There it is again. That wrinkled, hand-drawn Avengers graphic. This is the third time it’s appeared on this blog, which is certainly a record for Wonder Farm recycling. I hope you can excuse the chart for displaying itself again, though, because that funny little sheet of graph paper has generated some excitement around here lately.

Remember that post I wrote a month ago, about how I stumbled upon that fantastic Iliad graphic by visualization designer Santiago Ortiz, and how it reminded me of a few simple graphs T had drawn? And how Ortiz and I had connected via Twitter? Well, suddenly a new comment appeared on that post last week. The Data Artist in Residence from The New York Times, Jer Thorp, showed up just before dinner, to compliment my kid’s work! And for the next few days, hundreds of other folks showed up too, some of Thorp’s 10,000+ followers on Twitter, who arrived after he tweeted about a simple graph drawn by a 10-year-old and proclaimed it “AWESOME”.

Apparently Jer found his way to T’s chart after tweeting: “Of all the things that I have deep-seeded nerd knowledge about, the Avengers is easily top 3.” And Santiago Ortiz responded by tweeting a link to T’s chart and my post.

Beyond exciting. I thought: I should write about it on the blog!  And then I thought: why? Did I just want to show off?  My kid, New York Times artist, la di da!

I decided to think about that a bit.

Santiago Ortiz left another comment, recommending Jer Thorp’s TED talk. I’m glad that he did.

If you have fifteen minutes or so, give it a watch. Sure, it’s a talk about data, which may sound only slightly more interesting than a talk about finance, but allow yourself to be surprised. Jer is endearing; he’s a storyteller. Which is partly the premise of his talk, as you’ll see: there’s something essential in the interaction between data and story. When he gets to the data point showing the moment he met his girlfriend, see if you don’t get goose bumps. I actually teared up a little, but I’m a sap.

And his visualizations? Stunning. Beautiful in a way you never thought computer graphics could be.

Just as my show-off self was simmering down, and deciding not to post about this, Jer emailed this weekend, asking if he could use T’s graphics in a talk he’d be giving.

Could he use T’s graphics? (Snort!) YES. He could. Mr. T said so.

And then yesterday he posted this. His own series of Avengers visualizations. They are gorgeous and fascinating. (To see them in all their glorious, filagreed detail, click on the photo to see it on Flickr, click again to get to Lightbox view, click “view all sizes” on the right, and then click “original.”) Wow.

In that post, Jer gives credit to his inspiration for these visualizations. He mentions a particular ten-year-old.

Admiring his work, I flashed back to something Jer said in his TED talk. It was just an aside, after he showed a handful of his graphics, including the one of people saying good morning on Twitter.

I watched again, to get his words right.

“These are all things that I just do for fun. It might seem weird…I’m building tools for myself. I might share them with a few other people, but they’re for fun. They’re for me.”

That was when I knew I needed to write this post. And it wasn’t about showing off. (Well, not mostly.)

Jer made these incredibly complex, compelling visualizations for fun. For himself. Just as T had, when he spent a mind-boggling amount of time copying a long list of Avengers’ episode titles from Wikipedia to a piece of graph paper. For fun. For himself.

What propels a person to study a comic book series and to try to understand it though graphics? I suppose you’d have to ask Jer Thorp, or Mr. T. But clearly it has something to do with a passion for the topic. That sort of passion is important–yet it doesn’t have a place in traditional school learning. Passion-fueled learning is a powerful thing. We have to allow kids to pursue the fascinations that burn for them, even if they’re fascinations that may not seem particularly worthwhile to us, even if they’re fascinations with comic book characters. We need to give kids time to play with those fascinations, to fiddle with them, to create with them.

In his TED talk, Jer makes the point that we need to put data into a human context. There’s so much information out there; we need to humanize it, let it tell a story. In a similar way, we need to put learning into a human, individual context for our kids. We don’t learn by covering a bunch of information, those infinite bits of data that are out there, expanding exponentially, like all those Avengers on their radial graphs. We learn by engaging with what fascinates us, and seeing what we can do with it.

That’s what Jer Thorp does. When I look at his work, I realize: he still thinks like a kid. He wonders. He plays.

We need to let our kids do that too.

Do you remember writing school reports when you were, say, twelve? Do you remember your teachers harping on the evils of plagiarism? Was your response to do what I did and take lines from a book, switch out words, change their order and call them your own?

I can’t blame twelve-year-old me. Despite all the plagiarism sirens, I don’t remember a teacher showing me how to take ideas from other sources and weave them into writing of my own.

Learning to use source materials to inform original writing is a tricky skill to learn, but it’s an essential one. Most kids, even homeschooled ones, will eventually find themselves in a situation that requires it, whether that means a 4-H report, a display for a history or science fair, an essay for a class, content for an online wiki.

How do you help kids write original reports, biographies, essays and articles on topics which others have already covered? How do you help them take the ideas of others and work them into their own line of thinking?

I’ve worked out a process that has helped my kids over the years. Stacks of Post-Its are involved. You could certainly do this with index cards or scrap paper, but the stickiness of Post-Its can be useful in the organizing process. It keeps the notes from flitting about as the kids sort and arrange.

This method works best when parent and child work together, at least initially, regardless of the kid’s age. It works great for younger kids. Likewise, when an older kid is beginning a daunting project, going through the first steps of this process with a parent can get them up and running. I even used this technique to help my oldest get started on his college application essays.

This process is heavily influenced by my own experiences as a writer. In the steps below, I’ve placed a few lines in italics to point out the writerly logic behind the process.

I’m laying out a series of steps in a continuous list, but please don’t go all eager-beaver and attempt them in a single sitting! Break them up, over several days even, according to the child’s interest and maturity. Life lesson to be learned here: a big writing project is easiest when divvied into manageable parts, and spread out over time. This process will show kids how to do that.

A method for writing nonfiction based on other sources:

