Writer's Workshop: Fable Writing

Writer's Workshop is a time to write without abandon, especially in the early stages of brainstorming and free write before we get into the revising and editing stages.  This is one of my favorite ways to write and the pieces I will share in this series reflect that.  That's write, run ons and spelling errors are ahead.  

This piece comes to us from a prompt for writing short fables.  The prompt is meant to be read aloud as the student writes their fable.

For the 1st paragraph, write what the horse says to the bear.

"Woah-a-ah, I didn't see you there" said the horse to the bear.

For the 2nd paragraph, write what the bear says to the horse.

"It gets pretty dark out here, you must be from the city," the bear responded.

For the 3rd paragraph, write what the horse says to the bear.

"Sure am!" the horse beamed proudly.

ll of a sudden a huge storm breaks out: wind, rain, thunder, lightning.  Write a stenence or two about all the weather for your 4th paragraph.

All of a sudden a HUGE storm breaks out!  Thunder claps!  Lightning strikes!  Silos and barns are swept up in the flood.

For the 5th paragraph, write what the bear says to the horse.

The horse trembled, "We don't have storms like this in the city!"

For the 6th paragraph write what the horse says to the bear.

The bear gallantly jumped to his hind legs, "Hop on my back!  I'll swim us to safety!"

Now, skip a couple of lines and write "The more of the fable is:"  Take a few minutes to write a good one.

The moral of this story is: Strong swimmers make excellent friends.

Writer's Workshop: A Bad Experience You've Had With Writing

Writer's Workshop is a time to write without abandon, especially in the early stages of brainstorming and free write before we get into the revising and editing stages.  This is one of my favorite ways to write and the pieces I will share in this series reflect that.  That's write, run ons and spelling errors are ahead.  

I wrote this piece in class after given the prompt: "Write about a bad experience you've had with writing."

My sophomore year of college I took a literature and film class.  After each piece of writing read or movie watched, we were asked to turn in a one page essay on a prompt assigned by the professor.  I got an A on every one.  Now, I enjoy writing and even consider myself a good writer.  But I ain’t that good. (Example: I just used the word (nonword?) ‘ain’t.’  I wrote it out without a second thought.)  Being repeatedly rewarded with high marks did not make me want to try my hardest.  In fact, it had the opposite effect.  I threw each essay together an hour before class met Wednesday (usually after a regular Tuesday night of karaoke) knowing it was good enough.  Now, I don’t want to get holier than thou on you, but I am not that person I LOVE to write.  Letters, journal entries, the playlist to  mix CD,  I will hand write it every time.  But it doesn’t stop there!  I like the feeling of putting pen to paper, but I also love the sound of typing on a keyboard.  I have kept a journal since I was in middle school and as blogging platforms like Tumblr became popular, I put my high school voice out there for all to hear.   My writing is something I’m proud of, not something I only want to be good enough.

    I’ll never forget the moment I first valued myself as a writer.  A couple years ago I got the opportunity to write for a two very different blogs.  I loved both of my experiences, but I was right out of college looking for my “big girl job” (whatever that means) and neither of them paid and I really needed to go to grad school and what on earth was I even doing with my life?  I was visiting a friend of mine from undergrad and met her parents for the first time.  They were asking what I did and I began to ramble, “Oh I live with my parents and I got a degree in psych and really gotta go to grad school but I don’t know what in…”  My friend stopped me, “Taylor’s a writer.”  I was stunned.  Oh. My. Gosh.  I am a writer.  I told them all about my experiences working as a writer, and I was proud.  I want my writing to always give myself that feeling, I don’t want it to be just good enough.