Some pragmatic and productive alternatives to #NaNoWriMo here. "No NaNoWriMo? Eight ways to participate, sort of" This is a repost from around this time last year (with a few edits), for those of who who are not doing NaNo but want to share in the writing mojo that fills the air this time of year. Not everyone has the time to participate in NaNoWriMo. Many of us who can't participate wish we could. But just because we can't dedicate that much time and effort to our manuscripts for four solid weeks doesn't mean we can take part in the spirit of the event. Here, for the NoNaNoWriMos, is a list of eight things we can do to make November an especially fruitful writing month: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Maybe you don't have the time or energy or willpower to write a novel in a single month. Christy Peterson, Cultivating Wonder — Picture Book Idea Month and the Nonfiction Writer. Infographic: 15 Rules of "Netiquette" for online discussions. 10 Grammar Mistakes People Love To Correct (That Aren't Actually Wrong)
Brown Girl Dreaming | Granite Media. In this unique memoir, Jacqueline Woodson relates the memories, stories, and struggles of her childhood in a collection of free verse lyric and narrative poetry. For the most part each poem could stand on its own, but read together they form a rich story of a girl growing up and seeking after her dreams; in Woodson’s case the dream is to be a writer. These poems and stories are rich with humor, wonderful wordplay, vivid imagery of life in South Carolina and later Brooklyn, and an intense realness that comes from an author writing authentically and honestly about her own life.
Throughout the book there is a palpable feeling of love for family and friends, even as the poems acknowledge the challenges and conflicts inherent in family life, and perhaps because the poems acknowledge those challenges. This book inspires me to be a better, more authentic writer and a better family member and friend, and I’m sure it will inspire many other readers as well. I said I was bored with book reviews ( ), but it seems I am writing them again. Trying to keep things simple, though. 1000+ images about Writing 101 on Pinterest | Teaching writing, Anchor charts and National days. Seeing is Doing: 8 Creative Ways to Visualize Your To-Do List. A long to-do list can be overwhelming. Sometimes, you might want to take a step back and look at the day, week, or month at a high-level, visualizing what's coming up rather than just plowing through a list of to-dos.
But that's not always possible with a traditional to-do list app that's text- and list-based. If you're craving something more colorful and creative—or something that gives you a higher-level view of what you have on your plate—a visual to-do list could be exactly what you need. Below, you'll find seven different ways to visualize your to-do list, along with details on when each approach is most useful. 1. Hang Your To-Do List on the Wall to Keep Tasks Top-of-Mind I'm really bad about creating to-do lists and then never actually using them. The problem: I never actually look through my to-do folder. Another thing I like to do is to write to-dos in the same notebook I use to take notes while doing research for articles I'm writing.
Use a big sheet of paper and markers 2. 3. 4. Long live the blog! Learn how digital writing is making students smarter. How Stephen King Teaches Writing - The Atlantic. Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft has been a fixture in my English classroom for years, but it wasn’t until this summer, when I began teaching in a residential drug and alcohol rehab, that I discovered the full measure of its worth. For weeks, I struggled to engage my detoxing, frustrated, and reluctant teenage students. I trotted out all my best lessons and performed all my best tricks, but save for one rousing read-aloud of Poe’s “A Tell-Tale Heart,” I failed to engage their attention or imagination.
Until the day I handed out copies of On Writing. Stephen King’s memoir of the craft is more than an inventory of the writer’s toolbox or a voyeuristic peek into his prolific and successful writing life. King recounts his years as a high school English teacher, his own recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, and his love for his students (“even the Beavis and Butt-Head types”). Jessica Lahey: You write that you taught grammar “successfully.” King: It can go either way. Lev Grossman on his daughter, Lily: How being a father ruined my life and made me a better writer.
That’s the setup I want back again for writing. RT @OverDriveLibs George R.R. Martin Still Uses A DOS Word Processor. Create blackout poems out of @nytimes articles | "Searching for Poetry in Prose" Life Sentences: The Grammar of Clickbait! These Upworthy Titles Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity. But You Won’t Believe What Happens Next. Clickbait is bad. Clickbait is ruining journalism. Everyone knows this. Everyone hates the formulaic success that BuzzFeed has generated with endless listicles about animals, the 90s, and animals in the 90s.
Upworthy inspires a slightly more complex disdain: it claims to engage in advocacy by “raising awareness” through viral videos about “issues” instead of cats and the quizzes. An interesting thing about these complaints, besides the fact that they all read a little like Business Insider articles, is that they all address, even focus on, the titles of the clickbait articles. I Am Here to Take Back the Clickbait. Upworthy Titles Often Make a Relatively Banal Claim. A quick perusal of today’s Upworthy page shows sundry examples of this construction, which range from the accusatory: There’s A World War Happening Online Right Now. To the empowering: to the defensive: to the cryptic: Gigaom | Visual storytelling site Storybird adds longform option for the school-age set. Do What You Do, Love What You Love : Camille Rankine : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation. By Camille Rankine Last year, while speaking to a writing class at Medgar Evers College, I let slip a terribly-kept secret: there’s no money in this poetry thing.
