Brandi J. Clark

Last November 2013, I sat down everyday, for 30 days, to answer this question:

How can I help teachers love nonfiction writing as much as I do? And closely related…

Where does everything go so terribly wrong with nonfiction writing in schools?

First, I believe children start out as writers, before formal education begins.

I am inspired by a quote from Peter Elbow.

Peter Elbow states (along with many others),

“Very young children can write before they can read, can write more than they can read, and can write more easily than they can read–because they can write anything they can say” (Calkins, 1983; Graves, 1983; Harste, Woodward, & Burke, 1984; Sowers, 1982).

This means that writing is something innate, already present within in us. Therefore it is fair to say that writing is not just a subject in school or something foreign to what we already know.

So when we approach the teaching of writing in school, we are not dealing with a tabula rasa.

Students are bringing with them a variety of experiences with making marks on paper.

We start like these images…

And then…in the middle of the primary school years…this happens…

So what happened?

I will tell you later…
Until Next Time,
Lit Maven Out!

What exactly do you do during NANOWRIMO when you don’t want to write fiction?

Write Nonfiction of course.

I used some strong butt glue on my couch the entire month of November 2013.

I have sat with the resulting manuscript for six months and now I have decided to share it with you. I want you to get an appreciation for nonfiction writing that I believe has been lost in translation in our education systems.

Somewhere along the path to my Master’s degree, I discovered the heart of nonfiction writing. As I began to discover who I was as a learner, I unearthed a deep love for everything nonfiction. I began a quest to discover the process of creating great nonfiction and why I hadn’t discovered it before. It was not given to me in a tidy little book. I pulled parts of my mind together into a tidy word document. I let my muse take over, the keyboard was all hers!

Through writing 50,000 words, I discovered that we are doing a disservice to young nonfiction writers and ourselves but it doesn’t have to be this way.

I expect to experience more insight as I format my writing for the blog posts. Maybe my thinking will change. Maybe it will open up pathways that I never expected and maybe even a new future.
As with anything I write please enjoy!

Until Next Time,
Lit Maven Out