Welcome to Writing for Publication; Introduction; Publishing; Tears of a Tiger; Epistle Story Project

Welcome to Writing for Publication!

Period 3: Please complete the following tasks/questions/prompts and answer the questions on your handout to be turned in by the end of period 3.

What does it take to be a "writer"? What skills do we need? What attitude do we need to cultivate? Let's find out.

• Top Ten Writing Rules Advice from Famous Writers (5 min.)

Write the top 10 writing rules on the handout/note graphic organizer and turn in for participation credit today. Then, watch some of the following videos (the Sharon Draper interview is longer, so feel free to skip ahead a bit to her answers of students ?'s. Write down at least 3 of the questions students ask, and what Sharon Draper's answer is. Put this on your graphic organizer notes to turn in today as well.

Next, take a look at the following 3 short videos. Answer: What did you learn from viewing them? Answer on the handout.

• Sharon Draper interview (30 min.)
• Sharon Draper: Fostering a Love of Learning (2 min.)
• Sharon Draper: What are you Reading? (1 min.)
• Watch this video: Book Notes (Sharon Draper) (1.5 min.)

Make a list of words in your journal. Pick your favorite words or words that "resonate" with you--just like Draper did in the video reading of her book...When you are done, move on to our last little writing prompt for the day.

Finally, read the following poem:

From : "Afternoons" by Jorge H. Aigla

Those afternoons, the Saturdays of my tender childhood
in Mexico City
were just lovely...
I remember going to a store
that sold mountain climbing equipment:
my father knew “The Goat,”
one of the climbers of the great Popocatepetl,
and he would show us boots, ropes, and hammers,
and photographs of the Valley of Mexico and of snow.
In the old section of the city,
where they sold model airplanes
with gasoline engines,
I would watch the wealthy kids buy
and we in our dreams would fly.

Now it's our turn. Let's set the timer and bleed words and ideas on the page...Take 10 minutes and write a poem modeled on the one we just read:

1. Think of a specific time and place
2. What did you think or feel while in this time and place?
3. What was going on in this time and place? What details do you remember?
4. What other image do you remember from this time and place?
5. What did you learn or come to understand about yourself by experiencing what happened in this time and place?

Your poem draft should be at least 10 lines in length. Follow the pattern.

Another example:

Auld Lang Syne 

New Years Day we got the frantic call in the morning.
I was not awake--and did not understand yet what a

Stroke was. My grandfather would teach me this new lesson.

How blood, thicker, they say, than water, 

Clots. How age will somehow find a way

To take a loving man from a loving family, 

How it will sour the wine of prosperity, the leftover

Dregs of a celebration for a new year. Death wipes

Its clumsy feet on our doormat, knocking to be let in,

And I now know what it is to lose a grandfather

Locked in the glassy silence of a mortal body.

Write a poem using the model and guidelines above.

Period 4: (about 10:00)

After writing, let's take a look at our first project for the marking period. In Sharon Draper's book Tears of a Tiger, her characters tell the tragic story of a drunk teenage driver's accidental killing of a friend and the impact this event has on the community.

The structure of the book is written as a series of overheard "conversations", newspaper and journal or diary entries, poems, letters, and so forth by various characters impacted by the event. Each new chapter or "voice" adds more details to the story from a variety of perspectives. Books that are written in this kind of letter format are called epistolary novels. Read about the epistolary novel's history and background at the link.

Epistle Project:

OPTION A: Read this linked article. We will use this idea as a scenario for our next writing project. Take some notes on the article in your journal. Make a list of characters likely to be involved in the story.

• If you choose OPTION A: 
• Set your character in a school that has just experienced a tragic shooting (make the school a fictional place please)
• Your character can be a fictional student, a teacher, a staff member, the shooter, a parent, a sibling, a news journalist, a police dispatcher, a policeman, or any other involved character
• Give your character a name, a specific place that they were when the shooting happened, perhaps an understanding of why the shooter attacked, or perhaps a motive to be shot or explain how the character avoided getting shot
• Write a conversation between two or more characters talking about the event, perhaps a phone call conversation, a 9-1-1 report, a diary entry about the event, a police report, a poem that hints at a motive, or an elegy that mourns the wounded or dead, a note passed in class, etc. Use Draper's novel as a model for possibilities or ideas. 
• Your character cannot die in this story (at the time of their writing). You can hint that something might happen to the character later in the story.
• You can use Draper's format for dialogue (an em-dash to indicate a new speaker instead of quotes) if you'd like. 

Option B: Read this linked article. We will use this idea as a scenario for our next writing project. Take some notes on the article in your journal. Make a list of characters likely to be involved in the story.

• If you choose OPTION B:
• Set your character in a community that has just found the missing teenagers (make the setting a fictional place please)
• Your character can be a fictional student, a teacher, a staff member, a parent, a sibling, a news journalist, a police dispatcher, a policeman, a park ranger, or any other involved character
• Give your character a name, a specific place that the characters were when they "disappeared" perhaps an understanding of why the teenagers went missing, or perhaps a motive to disappear or reappear when they did. 
• Write a conversation between two or more characters talking about the event, perhaps a phone call conversation, or an online text, a 9-1-1 report, a diary entry about the event, a police report, a poem, a note passed in class, a Facebook post, etc. Use Draper's novel as a model for possibilities or ideas. 
• No one should die in this story.
• You can use Draper's format for dialogue (an em-dash to indicate a new speaker instead of quotes) if you'd like. 

Your draft is not due yet. We will continue writing our drafts next class.

However, please turn in your answers to 10 of the 15 reader's guide questions for Tears of a Tiger. Make sure you hand in your completed handout as well. 

HOMEWORK: Complete Tears of a Tiger (if you have not already done so...); Otherwise, none.