The Writer's Notebook

As we enter into week five of our school year (gosh, that's hard to believe) you should be getting comfortable with ideas to write about in your writer's notebook section of your portfolio. With the mid-quarter approaching, there will no doubt be a portfolio check. Be sure you have completed your writing territories, your freewriting list of "what I'm good at" and "what I'm not good at," and today's heart map and visual writing territories.

The heart map...let's see...imagine all the things that are close to your heart, things you love. Next imagine all the things that are outside your heart, things you can't let in or don't like to think about. Either way, it's easier to write about the things you feel strongly about, so this map may help in your search for topics.

We'll talk about techniques for finding writing ideas within your reading. One we will use in class is the "cloze poetry" technique where we look at a poet's style or frame and use it for a framework for our own. The "I Meant To Tell You" template is an example of this technique.

In the meantime, I hope everyone has the Internet agreement turned in so that we can all participate in the computer lab exercise in netiquette.