• Research your topic. Help your child dig deeply into research before he or she starts writing. Read books, but don’t limit book selection to straightforward nonfiction. Look for books in varied formats, if possible: with graphics, fictionalized information, even comics. A variety of writing styles will open up the possibilities for the child writer. Also, look for interesting websites, films and documentaries. Don’t limit research to books.
• Narrow down the topic. A report on chimpanzees is likely to be too broad, for example. With too much information to cover, the child will have to skim superficially across the topic. Focus on a particular area of interest. How chimpanzees live in groups, perhaps. If the child can’t decide what to focus on yet, do the dictation and sorting steps below, and see what interests emerge.
• Close the books and move away from the computer. It’s much easier to convey ideas in original language, and from a more original perspective, if you aren’t looking at the source material.
• Have your child dictate as much as he or she can remember about the topic and write each idea on an individual Post-It. For this step, you can have the child sit beside you, or even better, encourage him or her to move around and even walk circles while recalling information about the topic. Write down each idea on a separate Post-It. A child can certainly do this step independently, but initially it’s very helpful for a parent to take notes while the child moves and thinks aloud. Being able to move, and not being nerve-wracked by the blank page can be a big help in the early stages of a project. The child does not need to relay information in any logical order. Encourage interesting, juicy details. The child may need to consult sources for specifics later, but get the general ideas down now, in his or her own words. Be prepared to consume plenty of Post-Its! Writing each idea on a separate Post-It may seem wasteful, but it allows the ideas to remain unfixed and, literally, movable. It keeps the paper’s structure flexible, which is important at the beginning of a project.
• Re-read the Post-Its and have the child add any points that seem missing. He or she may want to go back to the source material at this point to do a bit more research, but again, encourage the child to move away from the sources and dictate any new ideas in his or her own words. If the child comes across a source quote that is particularly powerful or interesting, you can copy the quote directly, making sure to attribute the source. Once you get to the writing phase, consider using no more than one apt direct quote per paragraph. That’s a good general rule of thumb. If the child has relayed an especially interesting story or detail, he or she might want to set it aside for the paper’s introduction. More on that later.
• Sort the Post-Its into piles that seem to go together. If, for example, the child is writing a report on the contributions of Eleanor Roosevelt, she might put notes about the formation of the United Nations together. Post-It stickiness comes in handy here: the child can literally stick together notes that seem to belong together. You may need to help with this sorting initially.
• Narrow these piles of Post-Its to three or four piles—unless the project is planned to be an especially lengthy one. If there are extra Post-its that don’t fit in any piles, put them aside, and save them. The child might not need these ideas for his or her project–or he or she might try to make an additional pile for some of them because they seem particularly important. It’s okay if many of the initial Post-Its ultimately get discarded; what’s important here is that the child narrows in on what he or she really wants to convey. This step helps the child recognize which ideas matter most to him or her. The most salient details tend to cluster together, based on the child’s interests and sensibilities.
• Help the child give each pile a title that sums up the ideas in that pile. If your child is writing a history of real-time strategy video games, for example, he might title a pile “Early RTS Games.” Write the title on a different-colored Post-It, or with a different-colored ink. Have the child put these title notes on top of the appropriate piles. These are the main ideas for the child’s paper. This is an important step; having a handle on the main ideas will help the child write a clear, logically organized paper.
• Read the pile titles aloud, and arrange the piles into an order that makes sense. Which pile should come first in the paper, which second, and so on? Each pile will essentially become a paragraph, or a series of paragraphs, in the final piece. Do the pile titles fit together into a cohesive whole? Is there a logical arc from the first to the last? If not, the child might be trying to convey too much. Would it help to remove one of the piles that doesn’t seem to fit? Or to focus on a single pile, and try to expand it into separate piles? The beauty of this process is that the child is organically creating an outline, according to his or her own ideas and synthesized sources—rather than using some author’s outline, which is what kids tend to do if they write while constantly consulting source materials.
• Working with one pile at a time, arrange the individual notes in each pile into an order that makes sense. Now the child is essentially creating skeletal outlines for each paragraph. Transitional words and sentences will probably be necessary; we’ll get to those in a bit. At this point, the child might want to return to source material to add details, but once again, encourage him or her to leave the source material before rephrasing.
• Choose which pile to begin working on first. I always encourage my kids to save writing their introductions and conclusions for last: those can be the most important sections in a piece of writing, and are often best shaped once the bulk of the piece is written. The child probably hasn’t made a pile for the introduction and conclusion anyway. Skip the introduction and have the child start with one of the piles. Kids don’t have to begin with the pile that will ultimately come first, either. Encourage them to dig into the section that seems the least intimidating. Professional writers rarely work in a linear order.
• Write a paragraph. Have kids spread out the notes from their chosen pile in order. Read the notes aloud. Each note is like a pearl on a string, and each should lead logically to the next note. What words and ideas are needed to transition smoothly from one note to the next? Sometimes several sentences need to be added. It takes practice to learn how to do this. Consider taking dictation from your child as he or she constructs the first paragraph or two from the piles–or take dictation on the entire piece if it helps your child focus on the content. You can add transitional sentences to additional Post-Its, if you like, but I prefer typing the paragraph on the computer at this point. It makes it easier to change the wording as you go.
• Move or discard notes that don’t fit where your child thought they would. The paper may change a bit as the child works on it. That’s okay; writers ultimately figure out what they want to write by writing. Keep the process flexible.
• After the paragraphs are finished, re-read them. Does the writing in each paragraph flow? Do all of the sentences and details fit with the original main ideas–the pile titles? It’s okay if those ideas have shifted, but your child should be able to verbally summarize the purpose of each paragraph in a single sentence: “This paragraph tells why _________.” “This paragraph describes _________.” If the lines and details in a paragraph don’t support that sentence, or don’t lead logically from one line to the next, go back and try to tighten them up.
• Write the introduction. (Or the conclusion; order matters less than the writer’s inclinations!) The introduction should captivate the reader, and compel further reading. Did your child find an interesting story or fact when researching? Start with that! Elaborate on the idea, and give readers a sense of where they’re headed in the rest of the paper. But don’t feel a need to explain the entire piece ahead of time, with a traditional school-ish thesis statement. That makes for rather dull reading.
• Write the conclusion. This was the part I always dashed off at the last minute as a kid. Wrong! A good ending should be more than a tacked-on summary; it should contain something unexpected too, which leaves the reader thinking. Why is this person or topic important? That’s what you want your readers considering as they finish reading. If writing a compelling conclusion seems difficult, try reading the final paragraphs of nonfiction that you and your child admire, and see how professionals do it. Your child might surprise you, though: after writing an entire nonfiction piece with this process, kids usually have a firm grasp of their topic and are able to offer real insight by the ending.

Phew! How’s that for a process? Seems like a lot of work, but it’s much more effective than having a kid simply sit down and blindly write, directionless. And the early steps are fairly painless–they’re just a matter of recalling interesting information, and getting something down on paper. I think the process gives the child a greater sense of control over his or her ideas: attention is given to deciding which ideas matter, and where they fit in the whole. The process helps a child learn to write more as professional writers do.

You can use a similar process to help a child write nonfiction which isn’t based on other sources. When I helped my oldest with those college application essays, for example, he simply brainstormed random thoughts based on the essay prompts–Reflect on a challenge you overcame through persistence. Describe your dream job. Tell us which aspects of filmmaking seem of particular interest to you and why–and I jotted his thoughts on Post-Its. Then he was able to look over the notes, and sort and discard as described above, and begin to develop outlines for his essays.

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that I’m a fan of working with a child’s internal motivation. With writing, with everything. Therefore, I don’t recommend “assigning” a paper like this to a child. If you’re intrigued by the process here, just file this post away in your computer stacks. And when your kids come to you wanting to write that 4-H report, or that science fair display, or that wiki entry, or a history of a real-time strategy video games, you’ll have some ideas for how to help them get started.

