Deserving of an Exclamation Point

I bought my kids their first journals when they were 3.  At the time they were starting to write letters, and my daughter in particular loved to draw.  I wanted to document their writing development and introduce journal writing as a practice in our lives.  Each night I would scribe for them something "good" about the day and something "not so good."  Sometimes, they would take the pen to draw or write themselves.

My son, the pleaser, dutifully participated, but it was not a routine that he relished.  My daughter, on the other hand, often took the pen - tracing her hand and coloring it, drawing rainbows and people, and writing her name, the one word she could spell with confidence.  She added stickers to each page of her journal, and she asked regularly if we could "write tonight" rather than read.  She was a budding writer.

And then she went to school.

As a kindergartner, my daughter did not like to write in school.  "Reading" and "writing" were her least favorite subjects, and she abandoned her journaling at home.  No matter how I tried, I couldn't help her to see that the freedom she loved in drawing her pictures and writing with me in her journal were also things she could do on the lined paper at school.  She didn't draw.  She didn't "stretch her words," as her teacher encouraged.  She didn't write.

At the same that she abandoned the journal and writing in general, her creativity blossomed.   With music in her heart, she would create tunes, add lyrics, and dance - everywhere.  She danced and sang her way around the house, down the aisles of the grocery store, and even through the park on our family trip to Disney.  She was composing - but she still wasn't writing.

Her resistance was so strong that I asked her kindergarten teacher to allow her to "write her songs," during writing workshop.  Though my daughter appeared excited about the prospect, she did not write her songs at school, and my attempts to get her to write them at home were futile.  Rather than push her, I backed off.  We left the half-filled journals on her nightstand, and I hoped that, one day, she would return to writing.

Now my daughter is in first grade, and something has shifted.  A few weeks ago I noticed that she was carrying a small notebook everywhere she went.  At the kitchen table she asked me to help her think of "categories."  In the car she asked the family to give her words and to help her spell them.  She hid the notebook in her backpack to take to school and to share on the bus.  She filled page after page with pictures and words, and she asked me to get her more notebooks when she filled the one she carried.  A few nights ago I reminded her of the journals on her bedside table, and we looked through some of the stories she had created when she was younger.  "I was little then," she laughed as we read a silly story about her friend Isabelle.

Last night she asked me if we could "write instead of read tonight."  She had the journal and a pen in hand as she sat on the bed.  She turned to the first empty page and began drawing. She chatted as she developed her art, and she held on to the pen as she wrote her own words, rather than having me scribe her story.  "One day Princess Megan went walking," she wrote.   Her pen flew over the second page, and an elaborate castle appeared.  "Princess Megan went back to the castle."

She turned the page.

"And now the problem," she explained as a new version of the castle appeared on the page.  "The problem?" I asked, impressed that she knew that a story needs a conflict.  "Yes, every story needs a problem," she explained.  I smiled, hearing the echo of a teacher's voice in her words.

"But...," she wrote.  She paused for a moment before adding an exclamation point.  "BUT!" she exclaimed, and continued to write, "the drawbridge wouldn't open."  She added a second exclamation point.

She read the page three times, as if she knew that the punctuation was wrong.  However, as she loudly and emotionally pronounced "BUT!!!", it was clear to both of us that the punctuation was absolutely correct.

It's a fine line between correction and encouragement.  Writers need both, but without a desire to write, there will be little to correct.  My daughter is a developing writer, and I love that she loves to create, and I am happy that she has taken her composing back to the page.  I love that she knows that a story has a problem, and I love that she is learning to write stories both at home and at school.

My colleague recently posted about the importance of narrative.  My daughter is a living example of the power of narrative in a young writer's life.  AND!  I am excited that she has been inspired by her work at school to pick up the pen at home!