Exciting Writing

A teacher asked her colleague, Emily, what she did about children who don’t want to, don’t like to, write.

After a pause Emily replied that she could think of no child in her class who didn’t like writing.

It’s true. I know the children in her class, and even children for whom the mechanics remain difficult want to, indeed, like to, write. It led me to think about why that was. Soon after that another teacher told me of how the teacher taking over her class in September had come to her in amazement, asking what she had done to make that class so enthusiastic about writing.

‘They love it,’ she told my friend. ‘And what is this freewriting they talk about?’

My friend had introduced a daily freewriting session. For ten minutes she and the children wrote freely, non-stop, about anything they pleased. There was time for sharing, too. Children (and adults) who wanted to could read aloud what they had written. And they wanted to. And they wanted to hear each other’s writing.

Which made me think of a Year 2 boy who mystified his teacher, and me, by telling her that what he liked about writing was that it was exciting. We didn’t doubt that writing could be exciting, but this boy wrote the most mundane and pedestrian things, usually no more than one sentence in a single session; nothing intrinsically exciting, we thought.

Then his teacher observed him more carefully when he was writing. He wrote with others around a table. They leaned in and out from the page, often pausing to exchange information about what they were doing;  reading their words aloud and sharing their drawings. They were a little community of writers; and being part of that community, surely, was exciting. What were they doing? They were coming up with ideas, thoughts, memories that started in their heads and which they were able to translate into words and images on the page. Not only that, once on the page it was there to share. And they got to hear other people’s words, also. It was exciting!

What is most exciting, is their sense of agency. They were able to choose what to write and how to write it.

Pause for a moment and think about how thoughts shift around in your head, how they begin to shape themselves into something more coherent and then the hand takes over and those thoughts and arrangements of words appear on page or screen. Exciting!

Which brings me back to Emily, and a Reception/ Year 1 class just before Christmas. We were making garlands from card circles to be hung from a string. We suggested that they think about writing names of special people on the cards, and special Christmas wishes. They could write their own names if they wished (everyone would be able to do that) and then the names of others. Emily and I had their families in mind, I think, but these children set to work writing the names of their friends in school. And they moved on to making cards. They sat side by side, writing and decorating cards for each other. They saw no need for envelopes, secrets or surprises. Harry and Will, crouched together on the floor, explained that Harry was making a card for Will and Will was making a card for Harry. Children gathered round the table where there were gold and silver pens. They offered running commentaries to the future recipient of the card on its progress. ‘We will go to the beach,’ wrote Candice. They were in charge. When I returned to the class in the next week, they were eager to continue this compelling activity.

What is exciting? It is the knowledge that we can write what we want in ways that we choose. Teachers who attend my writing workshops know that they can write what and how they wish. It is something of a joke that they never do as they are told [although they often do] but that freedom, that sense of agency is, it seems to me, crucial as we learn how to write and understand what writing can do and be for us. What is exciting about writing for you? What stops the excitement? Is there something you can do about it?

Children in Emily’s class have agency. They have known since they were in reception that they are in charge of and have responsibility for their writing. They have regular opportunities to write freely. They must also follow given briefs. They do so in the knowledge that their teacher welcomes their personal interpretations and that they can solve any problems the task poses for them in ways that suit them and which strengthen their writing practice.

That is exciting.

Pause, and then write

Happy New Year!

The sun is shining as I write this and I am about to go for a walk with a neighbour. Although the paths are muddy and the breeze chilly it will be the loveliest thing. Sometimes walking feels a bit like writing. Yesterday, despite the sunshine, it took me an age to get out on the road. I suddenly found a number of small jobs that had to be done before I could go out. I prevaricated about gloves and hats. I sat by my muddy boots for quite some time, simply staring into space. And then I was out in the lanes, startled by the yellow of a dandelion, happy to see the blush of mauve in the sky, sitting for a while on one of the benches John has made in the woodland, glad to gaze at the circle of hazels. And, today, how much pleasure there is to be had in walking with a friend.

And so it is with many things. We put off the moment, whether it is the plunge into a pool, the first strides of a run, the rolling out of a yoga mat. Afterwards when we have walked or run or made friends with downward dog, we feel good. Writing can make us feel well. It is good for the mind and spirit and the imaginative life. If you are reading this, you probably know that already. You may have been given, or gifted yourself, a new notebook for the new year. Hurrah! But let’s be realistic, and kind to ourselves. At this time of year we are bombarded with exhortations and advice towards the new  person we are going to be in 2022.The stakes are too high! I have a number of notebooks that I began with a flourish on the first day of several Januaries and they remain  unfilled. Once I had missed a day, or two, somehow I couldn’t go back to it. It is even worse if you have a diary where blank, dated pages serve as reminders of your failure to write on Tuesday and Saturday. It’s already past the first few days of the new year, so let’s start with the kind of cheap notebook that Natalie Goldberg recommends. It is spiral bound, may have a cartoon character on the front and is not so fat it can’t, realistically, be filled in a month.

