Fifteen Gifts – Day Three

For an explanation of this project, click here.

Today we worked on character, and character for Creative Nonfiction can be a tricky thing because, like all things CNF, you have to work with what’s there. You can’t make someone funny or kind if they’re not. If a person is scared or obnoxious for example, you have to write them that way.

“Don’t write the word obnoxious,” I told the students. I pulled a Mark Twain and told the students to take that old lady out and make her scream. Or, in this case, take her out and make her give you unwanted advice.

I passed out worksheets with about a billion adjectives for personalities on it: eager, quiet, compassionate. I had the students choose one minor character in one of the CNF essays we are studying and circle adjectives for that person.

“Now write that story from this character’s point of view. Given what you understand about their personality, how would this character tell the story?”

At the Festival of Faith and Writing, I went to a seminar about Young Adult Fiction, and I believe it was Bryan Bliss who said that, “love is the realization that someone is real.” I want my 8th graders to write great characters. However,  studying a real person with all their flaws and sins, then writing that person in a way that the reader can relate, understand, or even love that person is the concept I want them to take away from my class.

Writing Creative Nonfiction is an act of faith for me. Don’t get me wrong, I rarely pray. I never witness. I swear quite a bit and I’m a bit of a gossip. But when I sit down to write, I imagine God asking this: LOOK! (and yes, I think he says this in all caps) HERE’S WHAT I GAVE YOU. WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO WITH IT?” It seems that, to name something about a person is a bit like writing them off. “She’s smart.” He’s reliable.” “He’s boisterous.” “She’s manipulative.” It’s been my experience that when I can’t use those words and I have to instead write about a time when someone was that way, I see more to the story. I see more to that person. So I write, and I say to God, (not in all caps because I’m shy), “Here’s what You gave me. Here’s what I did with it. What do you think?” I suppose trying to teach the 8th graders CNF is a little like sharing my faith with them.

After our break, we worked on poetry. “Barbara Frietchie” was the poem we looked at.

“That’s a man named Barbara!” one of the students said, looking at the poet’s picture.

“What?” another student said. “Why would any parents name their boy Barbara?”

“HE HAS A BEARD!” one student exclaimed, tapping the textbook.

“Well, he didn’t have a beard when he was a baby,” another one reasoned.

“Who cares? You don’t name a baby boy Barbara!”

“‘Barbara Frietchie’ is the title of the poem,” I told the class. “The author is John Greenleaf Whittier.”

“OH!!!!! HAHAHAHAHA! WE thought that man’s name was Barbara! HAHAHAHAHA!”

We read the poem and discuss rhythm and rhyming patterns. We talk about iambic tetrameter and I reminded the class that Romeo and Juliet is written in iambic pentameter. We talked a bit about what this woman did and how she must’ve been pretty brave.

I am fascinated by authors’ ability to write evocative stories in a specific form, but I didn’t share that observation with the class. My writing has felt tired lately, and a friend suggested I try writing an essay in form: lyric, or braided, for example. I’ve been paying attention and wondering about telling a story in form, and today was one of those instances when my writing habits got too close to my students and I wasn’t bold enough or sure enough to tell them sometimes, especially now, I am afraid to write.

Instead, I handed them a photocopied page of one of the CNF essays they’ve read. I explained that they need to create a Black Out Poem. This is a fun poem to make. What you do is find a set of words throughout the page that create poetry, then black out the rest.

“What’s the meter?” one student asked.

“No meter,” I said.

“Does it have to rhyme?” another one wondered.

“Nope. You can’t add words, and the poem must start at the top and read down the page,” I told them.

They lifted their pencils. They pressed their faces close to the paper. Some smiled. Some rolled their eyes. Some talked to their friends. Others shot baskets with empty (and full) water bottles. Some lifted their poems from their desk and reached them toward me. “Is this right?” they asked. “What do you think?”

I walked around the room watching what they would do with what they’ve been given. What else could they find on that page? What is it they can make real that we will love?