Deb Lund ad lib

Once in awhile I write a post which should really be on both of my blogs (one for writers, one for teachers), and this is one of them. My dinos are so grateful for this deeper understanding of their evolution. My friend, fun-cartoon-guy Dana Sullivan, sent me the dinolink to this StorySaurus…

Jamie Harrington’s now legendary (at least to those of us who were directed to Jamie’s doodle here) teacher, Ms. George, a teacher who “got” writing, knew how to make the writing process not only palatable, but pleasurable for her kiddos. How many times, in how many classes, did you have to watch the chalk swoop the arc up and drop at the end? I still see the bared wrists of all those teachers, as if that diagram were the only possible way to view story arc.

When I discovered that I could take my adult students through the same hands-on craziness that turned “reluctant” student writers into passionate poets and story-makers, the dinosaurs on our backs jumped off to romp with us. We’ve been dinoplaying ever since.

Last November I created an occassional NaNoNuj (some of you played with them here) to help NaNoWriMo’s make it through the month. We played with my deck of them at an Orcas Island Writers Festival workshop this spring. The phrases on these cards are mostly about making sure there’s enough tension to keep readers reading. But it’s the drawing, selecting, and handling of these cards that allowed workshop participants to let go and play, or “galumph” as my friend George Shannon calls it.

I can blissfully ignore plot and play with words for days on end. If I don’t pair plot with intention, it doesn’t happen. So I do. As a teacher, I always found ways to simplify complex information for my students. I skipped the jargon, streamlined the process, found analogies to make the learning real. I’m not a rules-follower if the rules don’t work for me. I don’t swallow someone else’s “solution” but listen carefully, process it, and find my own. That’s what Ms. George did in creating the StorySaurus for her students. That’s what you can do for yourself.