And I’d love to hear back if you do.

I’m thrilled to have an article on The Innovative Educator today. I’m sharing it here too for you, my favorite readers.

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Why Seth Godin and Other School Reformers Shouldn’t Dismiss Homeschooling

Recently, author and changemaker Seth Godin published the e-book Stop Stealing Dreams, a manifesto on the future of education. It’s a sweeping declaration of why schools are broken and how they ought to be fixed. In section #121 Godin gets to homeschooling: “Thousands of caring and committed parents are taking their kids out of the industrial system of schooling and daring to educate them themselves.” A promising first line! Then suddenly, without even a paragraph of consideration, Godin swats homeschooling aside, as if it were a senseless idea in a brainstorming session. It’s too challenging for most parents, too big a time commitment. It doesn’t give kids enough freedom to fail.

Sigh.

I wished right then that I could have Godin over for a cup of coffee to explain a few things. Hey, I’d include a whole crew of education reform folks in the invite—I’d rent one of those big silver coffee urns and bake blueberry muffins. I wouldn’t gather them around my kitchen table to convince them that everyone should homeschool. No, I believe in their cause; I believe that it’s time to reinvent schools. Instead, what I’d want to tell them is this: we homeschoolers could teach them a thing or two about the models they’re proposing.

Because what is a futuristic model to education reformers is a way of life for many homeschoolers.

I’ve been a homeschooling parent for sixteen years, since my oldest became a preschool dropout. Before that I taught third grade in a public school. People unfamiliar with homeschooling often assume that as a homeschooling parent, I simply replicate what I did as a teacher with a smaller group of students, at home.

They assume wrong.

Sure, when we started out, I modeled our days on my classroom experiences, as do many new homeschooling parents. We’d do math activities every day; we’d write in journals every morning. But here’s the part that those unfamiliar with homeschooling don’t understand: most homeschoolers shift from the school model rather quickly. The degree of this shift varies widely: some do it in small ways, deciding that a particular math textbook isn’t working for their child, for example, and eschewing it for another. Some shift in much more radical ways, tossing out the school model altogether, and trying an alternative approach such as unschooling, which values interest-driven learning based on life, rather than a curriculum. Even those who begin as unschoolers are likely to experience this shift, finding themselves becoming braver and more freethinking as they go.

Talk to any homeschooling family who has been at it for a while, and you are likely to hear that they’ve made such a shift. A shift away from the school model and towards something different. A move away from society’s expectations and towards the needs of their particular children.

Take heed, school reformers! Let us show you why this happens, and how.

Why do we shift? Because the needs of the child become so clear in a homeschool setting. When we watch our kids learn about something that electrifies them, that has them lost in thought, or talking fast, or reading into the night, or endlessly crafting, creating or building—we want more of that for them. We see the power of their engagement, and come to understand what real, deep learning means. And we try to help that happen more often.

We also witness when learning doesn’t work, when a child is bored, or frustrated, or simply sleepwalking through a task. This is the point when many homeschoolers let school-thought creep in. We worry that we need to push our kids through it, that they need to experience boredom and challenge because this is stuff of life. But then we recall those other moments, those times of engaged learning when we surely saw sparks in their eyes, and we begin to move past the school way of thinking. We begin to realize that any kid who develops passions will come across real-life obstacles in pursuing those passions—and that’s where they’ll learn about effort, perseverance, and doing things they don’t want to do. We don’t have to force those experiences on them in the guise of learning. It’s a waste of their time.

We also shift because we can. We aren’t bound—in most states anyway—by government standards or the requirement to use particular texts or curricula or lesson plans. And unlike private schools, we aren’t accountable to a company of tuition-paying parents. If something isn’t working for our child we can change it. Tomorrow. Today. This minute.

Many of us stop calling ourselves teachers altogether, as we watch our role shifting from teacher to facilitator. While our children dig deep into their fascinations with primates or Ancient Egypt or the films of Quentin Tarantino, we learn how our children learn. And our kids learn that too. They become quite expert at understanding how they learn. Recently a dental hygienist discovered that my ten-year-old son is homeschooled, and she said to him, “So your mom is your teacher?” He replied, “I’m my teacher.” She smiled: how cute. I knew better; I knew he believed it. And I believe it too.

Most homeschooling parents change and evolve as educators far faster than teachers ever do. We simply have more freedom and flexibility to do so. Plus, our incentive to change isn’t theoretical, or for improved test scores, or out of a passion for our career. Our incentive is our own children. Even the most conservative homeschoolers—those who employ a school model at home—tend to become more child-centered as they go. The needs of our children are too compelling to disregard. We change because our kids need us to change.

School reformers seek change. Seth Godin’s manifesto is charged with good ideas for change. When he recommends “precise, focused instruction rather than mass, generalized instruction” we homeschoolers nod our heads. When he writes about the “transformation of the role of the teacher,” we cheer him on. When he trots out the phrase “lifelong learning” we find ourselves high-fiving our computer screens.

And when he uses the word passion forty-two times in his manifesto, we understand why. We get it.

So why does Seth Godin not get us? Why does he dismiss homeschooling so hastily, without letting us inform his goals?

There are a few reasons, I’m guessing. For one, these reformers like ideas that are “scalable.” They’re searching for solutions that can be applied to all schools, everywhere. Since everyone can’t, or doesn’t choose to homeschool, reformers skim ahead to the next big idea. But the main reason they move on, I imagine, is that thinkers like Godin haven’t spent much time talking to actual homeschoolers. Like most people, Godin seems to believe that same creaky myth: we’re just replicating the school model at home.

Consider Godin’s response to a post on his manifesto at the Simple Homeschool blog. I was impressed that he took time to comment, but stopped short when he wrote, “I think that talented, passionate, focused homeschooling is amazing.” I appreciate the support, but he’s missing the point. He’s still stuck in a traditional, top-down model that puts too much emphasis on the role of the “teacher” for success. As Simple Mom’s editor, Jamie Martin, wisely responded, “I’m not sure ‘talent’ is needed to be successful in homeschooling as much as ‘commitment.’”

School reformers, if you don’t understand the distinction I’m making here, you might want to find some experienced homeschoolers and strike up a conversation.

Some progressive thinkers already have. In Drive, Daniel Pink’s bestseller on the power of motivation, Pink proposes ten ideas for parents and educators regarding kids and motivation. Idea #9: “TAKE A CLASS FROM THE UNSCHOOLERS.” On her popular blog, The Innovative Educator, New York City teacher and tech administrator Lisa Nielsen has a tab titled “Why Homeschooling Stuff is Here” which leads to post after post about what she’s learned from homeschoolers, and how that might influence what’s going on in classrooms. Psychologist and Psychology Today writer Peter Gray is exploring unschooling through a series of articles and an extensive survey of unschoolers. Education writer and analyst Clark Aldrich’s most recent book, Unschooling Rules, lays out what Aldrich has learned from homeschoolers and unschoolers, and ultimately proposes this notion: the future of education will be a synthesis of today’s schools and unschooling.

