I’ve not posted for quite awhile here. Instead I’ve been trying to get the children to do their chores without being prompted daily, a work in progress, slow, if any progress, on most fronts. I’ve also been trying to get them interested in doing the educational things that I have for them in their main binders, which has all the information they need to self-kick themselves into doing things Mon-Fri, but yet they rely on ME to actually push them into doing anything.
I’ve been busy with two birthdays and thanksgiving and now it’s Christmas season. I’m always having problems getting enough school work out of the children that I have to make it keep on going through Christmas season, though I’d rather be able to take-off. There is plenty of extra-stuff at Christmas time for educationalness, official and not.
So I’m writing here now to kick-start ME to get MORE done with them now. To buckle down and force the issue to use what we have, even if we don’t have all we need to do some things. I’m definitely requiring betterment of handwriting from my children, since I have a good handwriting ability and want them to also have that in this computer age. Hold an old-fashioned value for the hand written things, notes, letters, lists, stories, books, scrapbooking, crafting …
Education is something that can be measured from many angles, and I prefer to have one of the measured angles be “an ability to clearly put down ones thoughts to paper with ink flowing from a pen in hand.”
Also, the use of computer is to be learned fully. The handwriting is also part of “art” as it IS an art-form to have legible, even beautiful writing ability.
Another thing that I’m starting is having my two eldest write something creative every day, in a section of their “Grammar Notebook” — to have a place to practice better grammar in creative writing, a place to think creatively and have constructive criticism about how to up it together better, for grammar and flow of thought, and beauty in the turn of words.
Moreso it’ll be they will try and write well as they can. I’ll be a light-editor and try to spark them on to better writing and self-editing. To spot the errors themselves afterwards, to be able to read for editing sake, what they themselves write.
I can do that myself but don’t always put it into practice. Too oft writing something so long that I look at it and delete it (mostly thinking of things I type on the computer) instead of editing it. Or I post it without editing and am very embarrassed of myself when much later I read it when searching for something and am then faced with what to do with it. It almost haunts me that there are things of mine out there totally un-edited.
So I want to teach them that they can write and edit and write some more, and finally edit completely and be satisfied with it. Making it a good habit from a young age. I didn’t. I often just wrote and still do, fast and free. Though I know better.
Right now I do have my eldest sitting with his notebook looking blank as he embarks on this new creative writing. All he has to do is write something. Just anything OK. Nothing wonderful. Just anything OK, not perfect, just idea put into form. Just a start. It all starts in the head and that is the hardest part. What to write about.
I have lists of “camera activities” from a scrapbooking magazine this past year that I think are great jumping off points for creative writing as well. I know how hard starting things can be. I used to struggle in elementary school when I was supposed to write a poem. I couldn’t ever think of how to start. So eventually my mother would write a line or two, and from there I every time was able to fully write the rest of it by myself, even change something my mother wrote and make it my own from start to finish. It was a writers block I always had.
I find it interesting since I also have that same sort of thing in music, but it’s more so what I consider my “gift” –I am more an arranger than a writer or original music. I create by recreating. It doesn’t matter if one doesn’t have absolute originality in them. Creativity is being “creative with what you have” and if it’s recycling, it’s very green and very 2000’s. đ
Creative writing is about writing creatively. Making something, anything, interesting. Making the reader interested in what is written so much so that they want to finish reading it and feel some sense of understanding and thankfulness for the writing afterwards. That’s all. It’s something to work on and make something of some little thing. It doesn’t have to be a big important topic. Just anything. Like, why I like what I like. Just make it interesting with the way words can work with each other to be entertaining, informative with a twist of whatever it is that makes them sing.