Writing challenge (MOGO7000) weekly update #2

January
01/18/2011: Finished State of Nature adding another 1267 words. I feel good about getting 7000 words in a month. Thanks Vonda for posting this challenge on your blog.

01/29/2011: I particpated in a small writing challenge -only 100 words. So I fell short of my total of 7000 this month, but February should be better for me.

01/31/2011: Here it is the end of January and I didn't meet the goal this month but I did more writing this month than I had in the previous six months.


Total words written in January 2011: 4200 words (hopefully my math is correct - 1563, 1270, and 1267 on State of Nature with 100 words on a new story (that one will be brewing for a bit longer and is not state related) - I still feel proud that I have #6 finished, off to edit it now - see you all in the postings - Mrs. E :)

Writing Challenge (MOGO7000) weekly update #1

January

01/10/2011 - day 1 of writing challenge - worked on State of Nature, added 1563 words, only about 12 or 14 clue interactions to fill in. Well on my way to meeting the 7000 word monthly goal.

01/15/2011 - I had all intentions of writing more this week but work got in the way. I didn't write today on the story even though I knew I should have since I need to finish the story.

01/17/2011 - I didn't have any work this afternoon when I got online as expected so opened State of Nature and wrote for a while. I did almost 1100 words in the first couple of hours I (did some other things in there as well) and then worked a bit, fixed dinner, watched some TV and then worked a little bit more. I did leave the story opened all the time I was working as a reminder that I needed to write some more on it. I got a grand total of 1270 words in today.

In the two times I wrote in the week since taking the challenge, I have posted a grand total of 2833 words, so over 1/3 of the words for the monthly goal. I will post again next week my totals. I am hoping to finish State of Nature tomorrow as I only have seven jobs right now, knowing that there will be hand clinic work coming in sometime tomorrow and I'll be visiting with Mr. Hughes' class in the middle of the day. I'm on clue #18 but I've also added some to clue #25 or #24 and maybe a little bit to another clue between #18 and #27, so it shouldn't be too many more words to finish it. The goal is to finish State of Nature and then start working on State of Acceleration and have that completed by the end of the month and that should put me well over the 7000 words for the month. More next week. See you all in the postings - Mrs. E :)

Writing Challenge

My friend Vonda Skelton, author of the Bitsy mystery series, has put a writing challenge on her blog to meet a goal of 7000 words a month for the year. I left a comment to sign up for the challenge. The thought behind that is that maybe in a year or six months, I will actually be ahead on my stories. So my goal is to finish #6 and #7 this month. I started back on State of Nature this morning since work is low until later today and wrote for about an hour and already accomplished 1100 plus words. 7000 words here I come - lol. I will keep you all posted here how far I make it each month, perhaps on a weekly basis. Stay tuned to see what I accomplish by the end of the week - Mrs. E :)

Teaching the story - my first time to really teach (POV)

A couple of weeks ago, I had to miss class due to being out running errands or somethig. Mr. Hughes started the mini lesson from Carol Baldwin's "Teaching the Story" workbook we are using on POV. When I caught up with him that evening, he said he felt that the kids weren't understanding POV. So I told him I would check some things out over the weekend and come up with something to help guide the students with POV. It is difficult to do a mini lesson in such a short amount of time. I found two websites with some excellent definitions of POV for the students - Learner Org and Blue Gill. On the Learner Org site, there was a story called "A Jury of her Peers" to use when discussing POV. I had the class read about three pages of the story. I read the whole thing but didn't really feel that the POV was clear enough for them to grasp.

So I found this onlne version of The Three Little Pigs and read to the class. Then we talked about POV and did some fun rewriting of the story. So we took the writing time in class and rewrote the story from the wolf's POV in first person. The kids had a ball doing this. We shared a few beginnings and then Wednesday, shared a few more. The kids were supposed to finish their stories and post on the wikispaces pages we have for the class, but I've not checked them yet. Just haven't really had much time.

I will try to do better and update how the use of the book is going in conjunction with the writing time in class, so Ms. Carol will know where we are in the book. LOL. I think the book will work well, once Mr. Hughes gets the kinks worked out and can settle down into a routine. I know in the fall, we will probably go full force, since we will have most of the lessons down to where he needs to be teaching them, what's working and what isn't. I wouldn't mind doing a few more lessons for the class - that was fun for me. So maybe in the fall, I will get to do some. See you all in the postings.

Virtual Classroom visit Day 3

Yep, I was in class again today. We got two pictures done and two more leads for stories done. I found the second one much harder to do. So if you would like to take the challenge (3 minutes writing time on the first one and 1 minute writing on the second), then please share with us what you come up with. The first picture is a bit freaky but it does have a lot of possibilities. The kids had some humerous things and some not so humerous but I think they are doing well considering they are learning about writing stories.

Lead #3 (I didn't get to participate in Lead #1, which is action and the one yesterday was starting with dialogue that we did yesterday) Setting and Time - this is the more traditional way to start stories and might be the easier for a good many writers. For me, it was a tough challenge because I tend to lean toward action and dialogue for starting off my stories (or so it seems). Here is the caption from the picture:

JUST DESERT

______________

She lowered the knife and

it grew even brighter.





REMEMBER YOU ONLY ARE GIVEN 3 MINUTES TO WRITE A START TO THE STORY: Here is my start:


Jennifer's knife glowed brightly on that eerie Halloween night. She needed to get the pumpkin pie made but the lights had gone out and the only glow was from her knife. She will never forget the feel of the knife in her hand as it glowed hotter and brighter.

The closer to the pumpkin the knife came the brighter it glowed. The blackout allowed the glow to be the only light seen for many blocks.

How had she gotten this magical knife?



Lead #4: The one sentence wonder. This takes longer and more thought to come up with a sentence to start a story. The caption above the picture was as follows:

CAPTAIN TORY

_______________

He swung his lantern three times and slowly the schooner appeared.





My starter: Not very good by any means but this was tougher (1 minute to come up with this)

Jason looked out in the fog and jumped when he saw what appeared out of nowhere only to be stopped by the firm grip of the old man.



Share what you come up with. Keep checking back for the classroom visits and what we are doing. Don't forget next Friday is the Trockle Trick-or-Treat tour stop on this blog. We have been preparing for your creativity by giving you a few simple challenges here but next one will be a fun writing exercise for you - E :) and the JGD Squad