November 26, 2024

The Writers’ Nook is a place where we, as a group, can provide a safe and positive environment in which to encourage one another and hone our own writing skills.

Reading, writing and discussing

This will be a reading and discussing meeting. We’ll share our work with one another, aloud. Love it if you bring something that you’ve written to share. We’ll provide oral feedback to one another about the written pieces as well as the delivery. We‘ll spend some time reflecting on The Challenge from our last meeting; that of developing our Characters prior to writing the story. And be sure to bring your notebooks or scratch pads; we’re going to do some writing.

The Handout

There is no handout for this meeting but if you want to download the Evaluation Criteria that we used a few weeks ago to provide feedback to whomever has decided to read aloud, it will probably come in handy at the meeting.

The Challenge

Your challenge, after this meeting is over and before the next one on December 10th is to:

— write an original Christmas Story,
— write a piece about how Christmas has changed from the days when we were children, or
— tell us about the sounds from your childhood. Think back, what were the sounds that you were famiiar with in your childhood?

When you are finished writing your story, please send it to me so I can post it below for others to read, for feedback.

Responses

(Members, after reading the following responses, please continue on down this page to Comment on them. This is where we provide feedback to one another; this is one of the ways we learn from each other.)

A North Woods Christmas Story by Tom Wainwright (includes photographs of the leather-covered storybook in its snug lid, magnetically closed; the contents: the birch bark angels are under the yellowy sponge left of the Santa ornament; and the closed book box.)
Dorothy by Marilyn McAllister

2 thoughts on “November 26, 2024

  1. Dorothy: Marilyn, This is a beautiful poem honouring a strong woman and the roles she carried in her life. It’s a fitting tribute to come back to us with, given the remnants of the discussion we tucked into at our last meeting. Thank you.

  2. Tom: A North Woods Christmas Story, I have also written a story for my grandchildren and I know the feeling of doing it to the best of your ability because it’s a lifelong gift that you give them; and you want it to be perfect. It shows! And the work you did on the box and its contents is extraordinary. It’s the emotion that goes into the creation of something for someone special in your life that elevates the quality of the gift.
    I have a little problem providing feedback for work that is already ‘published,’ can’t look for areas of improvement because it’s already finished — but I do have some things I’d like to say about the writing. First of all, I congratulate you on creating a new tradition for your family like the reading of a special story that can go on and on for generations.
    I like several things that you did in this story that appeals to younger children. For example the repetition that the treetops were, “heavy with snow and frost, their tops arched over like little question marks.” Children love it when they can repeat a phrase in a story like a mantra. I love the joke about Birch Bark (barking); a good way to teach children that some words have more than one, and often disconnected, definitions.
    I noticed that several times you used more elaborate words, like dismay, and defined them. Again, teaching in a nice way.
    Congratulations and thank you for sharing this special story with us.

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