These thinkers promote ideas quite similar to Godin’s; the difference is that they’ve found inspiration in the experiences of homeschoolers. Doesn’t that make sense? Across the board, big thinkers in education are saying that today’s schools, modeled on Industrial Age values, aren’t serving the needs of the modern child. Schools need a radical change, a tectonic shift. Wouldn’t it be wise to pick the brains of those who have successfully made a similar shift? I can’t have every education reformer over for coffee—although my invite to Godin, should he find himself near San Francisco, still stands—but I’m not the only homeschooler to talk to. There are more than two million of us in the United States, according to recent estimates. Find a few, especially experienced ones. Talk to the parents. Ask what we thought about learning when we started as homeschoolers; ask how our notions evolved. Ask how our kids learned, and how we changed to help their learning. Ask what our kids taught us. Talk to our kids: young ones, grown ones. Ask what learning means to them. Ask about their passions; find out how they’ve cultivated them. You needn’t consider homeschooling as a scalable solution to the ills of schools (although with substantive school change years away, if you have kids of your own, you may be tempted.) Just hear us and muse on our experiences. We homeschoolers have been doing this for decades now; we’ve shifted from the old school model. We have insights that can influence education’s future, if you’d only listen.

It’s been a long time (like, um, a year), so here’s another writing ideas post. Finally. But first read the disclaimer and simply tuck this idea into your back pocket. It may not tickle your kids.

Mr. T is an info-maniac. His favorite part of his beloved National Geographic Kids Magazine is the “Weird But True” section, which is a collection of surely-that-can’t-be-true facts. Like “There are 294 different ways to make change for a $1 bill” or  ”A cloud can weight more than a million pounds.” Check out some facts yourself by clicking the magazine link above and scrolling through the “Weird But True” section in the right column.

When we discovered that Nat Geo has a Weird But True app for kids, I bought it for T and downloaded it to the iPod he inherited from one of his teen siblings. T loves it. Basically, it’s a series of interesting facts displayed on slides. Lots of vivid colors, cool fonts and interesting graphics. Click on the app link and view a few examples.

A few months back, T decided to focus on the Age of Exploration for our homeschooling group’s annual history fair. (For folks who doubt the learning value of video games, T’s interest was entirely fueled by his love of Age of Empires.) Knowing his admiration of what is weird but true, I wondered if T might want to make his own series of slides on the topic of exploration.

He liked that idea. And I think other kids might too. It can work for any topic a kid is into.

The project fell into two parts: finding the facts and making the slides.

Finding the facts:

Whenever T delves into any new topic, I do like any good homeschooling parent and head to the library. I look for good nonfiction–although I leave behind those awful, clearly-written-for-schoolkids-doing-reports books that are such a bore–and check out armloads. I also look for interesting documentaries, films, and websites.

As he started this project, whenever T read, or we read together, I encouraged him to add a sticky tab when he encountered a fact that intrigued him.

Eventually he began compiling a list. This was the slightly tricky part: how do you paraphrase ideas from books in your own words? This is such a thorny subject, for kids and parents alike, and such an important skill for kids to acquire that I’m planning to write about it in more depth in an upcoming post. But briefly, this is what we did: First, I asked T to simply remember as many facts as he could–without consulting the books–and I transcribed his words. It’s easiest, I think, for kids to rephrase someone else’s ideas if they haven’t just looked at the original document. They remember the notion, and not the precise words. For those he couldn’t remember, I looked at his stickies and reminded him with a loose suggestion. Something like: “You wanted to write one about how Captain Cook died.”

For the ones in which he did need to consult the original pages, we read them aloud and he tried to rephrase in his own words. When kids are new to paraphrasing from other sources, working with an adult can be a big help. I typed so T could focus on the phrasing. If his suggestion was too close to the original, I nudged him to say it differently, and more in his own style. Sometimes I played thesaurus and offered alternative words, and he chose which he preferred. Since I was typing, rephrasing became like a game, and I was surprised at how quickly T picked it up.

It may not sound like much, simply collecting interesting facts from a variety of sources, but I beg to differ. It’s a valuable skill. It encourages kids to look at the information they’re taking in–whether from a book, or a film, or a website–and to consider which parts captivate them. It allows kids to connect with other sources on a personal level. This same skill will, eventually, help kids write thoughtful and engaging essays, reports and reviews, if they choose to. It’s a great stepping stone into other nonfiction writing.

Making the slides:

Originally, I pulled up PowerPoint for T to use. He was making a slideshow, and slideshow=PowerPoint, right? Well. PowerPoint certainly wasn’t intuitive for T, and we ran into our first big glitch when he wanted to draw on a slide. I clicked around and tried to figure out how to draw in our particular PowerPoint version. Finally I just decided that it would be easier for T to draw in Kid Pix, a program he’s comfortable with, and then we could import his drawings later.

Silly me. Once we pulled up Kid Pix, I remembered that it’s designed to make slideshows. In a way that’s very intuitive to the kids in the program’s title.

We’ve had a version of Kid Pix around here since my college kid was little. I think we’re on our third. It’s a fun program, and mostly my kids have used it as a plaything, a way of making computer art and just messing around with images and sounds. When T was younger, he liked to make armies of monsters on the screen, and have them stamp each other out. He’d eventually cover the screen with layers and layers of images–and then he’d swirl them up. Crazy fun. I don’t think any of the kids have used it for a project before. But the beauty of that is that after years of playing with the program, T already had lots of experience when it came to making his slides.

(No, I do not receive a kickback from Kid Pix. I just think it’s a fantastic, creative, open-ended piece of software for kids. If you’re interested, you can get a 15-day free trial on their website. Do it!)

Honest truth: the first few slides were a bit of a slog for T. Making slides look and sound like he wanted them to was time-consuming. This is one reason why I love authentic audiences for kids’ explorations, like history fairs–even if it means I have to organize them. T had a deadline, and he wanted to have something exciting for the fair. I encouraged him to keep at it, and eventually he began to see all the slide-making possibilities that Kid Pix offered. Then he got really into designing slides and dug in on his own.

Here’s a link to his slideshow. (Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the sound to export correctly, so we left it out. Too bad: the sound added a lot, and I’m sorry that you don’t get to hear T’s death groans on the Captain Cook slide.)

Fast Tube by Casper

The show is, how shall we say it, nothing show-stopping; it’s just a kid’s first foray into slideshows. And honestly, the part of his history fair exhibit that got the most attention was the challenge that required visitors to sort fruits and veggies into Old World/New World categories. (Did you know that although tomatoes and potatoes are New World crops, eggplant–from the same plant family–is an Old World crop, from Asia? Can any botanists out there explain?)

