I Stole This But I Like It Anyway

On Janette Rallison's web page she provides her Top 10 Reasons to be a Writer:

1. Librarians think you're cool.
2. You have an excuse to be cluttered: you have no time for cleaning; you're creating ART.
3. You get a collection of stories you'll always enjoy reading because you wrote them.
4. If you publish, you don't have to think about what you'll get your friends and family for Christmas—they're all getting your book!
5. You can name your characters all the things your husband wouldn't let you name your children.
6. You can work in your pajamas.
7. You get to network with other writers.
8. Money and fame. Ha! Ha! But I just had to throw that one in.
9. You can pattern your villains after the guys who dumped you in high school, and
10. You don't have bad days; you just have more writing material to draw from!

More Zombies!

For those who just can't get enough zombie haiku, I wrote these during a district training session last semester:

Enduring district
Training sessions turns teachers
Into zombie hordes

Reverse zombie-ism:
Giving seventh grade numbskulls
Life Monday morning

Hygienic zombies
Always floss with arteries
After every meal

Losing gray matter
Voluntarily won’t ward
Off pot head zombies

Actively engaged
Students are more resistant to
Sudden zombie raids

The zombie brain lust
Proves difficult for teenage
Hemispheres to slake

Teachers are easy
Targets for zombie feasting
After P.T.C.

Valentine Splat!

I know I profess not to like Valentine's Day. That's not a lie. I don't. But that doesn't stop me from writing about the love of my life. Stop puking now. Save it for after the cheese.

“Still…After Twelve Years”

If I say
that when I glanced
across the room and
your eyes
caught mine
in a tractor beam, that
my heart skipped a beat,
it would be a gross
miscommunication,
an underestimation of what
I really mean to say.

And to describe my sentiment
by saying it
was as if my guts turned
somersaults
or fluttered
would seem
too cliché; it's more
of a stutter,
a seventh grader sweating at
his first dance, ogling
at the head cheerleader across
the grubby gym floor: infinite
space and streamers and
longing
in-between.

I couldn’t use the words
palpitate (too scientific),
or salivate (too…well, you know) either,
to describe
that instant;
and twitterpate is too
childish and insignificant,
like I’m expecting a do-over for shanking
a kickball across the white-lined blacktop
while you stand watching.

No,
it's more
of a ratta-
tatta-
splat
that hits you square
in the chops—drenches you
like the sudden shock of an
unexpected
water balloon filled
with stale, cold
hose water on a
muggy summer morning,
along with the breathless
impact of a cornerback
upending an unsuspecting receiver
on a simple comeback
route thrown inches too high.

Yeah, more
like that, but then
again, it’s still not quite
right, because there are some
moments that the brain perceives,
with all its intellect,
all its knowledge and
power over language, but
will never
be able to communicate
my love
accurately.

A Few Tips from a Psycho Genius

Unfortunately, Stephen King's language in On Writing isn't really appropriate for school. It's an excellent book for writers--a memoir on the craft. Here are a few notes that I pull out for my student writers:

Notes from Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

(page 37) There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.

(page 57) When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story…When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.

(page 74) Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don’t have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough.

(page 77) …The writer’s original perception of a character or characters may be as erroneous as the reader’s.

(page 77) …Stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea.

Toolbox: It’s best to have your tools with you. If you don’t, you’re apt to find something you didn’t expect and get discouraged.
1. Common tools go on top. The commonest of all, the bread of writing, is vocabulary.
2. You’ll also want grammar on the top shelf of your toolbox.
3. Avoid the passive tense.
4. The adverb is not your friend.
5. Fear is at the root of most bad writing.

(page 142) …Good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals (vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style)…It is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.

(page 145) If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.

(page 147) You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so.

(page 150) If there’s no joy in it, it’s just no good.

(page 153) Writing is at its best—always, always, always—when it is a kind of inspired play for the writer.

(page 163) In my view, stories and novels consist of three parts: narration, which moves the story from point A to point B and finally to point Z; description, which creates a sensory reality for the reader; and dialogue, which brings characters to life through their speech.

(page 173) Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story. Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s not a question of how-to, you see; it’s also a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can only learn by doing.

(page 174) Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.

(page 178) When it’s on target, a simile delights us in much the same way meeting an old friend in a crowd of strangers does.

(page 200) Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create a sense of artificial profundity.

(page 208) Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to theme.