Today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day, started by John Baur and Mark Summers, aka Cap’n Slappy and Ol’ Chumbucket aka eight years ago. Here’s a treasure chest of ideas for pirate-themed writing: Ask your crew to make up their own pirate names and to describe what they look like, what adventures they’ve been [...]
Saturdays are a good day here for writing stories. Though we have plenty to do, we can usually find some time for writing. Often, my ten-year-old grabs some paper and illustrates a story on his own while everyone else is working around the house…Today, he spent some downtime writing a 500-word story to enter into [...]
If your writers-in-training resist sitting for a fifteen-minute jounal entry or other writing exercise, you might have some success weaning them into writing “a sentence a day.” This can be done on a computer, or handwritten in a notebook. I prefer the latter, since flipping to the story will maintain the quick and easy nature [...]
My first grade teacher, Miss Mary Bodi, spent a lot of time bringing out the writer in her students. Regularly throughout the year, she asked us to choose a picture from a file. In it were magazine advertisements, clipped comics, and other images she’d collected. One-by-one, were called to sit next to her at a [...]
I found a curious definition in The Superior Person’s Book of Words : the Abecadarian Insult, which is defined as follows: “Sir, you are an apogenous, bovaristic, coprolalial, dasypygal, excerebrose, facinorous, gnathonic, hircine, ithyphallic, jumentous, kyphotic, labrose, mephitic, napiform, oligophrenial, papuliferous, quisquilian, rebarbative, saponaceous, thersitical, unguinous, ventripotent, wlatsome, xylocephalous, yirning zoophyte.” The Translation follows: “Sir, [...]
“…don’t you like to write letters? I do because it’s such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you’ve done something.” ~Ernest Hemingway In this month’s issue of Family Fun magazine is a letter from a woman who prompted her son’s interest in writing by encouraging him to write to his favorite [...]
A colleague of mine uses this prompt with her college students. She simply asks the open-ended question, “What’s your problem?” When they ask for clarification, she refuses. Just answer the question, she tells them. Write for 15 minutes. You’ll be surprised at the results!
Betcha can’t write a story using only 50 words! Dr. Suess accepted this challenge from his editor, Bennet Cerf, and wrote Green Eggs and Ham with 50 words on the nose. We may not be seasoned authors like Suess, nor willing to ante up a $50 wager as Cerf did, but we can all try [...]
It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. ~Charles Dickens That certainly is true here in the Midwest, where this year’s first spring day is warm an inviting through the window, and brisk 36 [...]