Still, T had fun making the show, and he’s amped up about using Kid Pix for other projects. It’s all about mixing his words with design, which is, as I keep mentioning, a skill for the new millennium.

If your kids try something along these lines, please leave a comment and let me know!

On Twitter last night, I came across something fascinating, via Maria at Brainpickings. (Always a source of fascinating bits.) It was an amazing visualization of the interactions of characters in the Iliad, and how they change throughout the book, by Argentinian designer Santiago Ortiz.

Do click here to view the stream in all its interactive glory. And then click on “network” for a different view. Mind-boggling.

I thought immediately of another graphic. A very low-tech graphic, in comparison, but one not entirely different. Remember the chart that Mr. T made last year, during his own fascination with The Iliad? It’s a chart of the various gods in The Iliad and how they interact with one another.

The thinking behind the two charts is quite similar, don’t you think? (You can see a bigger version here.)

Then there was this other chart which I’ve shared with you, about Avengers characters and how their “interestingness” changes over the course of the series. (Bigger, clickable version here.)

What’s compelling to me is that T came up with these ideas on his own. Sure, I’ve shown him lots of graphs and charts and encouraged him to think about sharing his ideas graphically. But he’s considered what he’s taking in (everything from classic literature to a superhero series–not so different in this case) and decided how to interpret it.

Mostly he’s just having fun. But look at how closely his play is connected to Santiago Ortiz’ work! A year ago, I didn’t even know there was such a job as visualization designer. I hadn’t heard the word infographic. But this is the stuff of the future. All the more reason not to dismiss the likes of video games and time spent at the computer. You never know where that might take kids.

More evidence of how the world is changing? As soon as I saw Santiago’s work, I wanted to contact him and share Mr. T’s work. I had a feeling he’d appreciate it.  T, of course, found Santiago’s work fascinating. I contacted Santiago via email, but then we continued our conversation on Twitter. Little tweets flying back and forth between California and Argentina. Now my kid has a visual designer to follow–and a whole new future career to consider.

In her fantastic book Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn, Cathy Davidson writes,

“By one estimate, 65 percent of children entering grade school this year will end up working in careers that haven’t even been invented yet.” (p. 18)

How do we prepare our kids for that? I think all we can do is nurture our kids’ fascinations, watch the world as it changes and look for connections between the two.

At least we don’t have to design a graphic visualization of those connections. But maybe our kids will.

It’s been a long while since I’ve written one of these what’s-got-me-worked-up posts.

Finished knitting projects! Finally! Last year, sometime mid-summer, my knitting mojo got lost. But thankfully we were reunited in late fall, in time for me to dig out the sweater I’d started for my hubby, and to finish it in time for Christmas. I’ve dubbed it the Hoppípolla Pullover, in honor of the Icelandic band Sigur Rós. Ever since he first saw the band’s documentary Heima, in which they play their music in obscenely gorgeous settings in their native land, often wearing similar yoked Lopi sweaters, Chris has asked when I’d be knitting him his own Icelandic sweater. Apparently the response should have been Why, by Christmas 2011, Sweetie! The random shirtless child in the following photo looks like he dropped in from a Sigur Rós video himself; too bad Chris didn’t have his guitar for the photo shoot.

For lack of other photos, I’ll decorate this post with a few other recently finished project shots. Ravelry site is down; links to come.

An article in print. I started this post in show-off mode; may as well keep going! I have an article in the March/April issue of Life Learning Magazine called “How Do Kids REALLY Learn to Write?” Gee, does that sound familiar? Yep, it’s a rewrite of the post I wrote back in January. Wendy Priesnitz, Life Learning’s editor, kindly tweeted to me after reading the post, and asked me to share it in the magazine. What a world we live in now: on any ordinary morning an editor might send you a totally unexpected message in 140 characters or less, and suddenly your day is made! The article is a more thought-out, clarified version of the blog post, influenced in no small degree by your thoughtful feedback in the comments.

Anne Lamott’s new book. It’s just a few weeks away! This one is a follow-up to Operating Instructions called Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son’s First Son. There’s a nice LA Times interview about the book here. I’ll never forget having Anne sign my copy of Operating Instructions at a reading on my very first Mother’s Day, in May 1993. I’d gone into labor with H the day after Mother’s Day the year before and, as I inelegantly tried to explain to Anne as she signed my book, I’d had to be a mother for a whole year before earning my Mother’s Day badge. I figured she’d appreciate the sheer injustice of it all, and after seeming a tad confused by my nervous babbling, she did. More Twitter talk: Anne’s on Twitter now! She manages to be funny and endearing and poetic in 140 characters. Do I scroll ahead when I see her photo show up in my feed? I do.

Another good book. Devotion by Dani Shapiro. A memoir in the form of a spiritual quest. I’m just a short way in, but it seems a fitting read for the Lenten season. (Not that it’s about Christianity; it’s about finding a spiritual center.)

A mesmerizing video. This film of making pesto by hand puts me in a trance. It’s so slow that it almost verges on parody; the, how shall we say it, pestaiola dries those basil leaves like they’re the bare bottoms of a beloved one-year-old. But by the time the gnocchi hits the table–make that by the time the gnocchi is bestowed upon the table like an offering to the gods–I’m ready to pull out my mezzaluna.

Resolutions update. As much as I miss being here with you more often, the decision to post less in an attempt to write more has been a fruitful one. I’ve written that article; I’ve made fine progress on my e-book; I’ve written a few conference proposals and am thigh-deep in a new article. I’ve been writing lots and lots and lots and if I’m atwitter about anything, that’s it.

So, what has you all worked up these days?

I’m reading Adam Gopnik again. This time it’s his new book, The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food. Gopnik on food and family! I’m reading it slowly, savoring it like it’s a little goat cheese crottin. Some of it is the deep-thinking Gopnik-ish stuff that has me skimming, feeling too dumb to follow–the history of the restaurant, for example, gets awfully philosophical–but much of it is simply delicious. May I share a few lines, about Gopnik looking into a beehive with a keeper?

“The beehive sits at the center of the roof. Dave opened it, cautiously, and we looked in together. It was like looking down into a New York office building from above: several thousand bad-tempered coworkers racing around and muttering.”

Yes. Exactly. I will never open a hive again without seeing secretaries.

Some of my favorite sections are the “emails” that Gopnik addresses to Elizabeth Pennell, a nineteenth-century British food writer. These sections are casual and chatty and full of Gopnik’s adventures in making the likes of butterscotch pudding and a henhouse-worth of roast chickens, including “the lemon-up-the-bum chicken beloved of British cooks.” It’s like sitting at Gopnik’s table with a glass of Rhône, and watching him simmer and yammer.

But I’m getting distracted. What I really want to focus on is an idea Gopnik writes about in one of his Pennell missives: “the rule of three.” First he uses it to summarize cooking:

“But mostly, the good things to eat take three steps. Three steps to pan sauté: the sauté, the reduction, and the finish. Three steps to make a cake: the liquids, the butters, and the dries. Three steps to stew…”

Then he starts applying his rule of three to art, and this is where it gets interesting.

