Introducing SAVE Creative Writing

Hi all. Remember me? I'll forgive you if you don't. It's been a while. It's not like I fell out of a tree or anything. I got laid off and had to scramble to find a paid gig. I'll tell you about the troubled California economy another day. Right now I'm I introducing SAVE.

How many people does it take to reach Anthony Bourdain?
One, if you're me and you know how to find him.

How many people does it take to reach America's writers? To be exact, the specific subset of writers that attended Vassar College? I don't know. That's where you folk come in. (FYI, Bourdain attended but did not graduate)

Currently, due to budget cuts, the creative writing program at Vassar is facing severe budget cuts. If passed they threaten to undermine the integrity of the creative writing program.

To follow the fight against these cuts and find out how you can help visit SAVE Creative Writing

Professionally Developed

Traditionally, when an administrator “asks” me to attend an outside professional-development training, I groan. Almost invariably, from the moment I walk into the local Howard Johnson/Best Western/Comfort Inn, slap the adhesive name badge on my breast, select from the continental breakfast buffet, and settle into my folding chair, these “workshops” become little more than a 6 –hour infomercial with the sole intention of selling us the latest book, learning kit, or software under the guise of imparting wisdom to a room of overworked, underpaid teachers who are already planning their escape during the “on your own” lunch break.

So, when my boss told me I had been registered for Walter Mayes’ “The Best New Young Adult Literature of The Decade” workshop, my reaction was much the same. But, since it didn’t seem I had much choice in the matter anyway, I figured, if nothing else, I’d get to sleep in, wear jeans, and leave a sub with my roomful of eleven year-olds on Halloween. If I was really lucky, I might even get a good list of new books to use for inspiring my students and my Fringe column. As it turns out, I got all of that, and a whole lot more.

The moment that 6 foot, 7 inch tall, former Jeopardy champion, Walter Mayes took the stage, I knew that this would not be a typical “training” session. As the Librarian and Media Specialist at The Girls' Middle School in Mountain View, California, Mayes is skilled in the art of engaging a dubious audience.

In addition to regaling us with stories of the liberal grandparents who instilled in him the love of all things literary, his experiences as a member of dozens of literary award committees, and anecdotes about trying to keep his library stocked with enough copies of the Twilight series (which he endearingly denounces as a “piece of crap”), Mayes provided exactly what we wanted: a list of the best new YA books, their appropriate audiences, and how to use them most effectively in our classrooms. Among his favorites? Gary Schmidt's The Wednesday Wars, Gordon Kormon's No More Dead Dogs, and Chris Lynch's Inexcusable.

Most importantly, though, he inspired us to turn the sour grapes of teaching literature to the unwilling into a sweet, sweet wine to intoxicate not only our students, but ourselves, with the love of reading.

Yesterday, I made a trip to the local bookstore, lightened my wallet, and weighted my tote-bag with 6 new books--the three mentioned above plus,Nancy Werlin's The Rules of Survival, Shaun Tan's The Arrival that I have only put down long enough to write this post.

So, for now, I’m off to do some reading. Be back next time with a look at Gary Schmidt’s The Wednesday Wars. In the meanwhile, listen to Walter read a clip from his book, Walter The Giant Storyteller's Giant Book of Giant Stories

Writing The Wrongs

Kids today aren’t just disinterested in writing—they are downright terrified of it.

Blame video games. Blame the Internet. Blame cell phones. Blame any of the high-tech toys that too many responsibility-shirking adults are so quick to use as a scapegoat. But, the way I see it, distractions like these are only as strong as the internal motivation to avoid another task. So what is it? Why is “writing,”—an activity that so many, historically, have used as a vehicle of rebellion, self-expression, and liberation, not more attractive to angsty, contrary teenagers?

What I saw in my classroom this week has led me to my own hypothesis. And, at the risk of sounding like a turncoat, I say: the real onus is on teachers.

“Miss Carey?” One overachiever asked, “Will you take points off our writing if we have more than 8 sentences in a paragraph—or less than six?”

No, honey, Mrs. So-and-So probably told you that because that’s the way the state testing Gestapo is going to decide how worthy you and your teacher are on the MCAS this spring.

