The Case Against Reading Too Broadly

The real problem with telling young writers to fan out across genres and forms is that it doesn’t help them find a voice. If anything, it’s antivoice. Learning the craft of writing isn’t about hopping texts like hyperlinks. It’s about devotion and obsession. It’s about lingering too long in some beloved book’s language, about steeping yourself in someone else’s style until your consciousness changes colour. It’s Tolkien phases and Plath crushes. It’s going embarrassingly, un...

 Be Prolific

For example, Simonton cites the work of inventor Thomas Edison who accumulated a mind-boggling 2,300 patents over his lifetime. He found that in the same year Edison applied for patents for the light bulb and the telephone (certainly both hits) he also filed for patents for 100 or so other inventions including the pneumatic pen (a partial miss), a talking doll (a definite miss) and a ghost detection machine (enough said). In all likelihood, Edison never knowingly worked on something he thou...

 Write With Style

Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers. We call these revelations, accidental and intentional, elements of style. These revelations tell us as readers what sort of person it is with whom we are spending time. Does the writer sound ignorant or informed, stupid or bri...

 Mentor Texts

One of the most powerful writing/language arts components of the MPS Comprehensive Literacy Plan (CLP) is the robust use of mentor texts across all grade levels. A mentor text is a piece of writing (book, article, pamphlet, caption, etc.) used to exemplify a specific aspect of writers’ craft. Mentor texts are used during both whole and small group instruction. Teachers purposefully select and intentionally read aloud from mentor texts to guide student as they work to apply similar writing t...