“I suspect that this is so because the rule of three really expresses the three stages that are always at the base of any good thing we make, from soup to David Salle: there is first the raw thing, then there is the transformative act, and then there is the personal embroidery. The rule of three applies, because it captures an enduring truth of life, that, at best, people always have three terms to play with: what I take from nature, what I’ve learned from my tribe, what I do myself: nature, culture, me. Something borrowed, something done, something only I can do.”

Reading this, as I pedaled away on my stationary bike, had me instantly thinking of another favorite writer, Michael Chabon. The truly devoted Wonder Farm reader may remember me writing this, way back in my year of excellent essayists:

There’s something about the way Chabon combines his Pulitzer Prize-winning style with the most base cultural references that captivates me. In his essay on Legos—one that had particular resonance for me as the mother of two Lego-loving sons—Chabon writes, “Time after time, playing Legos with my kids, I would fall under the spell of the old familiar crunching. It’s the sound of creativity itself, of the inventive mind at work, making something new out of what you have been given by your culture, what you know you will need to do the job, and what you happen to stumble upon along the way.” That making something new of what you have been given by your culture is a big part of Chabon’s genius. It’s precisely what he does in these essays, again and again. (It’s the same sort of creative, culture-twisting that I love to see my kids fiddle with, that I’ve written about in my Waldorf Guilt posts.) Chabon gives hope to a woman of his age who aspires to write, but worries about the conceit of such an intellectual aspiration given the amount of time she spent watching Brady Bunch reruns as a child.

Rule of three! Chabon starts with not nature, per se, but the canon of literature. Then he adds what his culture has given him, which might be Legos, or might be (as I noted in that post) Squeeze Parkay margarine, Wacky Packages, or the Planet of the Apes television show from the 70s. Then he loops it all together as only he can, with wit and lyric.

And then, still pedaling, I suddenly thought of a third writer. (Because, of course, there must be three when writing of threes.) The third? Mr. T. Last week he struggled to come up with something new for our writer’s workshop. We bandied about lots of ideas, until he finally came up with this scenario: a Colossus shows up at the Downtown Oakland Whole Foods. Written up as a newscast. An excerpt:

Reporter: So what exactly happened in there, Mary?

Mary: It was horrifying! The Colossus fell from the ceiling from the second story elevator platform and landed on hundreds of orange boxes! Then a sample-lady offered him a chocolate heart for anyone special in his life! He threw the sample-lady into a fruit salad display and ate the chocolate! And no, Tommy, you can’t have a Popsicle just because you saw a Colossus!

 Reporter: Sounds intense! So Mary, what did the Colossus look like exactly?

Mary: It was almost sixty feet high so that it was skimming the roof! It was made entirely out of metal!

Tommy: Mom, it wasn’t just metal it was bronze! It was AWESOME!

Mary: I just hope there aren’t any more Colossuses!

Tommy: Colossi! Mom, honestly!

I’ll spare you the part in which the Colossus starts eating shopping carts, including one with a strapped-in baby. (Never fear: The baby shoots back into its mother’s arms from a hatch in the Colossus’ stomach.) I will tell you that Mr. T had a splendid time writing this story. And you know where this lane in the grocery store is heading, don’t you? Rule of Three. Mr. T started with the canon: Greek mythology and tales of the Colossus of Rhodes. Then he added something given to him by his culture: shopping at Whole Foods (curse of the privileged urban child.) And then he shook it all up into his very own concoction.

It’s a light, fluffy concoction, yes. A fun trifle to write and read aloud to his friends. But I think it’s more than that, too. T. is making art on his own terms, as Gopnik does, as Chabon does. He’s reflecting on the canon, applying modern life and twisting it all in his own way. When we simply ask kids to write straightforward, formulaic responses to literature, or to nonfiction topics, we’re forcing them to skip a step. We don’t allow them to reflect on how the original material relates to their own worlds, and their own ideas, and the resulting writing is typically flat. It lacks the inspiration of art.

Which is why kids should be allowed to write about the banal trappings of their culture, if that’s what inspires them. Whether that be Plants Vs. Zombies or Quentin Tarantino films or Littlest Pet Shop figurines. Teenagers writing about Romeo and Juliet should be allowed to reflect on gangs and Facebook-official relationships. If you doubt that this sort of writing is valuable, allow me to direct you back to Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. Do you remember those aptitudes that Pink says we’ll need in the future, specifically the aptitudes of symphony and story? (If not, my synopsis is here.) Those are the aptitudes that kids will develop, if allowed to romp in the playgrounds of culture and their imaginations.

Mr. T is planning a whole series of tales of Greek monsters in modern-day locations. I can’t wait to read his spin. It’s fun, but it’s important too. After all, as my man Gopnik writes, “The rule of three is the rule of making.”

It’s very satisfying to write a post that brings so many of you out for a tea party in the comments! If you haven’t been back to the discussion for the How Do Kids REALLY Learn to Write? post, hop on over. You’ll find fantastic insights and experiences shared there.

One of my most essential suggestions in that post was the final one: Help your kids find meaningful, authentic reasons to write. And what was my first example of how you can help make meaningful, authentic writing opportunities for kids? Start a writer’s workshop. If you’ve been reading along here for any length of time, you could have predicted that one. You know that I mention writer’s workshops often, you know that I’m a great fan–yet suddenly I realize that I’ve only written about them at length here once.

So, let’s talk about writer’s workshops.

I’m so convinced of the effectiveness of writer’s workshops and writing clubs that I’m writing an e-book on the topic. (Still cranking away on that! It should be finished in the next few months.) From the introduction of my project:

One of the easiest ways I know to conjure an audience for a child’s writing is to start a writer’s workshop.

Conjure is an apt word here because, in my experience, writer’s workshops can be almost magical in their ability to motivate kids’ writing. I’ve facilitated a variety of groups over a dozen years, working with kids as young as four and as old as seventeen.  Twelve years in, I’m still surprised at how a workshop can inspire a child’s desire to write. I see it in the kids from my current group, overheard at the park, asking each other, “What are you reading at the workshop tomorrow?” I see it in the ten-year-old who emails, begging me to hold our bi-monthly workshops every week, “Please!!!!!!!!!” I saw it last year in the teenage boy who dutifully cranked out regular installments of a Twilight series spoof, because the other workshop kids cheered and whined for them. In the kids who arrive at my house on workshop day, and scurry off to a corner to scratch out the unfinished ending to a story—because they don’t want to miss the party. In my own son, who hollered about how much he hated writing at seven, but months later, after we’d started our first workshop, could be found at the kitchen table, scribbling away at his own Captain Underpants comics before he’d even finished his morning glass of orange juice.

