Writer Workshop: Morphing

Today, Triss and Mariel wrote freewrites and then worked on their hobbit/dragon compositions. Mariel's is kind of morphing into something different than what she started with-- she keeps adding details, and we are going to "narrow and expand" tomorrow. It looks like, rather than an expository piece on hobbits in general, she will have a narrative involving Bilbo Baggins and Lobelia Sackville-Baggins. Or it could go an entirely different direction-- she doesn't act like she is done generating material yet.

Triss is working on her conclusion and then I am going to have her edit her piece, using a list of things to watch for. I think her composition is funny.

Cornflower sat at the table with us and went through her library books, making notes on 3x5 cards for her science project. She discovered today that she can discard three of the library books as not containing information useful to her, and she collected four facts, carefully writing the book name, author and page number on each card.

Here is Triss' freewrite from today:

Outside, the rain looks like slim little arrows shooting down from a sky that doesn't look cloudy. It simply looks asa if a blue sky had turned a cool, pearly color with tinges of blue and pink-- very faint tinges. That sounds beautiful, but the sky really looks sad. Kind of expectant but hopeless, as though it's waiting for something that it truly doesn't think will come. It's the sky that looks sad, not the rain. The little silver arrows look happy and exuberant, with their points aimed at a certain spot and the rest shooting through the air at it. The raindrops don't look like tears at all, unless they hit the windows and become round and flat and shapeless. It's as if the sky is hurling its tiny darts in battle and waiting for an ally that it thinks will never arrive to help. The word for rain is "lanta"*. I don't know the Elvish for it, or the Spanish, or the Latin. At least, I can't thinnk of them just now. The word "lanta" is Leavan, and I like how slim and straight the word looks, like the little rain-arrows, and the gentle slanting flow it implies when the storm is in its last part. I can''t seem to spell today, but I like the word "lanta" and I like what it means, and I wish I was sitting out there to write, feeling the slim rain-arrows strike me and flatten, rolling gently down my face like my own tears, and watching them land on this paper, on one of the scribbles, and wash the ink into a little rain-pool with themselves.

*This is the word for rain in the language she has made up to go with one of her stories.