Multi-Genre Project Reflection
How I Shaped the Project
The process of creating a multi-genre project for my children has been a positive experience. As I began to plan for the different pieces I felt a little overwhelmed. There were so many things I would like to tell my children, so many stories that we have made together. Where to start? I thought about the stories my children ask me to tell them repeatedly and the ones they like me to share with their friends. I immediately thought of sharing something about Logan swallowing the thumbtack. I wanted to share something personal so I decided a letter to them would be appropriate, something to encourage them to be kind and good to others. I wrote about the state we all called home before we moved to North Carolina, and I wrote about the move here. I saw a theme start to develop as I began planning. I had more than enough written, and the revising stage had begun.
Revising these pieces was a process of helping create images through words. I wanted these pieces to hold up over time and last longer than my memory. I added more emotion, more imagery and more detail to help the pieces come to life. I cried as I revised the piece about Logan swallowing the thumbtack. It has been so many years, but I can still feel the lump in my throat as the anger and desperation of that moment are revisited. I smiled when I imagined the Washington beach, and thought of all the times I shared with family around a beach fire. I had included a piece about my older son, Cameron, being hit by a car two years ago. I worked on it quite a bit, but I couldn't capture the emotions that I felt. The more I added words, the less I felt like I was getting it right. That will have to be a piece I work on over the years and add to as I can. I just wasn't ready to share it yet.
Publishing was a natural next step in this process. Tying the pieces together with music, photographs, and graphics was fun, but a lot more time consuming than I had anticipated. I don't think that I could have planned for the publishing part much, because I needed to see how I felt when I read the pieces together. I used the graphics to tie the pieces together and the photographs to help capture the faces of the people in the stories. This could have been a much, much longer project if I included everything I had wanted. I thought about writing a page for each child about the day they were born, or something that I am particularly proud of them for. I will have to save those ideas and use them later when I make something else for them.
How the Project Shaped Me
I have learned that I like to write like I think. I do not like to write outlines or map out what I will say, I just want to get right to it and start typing. Ideas flow quickly and I type what I am thinking without going back to edit or revise until I have finished my initial thoughts. I found it difficult to narrow down an audience for this project because I didn't know what I wanted to write about. I decided I would just start writing and after I had a feel for what I wanted to write about, I would choose an audience and that would help me to shape the rest of the project. Obviously, my children are the center of my world and it wasn't a huge surprise that I would end up writing to (and for) them. If I had more time, I would make this a longer project, something like an online journal, that I would add to as they got older. It would be a collection of my favorite stories about them. I think I might do something like that. I would like to add a page each year with information about how they have changed, maybe a picture, report card, etc. Then as the year goes on, I could add pieces about things that were happening like funny moments, accomplishments, sad events, etc. The daybook would be a great place to record things that I want to add to the project. I guess I would have to say that I learned that I enjoy writing, and that I should try to do it more often. Having the project for my children will help me to continue doing it.
As a writing teacher I have learned things about the process of writing that I think will be helpful when teaching children. I learned that sometimes you don't know what you are going to write about when you start a piece. The ideas have to come to you, and just starting a dialogue between you and the paper is a way to get ideas moving. I learned that sometimes you abandon a piece of writing because you don't like the way it turned out, but later you can come back to it and make it a great piece. I think that the daybooks are great for this because they keep your writing all in one place and you can flip back through it. Maybe reading something that you didn't really like will inspire you to write something else, or maybe you will feel differently when you distance yourself from it for a while. I can clearly see how important daybooks will be in my classroom and how helpful they will be to my students as they learn about themselves as writers.
The process of creating a multi-genre project for my children has been a positive experience. As I began to plan for the different pieces I felt a little overwhelmed. There were so many things I would like to tell my children, so many stories that we have made together. Where to start? I thought about the stories my children ask me to tell them repeatedly and the ones they like me to share with their friends. I immediately thought of sharing something about Logan swallowing the thumbtack. I wanted to share something personal so I decided a letter to them would be appropriate, something to encourage them to be kind and good to others. I wrote about the state we all called home before we moved to North Carolina, and I wrote about the move here. I saw a theme start to develop as I began planning. I had more than enough written, and the revising stage had begun.
Revising these pieces was a process of helping create images through words. I wanted these pieces to hold up over time and last longer than my memory. I added more emotion, more imagery and more detail to help the pieces come to life. I cried as I revised the piece about Logan swallowing the thumbtack. It has been so many years, but I can still feel the lump in my throat as the anger and desperation of that moment are revisited. I smiled when I imagined the Washington beach, and thought of all the times I shared with family around a beach fire. I had included a piece about my older son, Cameron, being hit by a car two years ago. I worked on it quite a bit, but I couldn't capture the emotions that I felt. The more I added words, the less I felt like I was getting it right. That will have to be a piece I work on over the years and add to as I can. I just wasn't ready to share it yet.
Publishing was a natural next step in this process. Tying the pieces together with music, photographs, and graphics was fun, but a lot more time consuming than I had anticipated. I don't think that I could have planned for the publishing part much, because I needed to see how I felt when I read the pieces together. I used the graphics to tie the pieces together and the photographs to help capture the faces of the people in the stories. This could have been a much, much longer project if I included everything I had wanted. I thought about writing a page for each child about the day they were born, or something that I am particularly proud of them for. I will have to save those ideas and use them later when I make something else for them.
How the Project Shaped Me
I have learned that I like to write like I think. I do not like to write outlines or map out what I will say, I just want to get right to it and start typing. Ideas flow quickly and I type what I am thinking without going back to edit or revise until I have finished my initial thoughts. I found it difficult to narrow down an audience for this project because I didn't know what I wanted to write about. I decided I would just start writing and after I had a feel for what I wanted to write about, I would choose an audience and that would help me to shape the rest of the project. Obviously, my children are the center of my world and it wasn't a huge surprise that I would end up writing to (and for) them. If I had more time, I would make this a longer project, something like an online journal, that I would add to as they got older. It would be a collection of my favorite stories about them. I think I might do something like that. I would like to add a page each year with information about how they have changed, maybe a picture, report card, etc. Then as the year goes on, I could add pieces about things that were happening like funny moments, accomplishments, sad events, etc. The daybook would be a great place to record things that I want to add to the project. I guess I would have to say that I learned that I enjoy writing, and that I should try to do it more often. Having the project for my children will help me to continue doing it.
As a writing teacher I have learned things about the process of writing that I think will be helpful when teaching children. I learned that sometimes you don't know what you are going to write about when you start a piece. The ideas have to come to you, and just starting a dialogue between you and the paper is a way to get ideas moving. I learned that sometimes you abandon a piece of writing because you don't like the way it turned out, but later you can come back to it and make it a great piece. I think that the daybooks are great for this because they keep your writing all in one place and you can flip back through it. Maybe reading something that you didn't really like will inspire you to write something else, or maybe you will feel differently when you distance yourself from it for a while. I can clearly see how important daybooks will be in my classroom and how helpful they will be to my students as they learn about themselves as writers.