M1 and Writing

M1 has always been a reluctant writer.  He doesn't like putting words to a page, though he's magnificent at telling stories.  I vividly remember a little 5-year-old boy coming home from preschool and telling me a story about a boy in an apple tree.  It was such a beautiful story that I mentioned it to his teacher the next day and asked which book she had read.  Turned out that there was no such book and my son had invented the story on the spot.  It shocked me (in a good way).  Still, if I ask him to put pen or pencil to paper - or fingers to keyboard - I get a lot of resistance and a lot of stilted words and formulaic sentences.

*sigh*

I wrote a week or so ago about M2's writing project.  At the same time, M1 was doing one.  Because it's harder for him and I ask for longer paragraphs, it took him longer.  Besides anything else, we spent a lot of time finding his voice.  When he first whipped out an outline/rough draft, it read like this:  First, we did then.  Then, we did this.  Next, this happened.  Finally, this.  It was great.  Well, yes, it was, but you'd never have known by reading that paper.  I finally videotaped him telling me about Christmas and then transcribed what he said.  Then I told him, more or less, that he was putting the cart before the horse when it came to structure in his paper.  He was working so hard to make sure the bones of the paper were decent that he forgot that the depth and skin are what people notice the most.  I had to remind him that he can always add structure but he can't always add details and the fun bits of information that make something worth reading.

I don't know if it'll stick, but we did make some progress, and I'm glad. 

M1's story:

               I had a lot of presents on Christmas morning 2011. My favorite parts were the presents and stockings. My sister and I had a blast that morning.

               We were awakened by a cat falling out of the Christmas tree. It sounded like Santa had fallen out of the chimney onto our tree. For a while we talked about what we would do that morning and investigated our presents. Maggie discovered that she had a pink papasan chair. I figured out that I had a lot of small presents but no big presents.

I decided to wake up Mom and Dad. We pounced on Dad to wake him up and then shook the bed to wake up Doom. They grunted, “Oof,” and said, “Get off and wait by the tree!” We waited by the tree until they came in. It seemed like hours.

Finally they came into the living room. As soon as they sat down we launched into our presents. I found a Kindle Fire in one of mine; in another I found a box of Horrible Histories. Under a blanket, my sister found a pink papasan chair. I was so excited that I couldn’t remember anything (of anyone else’s) other than that papasan chair. I was happy that I could have Plants vs. Zombies on the Kindle Fire and turn brains into balls with limewater using a recipe from Horrible Histories. After we opened our presents we opened our stockings and found good things of all kinds. We found thick glow sticks, Tim Tams, Violet Crumbles, Twistz and a type of chocolate with a cup and a half of milk. It was an absolutely wonderful Christmas.

               There was so much delight on Christmas morning I could explode. It was the best day of my life.

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On an unrelated note, I have things to say about recent events, but I'm waiting until the media and investigators are done with what they do.  Then I'll be able to talk.  Right now I'm still processing.  As many of us are.