Not to beat a dead horse, but are you reading?  If you’re a writer, you should be.

Reading the works of great writers is an opportunity to learn from them.  I don’t limit myself to classics when it comes to this method of learning; many of the “classics” have outdated styles that most readers have no patience to endure.  (Really, I understand some of the meaning behind the styles of older works, but I cannot see myself spending 2500 words to describe the staircase my hero is about to climb.)  In my opinion, the modern “greats” are better teachers to emulate. 

Currently, I’m reading Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.”  It’s a great story.  It’s a political and social commentary with great questions of action and consequence, of morals and rights.  But for me, it’s even more.  It’s a study of great prose.  I find myself rereading parts in order to study her construction, her word choices, and her plotting methods.  Rand’s work is so different from my normal favorites like Grisham and Follett, but she conveys ideas with such superb clarity that I feel privileged to read her work.

When it comes to studying other writers, I also like to study C.S. Lewis and  E. B. White for their clean, simple, and masterful use of the language.  I also find (This is going to kill anyone who considers himself a “literary” person.) Brian Tracy and John Maxwell to write non-fiction with a certain grace and beauty.  If I were to write a non-fiction book, I would want it to sound like one of theirs.

I’m not a Nora Roberts fan.  It isn’t because I don’t like her writing, it’s because I haven’t read her stuff.  But, if you’re into romance and you want to write it, you really have to read Roberts.  Ask yourself, what is it that makes her readers love her?  Look at the way she strings a plot together.  Look at her use of language, her sentence and paragraph construction.  Study The Nora if you want to write romance.

Want to write “guy” books?  David Baldacci and John Grisham will be your teachers for about $14 a seminar. 

Read, my fellow writers, read.  You know you want to anyway.  But now you can claim you’re working or taking a class taught by another writer.  What could be better?

Have a great week!

–Mary

It’s that time of year when teachers like to look back and see what their students have accomplished.

Over all, I’d say I’m happy with the progress my writing students made this year.  They finally understand the difference between a book report and a critical paper.  For the most part, they have conquered the comma.  And they’ve learned to cut unnecessary words.

But if I could go back and start the year all over again, I would start writing fabulously bad sentences earlier.

What are fabulously bad sentences?  My secret tool to help students learn to edit their own work.  These suckers worked far better than quizzes or drills.  They also kept my students happier than the end-of-chapter exercises in their grammar books.

Here’s how it works: Each day, I would write several fabulously bad sentences on the board, and my students would edit them out loud.  These sentences were horrible, including comma splices, run-ons, incorrect punctuation, wrong homonym choices, and poorly placed objects.   Their job was to make them right, deleting words, correcting mistakes, changing tense, and even creating separate sentences when necessary.   At first, they didn’t get it.  I had to single out people to get corrections.  But, eventually, it became a game to see who could find the last, hardest-to-find correction.  When they began to catch on and the game got old, I let them take turns writing fabulously bad sentences for their peers to correct.  These kids came up with some fantastic, off the wall, and very original sentences.  It was our own class version of “Editor and Chief” – with an attitude.

They loved it.  Even more, they learned from it.  Their last batch of papers came back with far fewer mistakes and crisper sentences, which means I now love it.

Here’s a sample sentence:  There were fifteen boys and girls on the playground who obviously didn’t belong at an elemtary school and the little girl stood on the sidewalk clinging to her mothers hand and refusing to play with the boys who had beards and the girls who had fake fingernails, it was very confusing to a little girls of six because even if she couldn’t figure out what exactly it was that was wrong: she knew something just wasn’t quite right.

Another sample:  He and Rob decided to go to the store to find there mother some medicine to make her stomach feel better.

Try it with your students.  Try it with your own work.  Since I started working on fabulously bad sentences with my students, I have tightened up my own writing.  Ironic, huh?

Have a great week,

Mary