Improving Writing by Donna Jo Napoli

Improving Writing by Donna Jo Napoli
A presentation at Encyclo-Media 2006
Oklahoma City, OK
31 August 2006

Dr. Napoli is an award winning author and writes for preschool through high school in a variety of genres. She is a professor of Linguistics at Swarthmore College.

I want to begin by talking about the schitzophrenic attitude I see many of us having toward writing
when you are five and you paint a picture, it is placed on the fridge and everyone
when you are 40 and write a poem, people think you are deluded
inspriation, talent and brilliance can come to anyone
when we used these words, they end up intimidating us out of participating in art
that is a dreadful thing
the other side is: among the arts: sculpture, painting, music, writing, dancing, etc: writing seems to be the one that we have the strangest attitudes about
on the other hand, you would never think of teaching dancing if you didn’t dance, painting if you didn’t paint, etc
however we are asked and expected to teach writing whether we write often ourselves or not
Being able to read but not being able to write is like being able to understand a language but never being able to speak it
I want to encourage those of you who are or will teach writing, to write frequently yourself
I grew up in a financially unstable family
I went to college on a gigantic college scholarship: budget for flying home
the hardest decision I ever made was going to college, because it went against what my father wanted and said (I worked in the grocery store during the week and the laundramat on the weekends)
in college we had lots of assignments, after writing my first fiction piece the teacher
I never wanted to be rich, I just wanted to be responsible financially
I majored in math because I figured with that background I could always find a job

The word miscarriage is one of the worst words in the English language: it sounds like an EVENT happened, but that wasn’t the case– it was a PERSON
this experience really kind of drove me crazy
my Norwegian husband’s philosophy of life is: if you are miserable, it is your own fault!
At this point I started writing letters to a friend, every day
sometimes one letter, sometimes two or three
I wrote about my attitudes on religion, I wrote on anything and everything
I worked through that eventually, I now have 5 children
When I was writing those letters I was really writing to myself, but â€œinflictingâ€ them on my friend
he showed them to me several years later, and as I read them: there were many with powerful emotions
some were angry, some were sad, some were very funny

Somewhere in the past I figured out that education was the key to my future
I was one of the kids sitting in the back of the classroom, who never raised their hand
I learned that in these letters, I seemed so powerful
I learned that I really missed writing too
As a kid, you wake up in the morning and someone tells you what you are allowed to eat– you are told what you are allowed to wear, what you are allowed to read, and what you are allowed to write
When you get to be an adult, your boss tells you want to do
The whole world seems to be telling you what to do
In my writing, it was wonderfully liberating and give me a tremendous sense of control, because I could write whatever I wanted

So I came into writing through the backdoor
writing was a therapy for me initially
I know someone who actually teaches the minisry through writing: helping people to write their problems
I encourage you to write: write because it is YOURS
it is the simplest club in the world to join, you just have to pick up a pencil, you don’t have to buy any paints or tights
you don’t have to share it with anyone

My four rules for writing
three of them I am sure you have heard of before

RULE 1: WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT
The problem with this rule is it is a very clear one
Tell kids to pick something to
Everyone can write about themselves, their best friend, their sister
What if you want to write a second book
Maybe you know a lot about soccer, you have watched it a lot- you could write a story about soccer because you know so much about that sport and what happens there
So what about a 3rd book: base it around what your parent does, maybe they are a veterinarian
So are you limited to just writing out of your own
My favorite author in 5th grade was Walter Farley (The Black Stallion books)
I loved opening one of his books because I knew it would be like the last book
As and adult I loved Dick Francis
Again, these writers became masters at writing in a particular style

That is not the type of writer I wanted to become, however
I am a frenetic writer, and want to always be learning and writing about new things
I think you should â€œjust go out and learn somethingâ€ and then you can write about it
I am a very lucky person: I teach in a small college, and my husband teachers law school
in the summers therefore, we do our research but don’t have
We have a rule in our family that we can go anywhere in the world we want, as long as the summer pays for it (so one or both of us got jobs in other places, pretended we live there, have spent 2 summers in Australia)

Before I do primary research, I do secondary research
I’ll be doing another presentation about this
the trouble with secondary research is you don’t always find what you are looking for, and it is not always correct
On the Internet, you don’t have to read bad information, I think the Internet is a wonderful thing, but I love books, I love to surround myself with them
I am a book person
there is only so much you can learn in secondary research
you can encourage your kids to do firsthand research
kids can go to the zoo and SEE an animal they are researching
if they are studying flying, they can do some experiments, they can ask themselves some question

It is so much more fun to do primary research, it makes the world come alive
when you don’t have a book standing between you and the
You do not have to be white to write about white people, you do not have to be gay to write about gay people, a Jew to write about Jewish people, a swan to write about swans, etc

You just have to be as careful as you can when you write
whenever you write, you are never writing the experience that everyone has had
there is no such thing as THE â€œItalian-American experienceâ€
don’t put that burden on yourself
you are writing about an individual, and an individuals’s experience

