Writing Stuff

Welp, now I am a writing teacher! Sorta. I'm teaching a co-op class off the book REACH FOR THE STARS Writing Workshop by the fabulous Susan Marlow (and featuring me :D). I've got 6 fun-lovin boys and a few with some real talent from what I can see from the two weeks I've been doing this. Real fun. I think we're gonna talk about showing-not-telling this week. Always a fun lesson.

AND going down to my younger grade tutoring. The elementary class with the boys was fun today. They've been doing well with their adjectives, so we decided to put them to work today writing a story about a secret agent that sneaks into Wal-Mart and removes a bomb and saves all the people (while listening to intense music of course!). The got SOOOO into it. Each boy had a different storyline...

By Jdude...

"Shisoh was in Wal Mart. He was looking for the missing bomb. He went to the first isle. Guards were setting the bomb. It was set, and the guards went away. Shisoh ran to it. He grabbed it and went out of the store. But he blew up." Oh sadness...the poor distressed author started to cry in the middle of class over the death of his heroic character. He sure has the writer's brain. He'll be amazing one day...I've said so ever since he was less than a year old, arranging magnetic letters on the fridge into fun, Sci-Fi names.

By Jess...

"Casban snuk into the store and went to the isle. It was the way to the bomb. He ran to the door and smashed the door open and found the bomb. He ran to it. The time was almost gone. 20 seconds. He ran out of the building and threw the bomb. It blew up. When the bomb blew up he ran to the store and all the people was safe." Good description huh? And this babe is a genius with his sentence structure already! :D

By Mayf (with some interpretation and help)...

"A dog was named Charlie. He ran into Wal-Mart. The bomb was in the corner of the store. He grabbed it in his mouth and set it down somewhere far. Then he went in to check if all the people were ok. The end." He loves the name Charlie :)

Sweeeeet huh? :D I'm proud of all my writing boys. Oh wait I have a girl too! In the junior-high division. She just did me a literary analytical essay on THE LAST BATTLE by C.S. Lewis. I purple-penned it over just a minute ago. She really put some good thought into it! Course it needs a little structure work, but the content is really good, I'm impressed!

But oh, a tragedy. My purple pen is running out of juice! I'm a fun pen kind of chick, and I had one of those big huge, stick-o'-dynamite looking ones that I used for EVERYTHING. Twas a purple-blue ink which made it good for editing. I like black better when I write for my own purposes, but this one was good and VERY used. Then Lukey the Penbreaker took it apart when I wasn't looking and I'm sure this put my pen into a state of trauma, for a couple days later it quit working. For three days I scribbled through sheets of paper, watching for a splash of blue. I shook, licked, blew...but to no avail. And I haven't found another big one since. I decided to move on with my life and find another pen somehow. I dug through the junk drawer and tried pen after pen, but those kind you buy in bulk rarely work to my satisfaction. Then a friend (not knowing my plight) sent me a cute purple pen. It wrote pretty...not fast enough for rapid brainstorming, but perfect for editing people's work. I dubbed it my editing only pen, and called it....The Purple Pen. Then my Gram gave me a pen for Christmas that looks like a candy-cane. I checked the color and consistency on my hand right off the bat and the ink was black! And it flowed wonderfully without globbing or quitting! Perfect! The Candy Cane is my Thinking Pen. I use it for school and to brainstorm and to take to class. It tends to fascinate people. I also have this New Year's Resolution to use up all my blank notecards by sending them to folks, and a found a couple of black pens that look boring, but they are of different consistencies and they each work well on a certain kind of paper. The Black Twins are my letter writers. How did I get off on this boring story? Yall don't even care, just me! :P Why do I write these things...oh well. All that to say, THE PURPLE PEN IS GOING OUT!!!!!!!!! I need a new one. One with a color besides blue or red and thick ink. I suppose The Purple Pen deserves to rest in peace...I've edited a whole Ethanator novel, many childrenses school papers, chapters in creative writing class...much has the mark of the signature Purple Pen.

The search begins.