Hello everyone.  Are you still full of turkey?   I am looking forward to hearing your family holiday stories.  I am working at the Marquette County Historical Society holiday cookie sale this morning and then plan on coming home and writing all day.  I actually went to a mall yesterday afternoon.  I rarely go anymore but had my days as a crazed shopper in the past.  Didn’t buy a thing yesterday, but felt like I was part of an American experience…good, bad, or indifferent.  Keep writing!!!

Good morning.  See you in class this afternoon.  Have you been writing this week?   Hope so.  I’ve been researching Tamarack trees to write an essay on them for the John Muir book I’m co-authoring.  They are one of my favorite trees and are a kind of larch.      Here is a photo of their small cones and feathery needles.

http://www.kent.k12.wa.us/curriculum/writing/elem_writing/bib/writingprocess.htm

Don’t be afraid to go to writing seb sites that are for high school teachers.  They are often a great resource.  The one above is an example.    Hope you are having a good Sunday.  KM

Instead of writing, I’ve been working on the Key Ingredients: America by food exhibit the Marquette County Historical Society will be hosting in 2011.  It is a travelling Smithsonian exhibit in will be in Westfield in March and April of 2011.

Check out the info on blind robins under my post yesterday in comments.  The post is from Bob.  The previous sentence, by the way is poorly written.  Google makes us stupid and blogs make us sloppy grammarians I guess.  But I love them both.

Have a wonderful writing day.   km

Good morning everyone.  I’m sorry I haven’t been diligent about checking on posts here, but will do so a couple times a day starting today.   I have done my morning writing today.  I try to write for at least a half hour each morning which is barely enough time to gather my thoughts, but at least offers some inspiration and discipline to writing each day.  This morning I worked on another piece for the John Muir in Marquette County book Daryl Christensen and I are working on for the Year of John Muir in Marquette County.

I am impressed by the writing that was read by all yesterday in class.  It inspires me when I listen to your stories. 

I thought about my opening line of the Bernadette Foote story.  I could have made it clearer while not losing the rhythm and flow of the line by writing, “When Bernadette K moved to Oxford, Wisconsin, her mother thought her daughter had moved to the end of the world.”  

Writing is part poetry, part technical skill, and part inspiration with many other things thrown in. 

Don’t forget to write today.  The frost has turned the dry golden rod sentinels into white haired ladies queued up for tea.   What did I just use in that sentence?   I had to look up how to spell queued before I used it.  Writing is work, work, work.

Does anyone use writing software in place of just Word?  Tell us about it.  What is the name of the program do you like it, how much did it cost?

And have a great day.   I’ll check back later. 

It’s great to hear from you all.  I can’t wait to hear about Cliff’s trips to Charlie’s and about Donna’s first hunting trip.  KEEP WRITING and have a good weekend.  km

Donna, your post about too many adjectives is a good one.  I’m reading a book right now that is very good, but she uses too much description and loses me at some points.  One rule of good creative writing is to get rid of words that are not necessary and that do not add to the message or story for the reader.   If you are describing a fall day, for instance, “crisp as crackling ice, the cold air waited for us” might add to your story while “our breath billowed in big, white clouds looking like the sky filled with puffy  goose down pillows on a newly made up bed, soft and squishy,” is too much.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the MATC Writing your family story blog.  I look forward to working with you and hearing some of your family stories.  You can add comments to the posts in this blog.  Let’s see how it works out.  I hope you are all thinking about how you want to “manage” the writing of your family story.  We will also work on the craft of writing.  I was thinking about the old maxim, “show, don’t tell.”  Let me give you an example.  Remember the nice man and woman holding the sketch of the train?  I could say, “Arthur is a nice man.”  Or I could say, “Arthur helped Gladys  find the photo she was searching for and reassured her it wasn’t lost, before pulling out the chair for his wife of over 60 years.”