed to the letter.  They are only starting points or “Dag-namit, where do I go from here?” type documents.  Outlines can be changed in part or completely as the story develops in the writer’s mind.

 

Yes, outlines take time to write.  It takes time for you to consider your memoir or novel as a whole, why you are writing it, and what you are trying to say through it.  After all, Family—The Ties that Bind…And Gag! probably wasn’t written in a day.  I wonder if Erma Bombeck used scaffolds to build her memoirs.      

 

 

The Storyteller

Why am I a writer?  That's a good question.  I have always been a storyteller.  Perhaps I get it from my father.  He would tell us stories by candlelight every night in the summertime.  Each night one of his four children would be the hero of the adventure, rescuing the others from imminent danger or leading the way back home to safety.  We would hold our breath during the climaxes every time, even though we knew the story would end happily.  Maybe that was it.  Life situations don’t always end happily, but in stories they can. 

The Storyteller

I don’t write fantasy, I write contemporary short stories, mostly YA.  No vampires or zombies or aliens.  While they are all fascinating stories, mine are grounded in possibilities.  Some protagonists have parents, some don’t.  But no matter what happens in the story, somehow the protagonist learns to deal with the life situation he or she is living.  That’s not to say that nothing exciting happens in my stories.  I LOVE adventure and I LOVE nature, so I usually combine the two to create action in the story.  I have children lost in a cave while the protagonist deals with feelings of loss and anger and another situation where a young protagonist is the only one home to rescue her grandfather from danger.  My characters deal with unwanted responsibilities and desires to make others happy.  While I realize that these are universal themes, I hope to make my stories unique in their situations.      

I love to learn, as I have said before.  I enjoy researching topics and speaking with experts for short articles I write for a local magazine.  Whether I am learning something new with the students I substitute teach or learning along with my classmates in a new online course I’m taking, I enjoy telling stories of my learning experiences.  That’s what I will be doing in my memoir about going to college with five children in tow.  My learning stories encompass how to study on the go, attending my children’s sporting events, creating chemistry presentations with the twins, and creating French videos with NON-French speaking camera crew—okay, my younger children. 

What about you?  Do you like to create stories or relay family anecdotes?

Learning How to be a Writer and a Saleswoman

I sold a few books the other night at Camden County Community College in New Jersey during the Resource Fair for Special Needs Children.  I am a writer and a part of a resource anthology entitled Easy to Love but Hard to Raise.  This book is about children with “invisible” disabilities [ADHD, PBD, SPD, OCD, PDD, etc.] and the parents and guardians and doctors who assist with their upbringing.

I also contribute blog posts about my experiences raising a daughter with ADHD and learning disabilities.  My most recent post is about Driver's Education.  You can read it at http://www.easytolovebut.com/.

Okay, so I write.  But this saleswoman hat seems a bit big.  It covers my eyes and ears.  I sit.  I smile.  I play with bookmarks and post cards.  I try to pull parents and guests to my table with my sappy spiel.  Most times, I just looked ridiculous in my oversized saleswoman hat.

            Toward the end of the night, I did engage other parents in discussion about our special needs children.  We compared notes.  We shared experiences, but I only sold a few books.  Any suggestions for next time I need to sell books?  I need to get better if I’m going to publish a memoir and become a saleswoman for that book. 

Learning Illuminates Life

Changed my mind.  I don't want to go to school.

Life itself is a journey.  Recording life’s adventures is different from writing about them. 

I’ve been recording my family’s adventures for years.  Now I wish to write about my journey.  This is memoir.  This is what I hope to learn.   

            I think we all learn something new each day.  I know I do.  Whether I substitute teach in grammar school or high school, I’m learning how to control each mix of students, how Mrs. Jones performs the daily tasks, or how to present geometry word problems to the class.  Life is a learning journey.

 

I’ve been writing about my adventures in substitute teaching where I have to ad lib intelligence in all disciplines.  It’s like being on stage without a script.  I still expect to share a few humorous anecdotes while substituting, but I’d like to share my education journey through college as a non-traditional student—as a Mom with five children in tow. 

 

I’d also like to share my experiences in learning how to write memoir using these college adventures as the foundation for a book.  I’m signed up for a course, “Write Your Memoir in Six Months.”  It begins in January.  And I’m just as scared as I was when I began college as a non-traditional student.  My twins, my babies, were in second grade at that time, my son was in fifth grade, another daughter was in seventh and my oldest, who has learning disabilities, was in eighth. 

 

Come; join me on my journey into writing memoir.  Please offer your advice and support.  Pray I have the courage to complete the task in front of me.  Thanks for stopping by my new Adventures in Writing blog.  Please stop by again.  ~ Victoria Marie Lees

Starting the School Year with a Substitute

No one can plan for medical emergencies or when babies are born.  Several times I have been a substitute for the first week or two of school.  This particular time, a history teacher’s wife was having their first baby.  You can’t miss that.  You’ll regret it for the rest of your life if you do. 

Substitutes at the beginning of the school year need to trudge through the deluge of returning paperwork before they can even get to the lesson plans. 

In September, especially at the high school level, there is usually a discussion about 9-11.  What I didn’t realize was that these sophomore students were only pre-schoolers at the time.  They did not understand what was going on.  Therefore, it was necessary to tweak the teacher’s lesson plan a little. 

Instead of having the students write the required essay about where they were and how they felt about 9-11, I attempted to lay out the facts through famous photographs and the personal details of my day so that students could begin to understand what actually happened.  I had the students brainstorm why they think the particular targets were chosen by Al-Qaeda; i.e., the financial system [twin towers in New York], our national defense [the Pentagon], and, of course, the leader of the United States [the White House].  After our discussions, then I had the students write their opinions about the topics discussed. 

I liked having the same subject matter for the whole day.  It gave me the chance to get better with each class period.    

For this history class, I had the opportunity to look at the 100-question citizenship test for the United States and the students and I got a chance to work together to see how much we knew.  I was surprised at how much I didn’t know.  Together we learned more about our government, the political party platforms, and what it means to be a citizen in the United States. 

This is why I enjoy substitute teaching.  It keeps me on my feet and learning. 

The Pleasure of Reading to Children

My greatest pleasure, when substituting for the younger grades, is reading to the class.  I was lucky enough to enjoy this privilege when my own children were in grade school.  My children would choose their favorite stories for me to read to the class, usually Dr. Seuss or Bill Peet books.  Other times, they wanted me to read one of my works-in-progress, a new children’s adventure short story.  For those, I’d bring in visuals, magazine photos of bats or caves, or family camping photos of locations we’d visited.  Sometimes my son or daughter would draw pictures to go along with my children’s stories.

            Whenever we have extra time in class or if the teacher says that the substitute can either read a story to the class or allow free play time, I choose to read to the students.  And I don’t just read.  I sing, as in the poetry of the words of the story.  In the youngest stories there is usually a cadence, a flow that a reader can capture for the children.  Dr Seuss and Bill Peet (and many other authors) excel at having a rhythm to their story words.

            Then there are the possibilities in the stories.  What happens next?  Always give the children a chance to think about what could happen next and what it would mean to the protagonist [main character] of the story.  This works on students’ critical thinking skills.   

            Reading a good story to students can relieve tension in the classroom, both the teacher’s and the students’.  After a session of structured teaching, reading can allow teachers and students the chance to relax and ready themselves for the next subject. 

If you’re ever lost for something to do when substituting, or if the students are becoming rambunctious while you struggle with lesson plans, pluck a book from the classroom bookshelves and bring the students to the carpet.  Reading gives both children and adults a chance to imagine the possibilities.