“Miss Carey? What do you mean good poetry doesn’t have to rhyme? Are you saying that Jack Prelutsky isn’t the greatest poet who ever lived?”

Yes, dear. That is what I’m saying. If you were told otherwise in the past, it’s because your teacher was as afraid of poetry as you are.

“Miss Carey? Will you make us write as a punishment if we do something bad in class?”

No, son. I also won’t bludgeon you with a calculator and then try to make you a better mathematician.

It goes on. The truth is, I haven’t done much at all in the way of actual writing instruction so much as I have trying to reprogram 60 brains and convincing them that, despite what has been instilled in them with all the fire and brimstone of a Catholic upbringing, writing is not just another set of rules and regulations cast upon them by generations of old-dog teachers who refuse to learn new tricks. So far, it seems to be working, but it’s going to be a long road.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Young? Adult? Literature?

My favorite comedian, the late Mitch Hedberg, once cracked: “Every book is a children’s book as long as the kid can read!”

Clearly, this statement is little more than an uninformed generalization with the singular goal of eliciting a chuckle. But, I must admit, as a card-carrying member of the “Make ‘em laugh any way you can” brigade, the silly one-liner actually gave me pause. Because, more and more, Young Adult Literature that I see as a middle school teacher is taking on content and themes that, often, is more “adult” than “young.” The ensuing internal debate has become a sort of “Chicken or The Egg” conundrum that I’ve yet to resolve.

Then, upon being invited to write for Fringe, I was referred to another column in a popular blog on YAL. And, I totally dug the snarky, “I love the 80’s”-style reviews of books from our collective childhood, having consequently been inspired to unearth lots of dusty paperbacks in my basement. And, while it’s most certainly been quite a trip to revisit these characters and stories through grown up eyes, as I read, something strikes me. Though I feel very close to these books out of nostalgia, I can’t remember ever being to relate to them as a moody, lower-middle class kid, coming of age in the neon nineties.

And so, it is in the same spirit with which I immediately removed the archaic Where The Red Fern Grows, and A Wrinkle In Time from my sixth-graders’ required reading curriculum, that I have decided--for the purposes of this column--to stick to YAL. and authors from the last two decades. But I promise—no annoying little wizards. Ever.

Be back in two weeks, with Laurie Halse Anderson’s Fever, 1793.

Debt: The Big Dream Killer

Want to hear something scary? My fiance and I together owe over $120,000 in school loan debt, and we haven't even come close to entering the collapsing housing market yet. So if we were to buy a house here in Massachusetts, where it's unlikely we'd find even a fixer-upper for less than $200,000 any reasonable distance from our jobs, we're likely looking at over $300,000 in debt to start our lives together. Together, we bring in about $83,000 a year (which sounds like so much to me), so we'd owe over 3.5 times what we make in a year. That's not to mention any credit card or auto debt. No wonder we're scared to buy a house, even though we're pitching money down the toilet in rent. And children? Forget it. Can't afford them.

Compare that to my parents, who, when starting out in the mid 70s, had to pay back my dad's student loan of $3000. They bought a starter home that cost about $30,000, and my dad's starting salary as a teacher was about $15,000. They owed about twice what they were bringing in, without counting any money my mom earned before she got pregnant.

It feels unfair. We've gone farther than our parents in education, but we're wallowing under more debt than we can handle. We had more opportunity, more time to dream big, yet many of us are struggling in jobs we don't like to pay for the education that was supposed to make our dreams realities.

I don't regret going to college, but it was so easy to think of those loans like monopoly money. I just wish someone had sat me down when I was choosing paths like English and writing and said, hey, it's great to do what you love, but don't forget this isn't free. You have to pay it back. So if you aren't going down a path that will definitely lead you to a job that will pay for what you love, think about switching majors.

The irony is that you need the degree (and its debt) to get the job to buy the house that will put you in further debt. Oh, and did I mention our dollar isn't even worth as much as it used to be? But luckily, all that writing training comes in handy - I can write all my thoughts here for free, whether anyone reads or not.