Aloha

A small friend is turning 6 in two weeks.

She lives across the country,  

and we can't make it to the luau party.

We can't come for cake and balloons and birthday hugs,

but we can send pineapples

and kitties

 

and fancy toothpicks.

 They're like tiny, paper aloha hugs.

 

So, in shuttling wildebeests to soccer camp lately, 

I have discovered a few good surprises 

in being the carpool soccer mom.

 Books on CD. 

Car-goofy kids.

And sketchbook time

 while all my soccer players 

do their runs and drills.

Big chunks of sketchbook time 

help when working out new ideas.

 It's funny that I can sketch happy around a crowd, 

but I can't write a drop.

My thoughts turn to stone and my stories sink.

 But then, that's kind of a theme for me with words anytime lately.

I know some writers who scribble serious magic 

in coffee shops and airplanes. 

What about you?

When do you do your deep story work?

Can you create masterpieces with everyone there?

Do you thrive with hum and buzz?

Or do you like a hush when you create?

 

Wherever you find yourself this week,
I wish you peaceful breezes, sweet surprises, and
aloha.

Books {and CD books} we're enjoying this week:

Captain Cat by Inga Moore

Dream Friends by You Byun

Ling and Ting Share a Birthday by Grace Lin

Ling and Ting: Together in All Weather by Grace Lin

A Boy and a Jaguar by Alan Rabinowitz, ill. by Catia Chien

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin 

Chasing Secrets by Gennifer Choldenko

The Cat Who Came in Off the Roof by Annie M. G. Schmidt 

 

 

Writing is Magnetic

Why Speed Scrabble is good for writers...

Every Tuesday,

I visit the classroom

and play "literacy sort" with six and seven year-olds.

We cut words from paper 

and shuffle them around 

to find out how they are similar or different. 

Most of the kids are okay with this sorting game, 

but one of my new friends 

is traumatized. 

He wants his little word scraps to stay in one place, 

straight as soldiers, unsullied by battle.

As a writer enamored with my first drafts, I sympathize. 

It's painful to step back from your work. 

A good pair of pruning shears can help.

 Or a few rounds of Speed Scrabble. 

  

It's great for practicing revisions:

Learning to improvise,

To scribble 

your heart out, 

erase, 

and start again.

How do you step back from your work?

Are you open to change?

Do you improvise?

To fuel my Scrabble fire, 

we made alphabet rock magnets, 

inspired by this.

Beach.

Rocks.

Paint.

Lettering.

Magnets and Glue.

Voila!

Let the refrigerator games begin!

A Speed Scrabble how-to for novices:

Speed Scrabble is like "miracle-gro" for writers in revision.

The idea is that you play sans game board, creating a personal network of connecting words with your first handful of letter tiles. 

Every time you draw a new letter, you scramble your previous words to make room for it.  

Even if you adore that you made "quixotic," you are willing to sacrifice it to make a new bundle of connecting words. You're done when you can't figure out where to go next, or you've used up all of the tiles. It can be played alone or in competition, depending on your personality. 

Don't you feel your improvising juices sloshing around already?

Love Flunkey

Here's a new game for my wordy pals:

Word Chess

Start with a word. 

Change, add or subtract one letter to make a new word:

LOVE  

LONE

Keep changing one letter at a time 

until you can't make a new word. 

It's like CHESS, only without the chivalrous little guys you move around.

This is a fun solo game, but it is also fantastic with a partner. 

See who gets checkmated first!

Here's how I get from LOVE to FLUNKEY:

LOVE

LONE

LONG

LUNG

LUNGE

LUNGED

LUGGED

PLUGGED

PLUNGED

PLUNKED

FLUNKED

FLUNKEY

Play it:

*Can you make more words from FLUNKEY, 

changing, adding or subtracting one letter at a time, 

without repeating any of the previous words?

Tin Man, by Pip

Word Chess, Gauntlet Style 

Using the same rules, 

try to turn one word into a very different one. 

Here's CAT to DOG, one letter at a time:

CAT

COT

DOT

DOG

Play it:

* Can you turn HEART into BREAK?

* Can you get LOVE to EVOLVE? 

Word Party

We had a party this week to celebrate words and reading.

Sugar Snack helped me get ready while the girls were at school.

Pumpkin Gingersnap Cookies cut into "sight words" = Yum!

He can't read yet, but he knows tasty cookies.

I drew pictures of things we'd have at a party,

labeled them along with some random descriptive words,

cut them out

and put them on the table in a big bowl.

We took turns choosing from the bowl and sounding out words.

Once read, we decided where our words belonged:

food and party fare ("cup", "cookie," "bread")

decorated our plates,

descriptive words like "red" and "shiny"

fancied up our paper crowns

and a few unwanted words like "grouchy" and "tired"

ended up on noses and chairs.

After a delightful afternoon filled

with games, tea and word cookies,

the verdict was in:

"This was the best day ever! Can we have a word party every day?"

Word Therapy for Time-Crunched Writers

If writing life is a garden, mine is in winter.

I love this glorious season;

but with twins in kindergarten, a babe in arms

and a toddler in everything else

- including water and bags of pancake mix simultaneously -

available writing hours are slim to none.

Why fight it?

I'm a writer; I don't want to be a frustrated writer,

so I'm turning my daily adventures into word therapy.

It's a lot like writing, only without the pen or computer.

Some might call it "thinking,"

only it's more purposeful than that.

How do you feed your hungry inner writer and artist?

Lunch!

Read.

Read to kids, read to your partner, read to yourself. Reading is research.

Compare books, outline favorite plots, take notes on what works and doesn't work.

Play word games.

Play with rhyme, rhythm, pacing, pig latin, word patterns, alliterations, Cockney rhyming slang.

Observe. Question. Listen.

Be Sherlock Holmes, focusing on minute details in speech, expression, landscape, emotion.

Play- at kid level.

Celebrate word and art in the commonplace.

This one is so fun for me that I'll visit it in later posts.

Box City

Box Castle

Here's to getting our brain-dirt nice and loamy so that when we plunk down our story seeds, they'll shoot up into brilliant oaks of word!