Filling a notebook a month, getting the words on the page is what Natalie Goldberg recommends. It is our daily jog, our morning flow. Some people write morning pages: twenty minutes of non-stop writing with no expectation, even, that you will read back what you have written. Some people make a date to write with a friend. This is low stakes writing. There is no need to worry about the Great British novel just now. Tjis is just about words on the page.

In last Sunday’s Observer Magazine (2.1.2022) Michael Rosen wrote about the importance of play in his life, of playing with words and, as he learned when his son died, how writing things down helps him to confront the sadness:

… penning a poem about sadness or a sense of loss can leave you feeling better as well. It helps, laying things down on paper. I call it “unfolding”.

Everyone can do this, it doesn’t take expertise. Think of it as doodling with words.

There’s a tyranny to education: learning to write frees you, but we’re restricted by being taught that formal sentences are all that’s worthwhile. Instead, scribble down fragments – think up half-lines mixed with song lyrics, lines from films, things people say. Don’t overthink it - it’s like talking with your pen. This process is a liberation for the mind.

I am thinking that you know all this. And you know how, not only the commitment to the formal sentence, but the requirement to write at particular times and in ways that are defined by others often dominates how children write in schools. For many, it is the only way they experience writing. The young people we teach experience sadness, too. They have complicated lives. They worry about things. Are you able to squeeze five or ten minutes of free writing, playful writing, into their school day?  In schools that I know where there are regular opportunities for free writing, young people like writing, often love writing. And they learn, also, the ways in which writing can be their own, that writing can make you feel better.

So I send you the very best of wishes for the year ahead. Write often. Write for your own reasons.  Be playful and tender. Allow the writing to bring you back to yourself. I hope, also,  that you are able to find the space where children may write for their own purposes and that they learn what a good thing that is.

How about a five minute free write every day? Start with this month’s thirty writing prompts to break into the page, along with an idea from David Morley.

Love Writing

There’s no shortage of advice for writers from writers.

In interviews, blogs and newspaper articles we are able to learn from the published and the prize-winning. Sit down, stand up, write propped up in bed, we hear.

• Craft sentence by sentence (Andrew Cowan).

• Get the words down fast and then revise (Stephen King)

• Write what you know (Geraldine Brooks amongst many).

• Forget the boring old dictum "write about what you know". Instead, seek out an unknown yet knowable area of experience that's going to enhance your understanding of the world and write about that. (Rose Tremain).

We will take the advice that suits us. But what might we take and apply to our teaching?

I have begun thinking about this more deeply. Most writers are addressing an adult audience, most of whom want to be published. However, each one of us is a writer. Each person we teach should learn how writing works for them. I have been sifting through all this counsel to find the ideas that will inform our practice. We probably don’t need to take up Hilary Mantel’s  suggestion that we find ourselves an accountant. Anne Enright’s recommendation of whiskey alongside all her other advice might be an interesting addition to the Year 10 classroom but …

• Be kind to yourself, say Roddy Doyle and Kate DiCamillo, as do many other writers in their different ways.

• Love what you do, says Jeannette Winterson.

• Have fun, says Anne Enright.

Initially, I discounted this advice as irrelevant to the task of teaching writing. The current National Curriculum is unlikely to have much truck with such sentiments as being kind or loving what you do. As for having fun - please be serious. There are criteria to be met. I thought again.

Seriously.

Seriously, having fun, being kind to ourselves, loving what we do, sit at the centre of the writing workshop. We have become dominated by a curriculum overloaded with content and anxious about skills. On-line answers to remote learning emphasise rules and routines. A friend of mine lamented the impossibility of keeping her son focused on the deathly slow progress of a PowerPoint presentation for writing. Yet when she abandoned the prescribed course and went for a walk, weaving writing into the activity, the roles were reversed, her son calling her to wait, while he completed his task. 

Let us begin with our writers, whether adult or child. Place them at the centre of our teaching. Writing springs from safe spaces, mutual encouragement, universal celebrations.

When we find the ways in which we love writing, our writing grows. Let us be kind to ourselves and to each other. 

Happy new year!