If you can, â€œpass it byâ€ someone who is from the group you are writing about, and see what they say
they may give you some very helpful information

RULE 2: USE GOOD LANGUAGE

As teachers, this is a real issue
I come at this as a linguist and a writer
there are different SITUATIONS for language use
it is always a question of appropriateness
language you use with friends, with parents, when applying with a job, etc are often different
in some ways those differences seem to be shrinking
when I spoke with teachers, there was a big difference in the formality in which I spoke
You want kids to be sensitive to that as they write (They are often sensiti

Have students READ EVERYTHING THEY WRITE ALOUD
you’ll be amazed by how much you’ll see that needs to be fixed when you do this
the reason for this is that you have a trained ear
the training happens slowly, but it happens
At 12 picking up the phone, you can often tell if the person is male or female, if they are a native English speaker, you might be able to guess at their race, if they may not be a native speaker, you might be able to guess at where they live, their SES status
No one ever taught you that, this is our linguistic development, it happens in a very unconscious way
By about 12, you are as linguisticly aware as you will be as an adult (unless you become a professional linguist)

So write it and read it aloud
when you have dialog, the sound of differently aged students is going to vary
use this and revel in it
language is not: â€œoh don’t say thatâ€
how many times growing up was I told â€œdon’t say ain’tâ€
now I know some contexts where I can use it
in your writing, you can make it come alive if you can make it true to your ear, especially your dialog
if you are a teacher, reading what your children write
Students have different manual abilities
lefties can have very messy handwriting
their paper might look like a messy rag
just get over that!
Read what they wrote out loud, and you can hear their voice
if you can hear their

I do not believe in false praise: kids see through it and kids don’t like
if you say: â€œThis one sentence really summed it upâ€ or â€œyou nailed the voice of this person with that paragraphâ€ then you can empower students to understand their voice
Writing is not a natural language
what we do with our hands and faces are natural: writing is NOT
there is no culture in the world we have ever come across that has writing and does not have speech or sign language
writing always follows
it always comes in when the population is big enough that people start taking money from others (like tax records)
writing is not a natural thing, it can feel very strange to the chidl

Children don’t don’t need to learn how to acquire language, just asÂ you don’t need to be taught to metabolize sugar (unless something
how many people see writing at home
people do write emails
you can empower by pointing out what they really know over and over
have them keep a

RULE 3: WRITE ABOUT SOMETHING IMPORTANT
that can be a rule that scares you
don’t write about it if it is trivial
kids as well as adults can get hung up on this: â€œBut I’m only a child!â€
maybe kids haven’t had big / major things happen, or maybe they don’t want to write about those experiences

Encourage your children to appreciate the importance of what they are looking at
for the 5th grader who has been trying for years to make the soccer team and just made it, that experience may be the most significant thing in their life
if you recognize the importance of that for the character, and you caress it to give it the dignity it deserves…..
the little things really are everything
it isn’t the huge things in life that make you happy to get out of bed in the morning, it is the little things
the little things add up
it is the little things that show if someone really cares about us
just write about something very little
don’t frighten yourself away
take that moment and understand it all, and if you write about it you can have so much fun and so much satisfaction

RULE 4: WRITE WHAT ONLY YOU CAN WRITE

Katheryn Patterson said this the first time I heard her speak

I think this is THE MOST IMPORTANT rule of writing
because if someone else could write it, they probably either already have or are doing now
this does not mean you have to write a book about yourself
this means to me: take all the things that make you who you are and bring them to the table: when you come to a scene, look at it from every angle, look however you can, until you find that angle that makes your heart beat fast because of your past experiences / some reason that you have an â€œinsightâ€ on it
if you don’t care about what you are writing about, you have almost NO CHANCE of getting your reader to care about it

If kids have to write about things they don’t care about, they are not going to write well

Always build some flexibility into your writing assignments
I even do this in my linguistics assignments
I say if you have something BETTER, then write it!
I don’t want my own ideas to limit my students
find ways to give them room in their writing
giving them room can be overwhelming for them, esp for kids with special needs
if you are after specific things, giving them room can foil your objectives

Example:
what could be the best thing that could happen to someone over the summer, or what could be the worst thing that could happen to someone over the summer
this gives more options to kids rather than saying everyone must write about what they did this summer

If you are writing about frogs: ask them to do something that they can have fun with
just describing things can be fun, but it often isn’t enough
it is so awful to be bored

I believe in teaching people that there are games in life: tests can be games, SATs are games, job interviews can be games
instead of resenting them, learn how to succed at them
how do you make that fun? Ask them to set a tone
Make your essay a little bit sassy, edgy, or fun
Then look at what
Be really frank about the idea that these are just games
if you don’t learn how to play those games, no matter what abilities you have you may not be able to show them
help kids have fun with their writing by changing tone, getting creative

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