A writer’s workshop may not have such an effect on every child, but I’ll make the audacious claim that it will have such an effect on most kids. It’s a powerful motivator, and it’s hard not to use magic as its metaphor. I’m not the only one to think so; I’ve heard facilitators of other workshops and writing clubs for kids make similar claims.

Yet, for all it offers, a workshop is a fairly simple gathering to facilitate. We’re talking big payoff with minimal effort. Really, all you need to provide is a place for kids to share their writing. And a little help in cultivating a nurturing atmosphere.

There are many ways to format a workshop. In classrooms, teachers typically present a short lesson on craft, often using professional writings as inspiration, and then there’s a longer session of writing time, with sharing at the end. Many home-based workshops follow a similar pattern: the facilitator offers a fun prompt, and kids write, and share what they’ve written.

We do things a bit differently in my workshops. Kids write whatever they want: on any topic, in any genre. They do the actual writing at home. Then they read their work aloud at the workshop, and the group offers feedback. We generally do a quick, fun writing exercise together midway, but bulk of our time together goes to offering feedback on those written-at-home projects. I like this format because it allows kids to take time on their writing, and it offers more freedom in how kids write. Many still dictate their work to parents, which they can easily do at home; some like to write at computers; some enjoy writing bit by bit over the two weeks between our meetings; some prefer dashing off something by hand on their way to our gathering. Many choose to write longer pieces, and offer their latest installment at each meeting.

When kids write at home, it leaves more workshop time for feedback. And that, I think, is where the magic lies. As I mentioned in that last post, people (generally) write for connection and response. A writer’s workshop fulfills that in bucket loads: A child sits at the front of the group and reads his or her writing. And the other kids listen! And offer positive feedback!

That, my friends, is gold to a writer. I know I never tire of getting feedback on my own writing.

You’ll notice that I specify positive feedback. I’m a big believer in positive feedback. I think that hearing what we do well is more instructive than some folks realize. Getting feedback on our strengths teaches us what our strengths are–and many of us don’t recognize our strengths. Positive feedback teaches us what we do well, and encourages us to keep doing it.

A big chunk of my e-book focuses on offering feedback, because it’s such an essential part of a workshop–and it’s also the place where a workshop can go wrong, and turn unproductive. We do, eventually, begin offering constructive, building feedback in our workshop, but we delve into it slowly and with care. But truthfully, you could host a workshop that allows only positive feedback, and the kids would develop as writers.

What never fails to amaze me is the insight that kids can offer about writing. They really begin thinking like writers. At our last workshop, one ten-year-old said, “I like how you took the comedy of somebody messing up a newscast and made it real.” Another said, “I found it interesting that the snatchers couldn’t get the kids, which made me want to hear more of the story.” They comment on everything from specific words to character motivation to plotting. Once, a teen responded to a girl’s Christmas memoir by saying that all the details made him feel like he was looking into a snow globe. (I practically welled up at that one.)

You can get a glimpse into how a feedback session can blossom into a full-blown writerly discussion in my post Still Talking Literature.

A Few Benefits of a Writer’s Workshop:

• Workshoppers experience one of writing’s essential purposes—the opportunity to convey ideas in words to an audience.
• Having an audience to write for can be highly motivating.
• A workshop audience provides feedback on one’s writing. Feedback isn’t always easy to come by.
• The workshop setting encourages kids to write with an audience in mind. Writing for a particular audience can help writers develop clarity in their work.
• The workshop exposes kids to a variety of writing genres and styles. Very often the kids influence one another’s writing.
• The workshop provides authentic deadlines for writing, which can be helpful for writers of all ages.
• A positive workshop environment can help kids recognize their personal strengths as writers.
• A workshop setting values creativity over formula, content over correctness, practice over theory—all qualities essential to developing writers.
• The workshop helps kids understand that writing is a process, that the work is malleable. Writing can always be changed and improved, if the writer chooses to.
• Discussion about one another’s writing helps kids learn how literature works, in an authentic, meaningful, interesting way.
• For homeschooled kids, the workshop provides the audience often missing in a homeschool setting. For schooled kids, the workshop allows for opportunities that may not happen in a classroom: more freedom to write creatively, and in-depth dialogue about kid-generated writing.
• And a benefit not to be underestimated: the workshop shows kids that writing can be fun.

I’d love to keep the tea party going. A few questions to get the chitchat started: Have your kids ever participated in a writer’s workshop or other sort of writing club–or have you hosted one yourself? Was the experience useful? Have you participated in a workshop yourself? Or, have you ever considered hosting a writer’s workshop? What’s kept you from doing so?

Mr. T is just beginning to type his writing on his own.

Warning: some of what follows may sound like heresy to traditional educators.

Recently a reader of this blog sent an email asking for advice. She’s a homeschooling mom, and she wrote after spending time with other homeschooling friends, and hearing how they teach writing to their kids. Basically, these parents have their kids work daily at their writing. Younger kids draft a sentence each day and then combine them into a paragraph at the end of the week. An older child writes a paragraph each day, and then combines them into a traditional “five-paragraph essay.”

My reader writes:

“I wonder if this approach is going to encourage a love of writing and an ability to establish an authentic writing voice of one’s own.”

She then went on to describe some of the writing that her kids do, based on their interests. I won’t describe the details, to protect my reader’s privacy, but she writes,

“Their writing experiences are few and far between, but in my opinion, so rich, so full of voice and purpose…”

Here’s what she wonders:

“Can these kinds of few and far between writing activities be “enough” if they are rich enough and gradually become more frequent?  How can a family keep a sense of play and joy and authenticity in writing while making it a habit, too?  And how can a parent know when it’s time to push a little more and when it’s time to wait?  And am I being overly cavalier and irresponsible to think that teaching my kids paragraphing skills can wait a while?”

There are so many good questions here, enough to fill a chapter in a book. Rather than try to address this reader’s wonderings in an elegant, cohesive way–which would have me tapping at my computer here for days–let me offer instead some random thoughts.

• The notion of learning through routine practice is mostly a school notion. Practicing small pieces of a larger skill day after day is a way of ensuring that a large group of children will eventually learn that same skill. The assumption is that the child will learn the multiplication table, or the rules of grammar, or the parts of the body if he or she works at them repeatedly. The teacher can’t be aware of learning that happens outside of the classroom, in daily life, so all learning gets focused into a lesson format. Many of us who grew up going to school have unwittingly become convinced that a person needs this sort of routine practice in order to learn something.
• Adult-driven, routine practice-type learning rarely takes the child’s interest and motivation into account. In fact, in most cases, the child isn’t terribly engaged in this sort of practice. He or she does it simply because it is required.
• On the other hand, when a child’s interest and motivation are there, that child can often pick up concepts and skills rather quickly. Repeated practice isn’t necessary. Your daughter figures out how to multiply mentally because she wants to win at Yahtzee; your son understands how different ancient civilizations affected one another because he enjoys reading The Cartoon History of the Universe.
• This is not to say that repeated practice doesn’t have a role in learning. Repeated practice when taken on by choice can be the deepest sort of learning. When, for example, a child does that skateboard trick over and over to get it down; when she draws manga characters in the margin of every paper in her path; when she keeps strumming her guitar because she wants to be able to play Hey Jude through the finish. The child learns in these situations because he or she is motivated and the engagement is constant. In this case, practice leads to deep learning, yet it doesn’t feel like practice to the child. The child is simply doing what he or she is compelled to do.