So we have to find other ways of making a living. A student in the front row expressed his dismay at my admission. Not at the idea that, if he chose to pursue poetry further, he would be accepting a life of poverty, but instead at my apparent resignation to the low earning potential of my writing. He thought my claim belied a lack of drive and ambition. “You’re selling yourself short,” he said. Interesting choice of words. Once when I acknowledged to another poet that, if given the opportunity (i.e. through sudden windfall of cash via lottery winnings, discovery of buried treasure, money tree, or similar), I probably wouldn’t work at all, she said, “You see, you’re buying into the idea that poetry isn’t work.”
Am I selling myself short? I’ve been working at some job or another since I was fifteen. The 2014 Pulitzer Prizes | 2014 Winners: Donna Tartt's "The Goldfinch" for fiction. On Beyond Haiku: New Forms for Poetry Month. Evolution of Storytelling. Thanks, I need these. MT @brainpicker: The art of kind criticism- Daniel Dennett's 4 rules for arguing intelligently. By Maria Popova “In disputes upon moral or scientific points,” Arthur Martine counseled in his magnificent 1866 guide to the art of conversation, “let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent. So you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery.” Of course, this isn’t what happens most of the time when we argue, both online and off, but especially when we deploy the artillery of our righteousness from behind the comfortable shield of the keyboard.
That form of “criticism” — which is really a menace of reacting rather than responding — is worthy of Mark Twain’s memorable remark that “the critic’s symbol should be the tumble-bug: he deposits his egg in somebody else’s dung, otherwise he could not hatch it.” But it needn’t be this way — there are ways to be critical while remaining charitable, of aiming not to “conquer” but to “come at truth,” not to be right at all costs but to understand and advance the collective understanding. 6 Technology-Based Poetry Ideas For Students That Think They Hate Poetry.
Excited to see this book next month, and the trailer is incredible | BEEKLE by Dan Santat. Portrait of The Artist As a Young Adult: Celebrating Youth Art Month in YA Lit. A variety of scientific studies have proposed that scent is a powerful trigger for memory, and for me, that has certainly been true. Cinnamon and ginger will always kindle the warm anticipation associated with my family’s Christmas cookie baking. Similarly, there’s a particular combination of musky hairspray, sweat, & dust that immediately brings back the nerves and adrenaline of theatrical performances. And finally, the smell of fresh drawing paper, pencil shavings, and paint fumes will always be thrilling and soothing for me.
Why? Because those scents symbolize a key aspect of my adolescent identity: being an artist. By high school, art was embedded into my daily life. Accordingly, I’m always keen to find stories that explore and celebrate the varied roles of visual art in the lives of young adults. Page by Paige – Laura Lee Gulledge (2012 Great Graphic Novels for Teens) When her family moves from Virginia to Brooklyn, Paige’s only friend and solace is her trusty sketchbook. Try These Word Cloud Tools to Help Students Analyze Writing. Using word clouds can be a good way to help students analyze documents. By copying the text of a document into a word cloud generator your students can quickly see the words that appear most frequently in that document. Word clouds can also be used to help students see which words that they have frequently used in their own works.
Have your students create word clouds of their work during the revision process of writing a story or essay. The word cloud will quickly show students which words they have used a lot. Then ask them to think about synonyms for the words that they have used most often in their writings. Here are some good tools your students can use to create word clouds.TagCrowd offers three ways to create word clouds. ABCya! Tagxedo makes it very easy to customize the design of your word clouds. Wordle is regarded by some as the "original" online word cloud generator.
Disclosure: ABCya! Twenty Rules for Better Book Displays. *This article originally appeared in the March 2013 issue of RA News. Subscribe to RA News and any of our other newsletters.* When I'm not writing for RA News or working as Marketing Director at Lawrence Public Library, I blog about practical marketing for public libraries at www.658point8.com. Any given week, I'll write about trendy things like social media engagement or scintillating topics like how to write a better subject line for your email newsletter.
As a marketer who reviews statistics and demographics constantly, I find this fascinating. Since writing that post, I've corresponded with lots of librarians about this topic and have thought more about what makes a good book display. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. . , but it is not always so for our customers. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. Knew they would be popular if they were more visible and pulled a few hundred of them for a display. Collection, and like National Geographic, they flew off the shelves. 18. 19. 20. School technology plan would begin with infrastructure and training, House Speaker Becky Lockhart says. 2013 Granite Book Awards: Young Adult Fiction | Granite Media.