Nurturing curiosity

Last weekend, I attended the Rocky Mountain SCBWI conference in Denver. It was a terrific meeting (such an enthusiastic, involved group!), and I had the opportunity to talk with agent Karen Grencik of Red Fox Literary, and editors Emily Clement of Arthur A. Levine Books and Sylvie Frank of Holiday House--gracious women, every one.

As a non-fiction writer, I paid close attention when the Common Core State Standards came up. Both Karen and Sylvie mentioned the importance of tying books to the Common Core. If a story has the potential to be used in the classroom, it will be much more likely to get published.

More and more, teachers are looking for books that allow them to "teach smarter, not harder," as a principal at a nearby school so eloquently put it. What does that mean? Teachers need books that teach literacy while providing curriculum-related content. Books that kill two birds with one stone, if you will.

(As an aside: If you teach science, Melissa Stewart has a terrific Pinterest board to help you find books to fit some of the Common Core standards.)

Teachers need to find ways to teach math and science simultaneously. Science and math are closely connected, and yet I get the sense that they're typically taught as completely distinct subjects. Do they have to be? Can't we interweave them, thereby increasing the amount of time available to dedicate to both?

For example, in a life cycles unit a class may order caterpillars. Watching them pupate and emerge as adult butterflies is a remarkable experience, but it can be so much more.

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Order caterpillars that are smaller, those that have more time to grow. Then have the students measure them. Weigh them. Graph the change in size over time. Weigh plant material before it's given to the butterflies, then again a day later. How much weight was lost? Was the same amount gained by the caterpillars? Why or why not? If the plants lost more weight than the caterpillars gained, where could the rest have gone?

Think you don't have enough science time to extend the life cycles unit? That's the beauty of "teaching smarter"--you can squeeze science into the daily math routine. And numbers are so much more interesting when they mean something.

I think--or rather hope--that the Common Core will encourage just this kind of cross-over in the classroom. After meeting with the principal mentioned above, and one of the teachers at her school, I strongly believe that we can again foster a love of science--and math--by returning to a hands-on approach and blurring the lines between subjects.

Math is fun and cool when it has real-life application. And science is all about curiosity--after all, what is a scientist but a kid who never stopped asking "Why?" 

The possibilities for exploration and discovery, critical thinking and inquiry-based learning are endless if we can just start to see the curriculum in a new way. 

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R is for Revision

For the longest time, I didn't know how to go about revising. I can line-edit, but I didn't know how to go about tackling the big picture.

Last month I attended a revision workshop hosted by SCBWI Germany/Austria. They brought in Sara Grant (co-founder of Undiscovered Voices and editor at Working Partners), and her Revision Game workshop was FABULOUS! I learned a ton.

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I can't share everything Sara taught us, but here are a few snippets to get you started.

Figure out what's at the heart of your story. What's the meaning behind it? (What point were you trying to make? Why did you write it?)  Now read your story with this in mind. Did you tell the story you wanted to tell? No? Revise accordingly. Get rid of anything that doesn't get at the heart of the story.

Create a time line. You probably wrote over weeks, months, or even years, and it's easy to lose track of the day of the week/time of day in the story. Is the timing consistent?

Check for duplications, action (too much? not enough?), exposition (too much? not enough?), dialogue, and setting.  Make sure your readers know where the scene takes place and who is talking, but don't overuse attributions.

Read the story for each character (read only that character's scenes). Can you track the character's emotional arc? Do you even need this character? If not, can you combine it with another underused character to make one stronger/more relevant character?

Once you've got the big stuff figured out, it's time for micro-editing.

(If you're a member of SCBWI, see if you can get your region to host a workshop. Sara lives in the UK, but her debut novel Dark Parties comes out in the US in August, so she might be in the neighborhood if you're state-side. Seriously, look into it. I can't recommend it highly enough.)

What do you do first when you start to revise?

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WIP Wednesday

Last Friday I hid away in a hotel in the foothills of the Alps and finished the first draft of Thunderstruck. I was scheduled for a critique of the first chapter with the fabulous Sara Grant (a commissioning editor at Working Partners and co-founder of Undiscovered Voices) the next morning, and it was my personal goal to have the MS done before I met with her.

It wasn't a smooth ride. Oh no, that would be way too simple. A smooth ride? I wouldn't bother writing about that here. Doesn't make a good story, you know.

source (this isn't where I was, but I didn't take pictures, and this is lovely, isn't it?)

 

 

I was madly typing away, at the height of the story's climax--exciting things happening to my MC, who was fighting for his life--my fingers flying over the keys, and then--

The screen went black. At first I expected it to flicker and come back up. But the  dying sound of the fan and lack of power lights told a different story. Either the computer had decided it simply couldn't take any more excitement for one day, or the gods I'd been writing about really didn't want this story told. (Yes, I seriously considered both options.)

I developed a sudden case of asthma* the air rasping through my throat as it tried to reach my lungs.

You see, I had done something that seemed like a good idea a few hours before. Originally, I had the working document on a memory stick (I had borrowed Beloved Husband's laptop for the weekend). But surely, I thought, the file would be safer on the hard drive. Fewer chances for error when saving. I'd just back up to the memory stick. So I saved it to the hard drive and worked from that. But hadn't backed it up since making the little switcheroo.

Jumping up from the chair, I said a number of rude words. Maybe the power had gone out?** I checked. The lamps worked and the little light on the power cord was on. Only the laptop wasn't working.

*insert f-bomb here*

Okay, stay calm. Turn it on, maybe it will just reboot.

Disk error. Press any key to restart.

Okay, I can handle that. I hit a key.

Disk error. Press any key to restart.

Maybe I hit the wrong key. Try another one this time.

Disk error. Press any key to restart.

I'm starting to notice a pattern. Click.

Disk error. Press any key to restart.

And again...

Disk error. Press any key to restart.

*repeat f-bomb word* *several times* (I don't swear often, but this seemed an appropriate occasion.)

Disk error. What were the chances of my most recent version still being there when (if?) I got the thing running again?

Laughing semi-hysterically, I shut it down. Then I wrote down an outline of everything I could remember from the last six (yes six) chapters. Everything I'd written since I'd relocated my working document. And then, in the wisdom that crisis imparts, I decided that maybe some unseen force wanted me to enjoy the sunshine in the Alps, rather than sit at a desk all day.

So off I went, to wander around in the forest. The trees soothed me. I wandered down a narrow path and happened upon a pond, still covered with ice. It sat at the top of a hill, and I followed a meadow down, down, through marshy, boggy lowland, then up a trail on the far side. A deer heard me coming and leaped away through the trees.

Despite my disaster, all was right with the world. Maybe the computer would be okay when I got back.

After two hours, I returned to the hotel and stared at the laptop. Dare I try to reboot? Could I handle another Disk error message? Would I be able to finish the ms before morning?

I opened the laptop, hesitated, then pushed the power button. Lights flashed, the computer whirred and I waited. I'm not sure I breathed while it booted up, but boot it did. And all I'd lost was the last two pages.

I wrote them better the second time.


*I don't have asthma, but now I know what it feels like.
**I was not thinking rationally; I later realized that even if the power went out, the battery would have kept the laptop going.

Because I was single-mindedly focused on writing, I didn't learn of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan until I had finished the manuscript later that night. And I felt like a fool. My crisis was nothing, absolutely nothing, in the face of what was (and still is) happening there. The people of Japan are in my thoughts and prayers.

So what about you? What's the worst (writing-related) catastrophe you've experienced?

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