Writing Small...Love Me Some @RalphFletcher and His Notebook Advice...Altered a Little To Write This Morning

Step one: If you want to be a good writing teacher who connects with kid writers, you need to read The Writer's Notebook by Ralph Fletcher. I read it five years into teaching (high school) and it changed the ways I approached how I taught students. Yes, the book worked with high school kids, because it helped me to tweak the ways I developed writers in my care. Fast forward to teaching graduate students. It was awesome to see a re-release of the book last year. I can't think of a better first read for graduate students in a literacy course. The assignment...read the book and go forward to sketch in your notebook a story/ writing/tale/wonder as it hit your brain while reading. 

Now, Fletcher has a chapter on writing small, but I admitted to the students that I have a small brain and live forever as a 15-year old kid longing for childhood. I shared my obsession of putting quarters in vending machines every time I can and the joy I have when I find toys on my daily hikes. I found an astronaut lego lady last week, who I thought would be a great pairing with spider man to entertain mermaids in a gathering to fight of 2024 election blues. 

Of course, I started making up the story and students were engaged and I was thinking, "Wait. Don't believe me. I'm making this story up." This didn't really happen, it's just what I'm narrating because I put a little thing next to a small thing, and then I started asking, "What if?' 

The Peter Parker paper doll (and Spidey) I got from a box of Cheerios a few years back. That version of Peter sort of looks like a younger Crandall. The mer-men belong to Pam and I've been building the story in her bathroom - not my own. She just noticed the figures this week and asked me, "Are there your dolls?" 

I then told her a story about how the astronaut and Spiderman are convening with her mermaids because they'll need aquatic support during all the stupidity to come this election year. 

Truth is...Fletcher also discusses the power of a photograph, and since I now use my years blogs as a writer's notebook, it is here that seeds are planted...this post from writing "small" and photographic triggers. 

It's Wednesday, I have another graduate class to teach, and I need to thaw my morning bones with more coffee. Onward. I don't think an astronaut or Spiderman is what I want to be in the next year, and I hope to find another talisman soon to keep the mermaid story going.