So, how do these ideas apply to writing?

If you’re concerned about helping your kids develop writing skills for their futures, I have a few quotes for you.

Me, squinting and looking sheepish.

I did not write much in 2011.

That realization sort of stuns me. I didn’t recognize it until the year began to dwindle and I glanced back. I spent a lot of time last year working behind the scenes of my writing, without actually writing. I futzed under the hood, you could say, without actually driving the car.

And how, you might ask, did I do that for a year?

I spent the first three or four months of the year researching why writing matters. This was, ostensibly, a means of starting a book chapter called (what else) “Why Writing Matters.” I can’t, I figure, expect parents to read a book about helping their kids with writing unless they’re convinced that the endeavor will be worth their while. So I simply set out to do a little research, and found myself falling into a rabbit hole of studies, reports, articles and books on how writing is becoming more important than ever in the modern world. And concurrently found other studies, reports, articles and books bemoaning the fact that writing is being more neglected than ever in most classrooms. It’s a fascinating, horrifying story, and I couldn’t move on from it; I just kept reading, gathering notes and pulling out my hair. I managed to collect it all into an article query, and wrote an introduction to the article, but haven’t yet had a magazine take me up on writing the actual piece. It’s an important story, and one I’d still like to tell.

I spent another few months preparing workshops which I presented at a homeschool conference and elsewhere. I’ve given workshops before, but these were two completely new ones, and it surprised me how much time they took to put together. Good news: those months of research wriggled their way into both workshops. Suddenly I had more evidence, more grit for parents, to work them up about writing. Giving the workshops was exciting–there’s nothing like sharing ideas with others and getting immediate, tangible responses. (And hugs, even.) The give-and-take with participants gave me all the more insight about kids, parents and writing for my book project.

Still, it wasn’t writing.

I spent another two months redesigning my blog. This was perhaps the most frivolous, not-related-to-writing distraction of all. I just wanted my blog to look more like the vision I had in my mind; I had no idea how much I had to learn about code and such to make that happen. It was a fulfilling little dalliance, though, and it had to be good for the synapses in my forty-six-year-old brain. Now I’m redesigning my homeschool support group’s website, so the experience wasn’t all shallow self-indulgence.

Looking back on how I spent 2o11, and how much I wrote, I realize that I worked on just three projects: that article query, my e-book for parents on facilitating writer’s workshops (still unfinished) and this blog. That’s it.

Sigh.

I also realized something else. There are two things getting in the way of my writing.

1. my book project
2. this blog

I know, I know! How can writing a book get in the way of writing? But a book project is nothing if not big. I knew that writing a book would take years. It’s been almost three years since I got the original audacious idea of writing it. In that time I’ve done a lot of thinking, outlining and note-taking. I’ve even done a lot of writing. But I can see now that I am years and years away from anything resembling a completed book. I just don’t have the time to make it happen faster. I’m still a homeschooling parent, which implies a certain level of busy.

I’m also a monogamous-project person. Ask any of the moms in my homeschooling group, who see me knitting at the park week after week. I work dutifully at one project and finish it before I even swatch for another one. It’s a little ridiculous. I knitted a single sweater coat for nine months until the thing reached my ankles. I’m not sure what this tendency says about me. That I value finished projects over process? That I can’t multi-task? That I’m tunnel-visioned? True. True. True. But it’s also true that if I want something I will work for it. Stubbornly. Single-mindedly. Mulishly.

I thought I wanted to write a book. I do want to write a book. But what I realize, now, is that I want even more to help other parents with their kids’ writing. And if I put all my time into writing a book that won’t make it into another parent’s hands for years and years, then I’m not going to be helping anyone for a mighty long time.

Then there’s the fact that my project single-mindedness hasn’t allowed me any other writing for almost three years. So many times an essay idea has whispered in my ear, and I’ve ignored it, knowing that I’d never get a book finished if I got sidetracked with other whims. But, oh, how I’ve missed writing essays and articles! I’ve missed breathing on them and shining them up until I could see my reflection in them. I’ve missed sharing them with my writer friends, and re-writing them, and re-writing them again, and finding potential markets for them, and sending them off, with held breath and crossed fingers. I’ve missed that enchanted period before the rejection arrives, when the unlikely is possible.

I haven’t written a new essay in almost three years. I stopped writing essays just about the time I started getting them published.

Suddenly I’m feeling a little sad about that.

I’m not giving up on my book project. I’ve just decided to let it become the afghan that I knit at on the side, for years, without worrying about when it will get finished.

In the meanwhile, I’m allowing myself to dally. I’ll keep working at my e-book on facilitating workshops. I’m excited about the e-book model: the shorter format, the self-publishing angle. I’ll try out this first idea, and if it goes well, I very well may release other portions of the book in my brain as e-books. I love the idea of potentially helping other parents sooner, rather than later.

And I’m going to get back to writing essays and articles. I’ve pulled a few simmering-too-long ideas right up to the front burners. Feels good.

But back to that other writing obstacle: this blog.

I’ve kept up this blog as doggedly as everything else I do. A post a week, most weeks. For a long time I kicked myself for not writing more. I was convinced that I needed to post more often to build up my audience. And how I wanted to build my audience! I kept waiting for the month that my blog would take off, and attract masses. But, no. There have been no take-offs or other statistical pyrotechnics. My blog audience has grown slowly and steadily over the months and years. What else did plodding, deliberate me expect? I have a relatively small yet loyal readership. Every month there are a few more of you. I am finally beginning to take satisfaction in the fineness of that gift.

But a post a week here has been too much for me. As this current post is making all too evident, I don’t write short. Wish I could, but I can’t. So even posting every eight to ten days meant that blogging took up a good chunk of my writing time.

No, I’m not giving up the farm. I’m just putting my eggs in the basket that says that most of my readers will keep showing up, even if I only post every two weeks or so. That’s what feed readers and email subscriptions are for, after all.

I’m also hoping to focus my posts here on writing with kids, and passion-driven learning because those are the topics that matter most to me. I’ve finally figured out that I’m not Soule Mama, you know? I may drop in some atwitter posts now and again–heavy on photos, light on text–because I don’t want to things to get too impersonal. But I have a better sense of what my mission is, and what I want to share here.

So. All of this has been a bloated, navel-gazing introduction to my new year’s resolution: In 2012 I will write.

Wish me luck.