Story-Writing and Life

Joanne's topic for Unschooling Voices this December is:

December topic: What interesting activites, projects or experiments have your kids done this past year?

One thing that we did this year as a family was a story club. I've written about it on my other blog, but here I'll summarize it here and share what I've learned. It was my oldest son who had the original idea for a "story society". He was coming home from college for summer vacation. One of his goals for the summer was to work on a story, and he has always enjoyed writing more if he is part of a group. His idea was to make it a bit like the Inklings -- a literary club which included CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien and some others. They would gather together and read aloud from their works-in-progress, and sometimes share ideas or discuss issues related to their writing. It was a fruitful collaboration and led to some really wonderful literature.

So we made plans to meet weekly and try this. Not necessarily the wonderful literature, at least not right away, ha! but the collaboration and the exchange of ideas and readings aloud. The first meeting was just my oldest and myself. I didn't want it to seem schooly or like a "requirement"at all to the others so I didn't even mention it to them, I don't think. But after the first meeting they asked if the meeting was open to everyone, and of course my oldest and I were glad to have some extra companionship. It ended up with everyone in the family attending the meetings. My 16yo daughter, my 10yo son and my 20yo son and I all read bits of our writing. My 13yo, my little ones and my 18yo sat in on the meetings. My 18yo prefers to keep his works-in-progress private but we did usually read bits of his last book aloud, which gave us a chance to celebrate his accomplishment. Not every 17 year old has worked for two years on a full-length (600 page) book and finished it into the bargain.

The story meeting has been fun and inspiring for us all. My ten year old in particular has really gotten into writing as a result. We named our society (but I won't reveal the name or I'm sure I'd be drummed out of the fellowship) and when we have friends visiting we include them if they are interested. When we visit my oldest in college we hold a story meeting there in some quiet corner of his campus. Sometimes we use some elements of each others' stories in our own. One of my daughter's friends wants to try to start a story meeting in her family, too.

One related thing we have done: my daughter and I both joined the annual Novel in November event. The goal is to get 50,000 words written by the end of the month. I won't even come close; she met the goal last year and may at least get close this year. But it was really useful to register so that we had that incentive to just write, and stifle our internal editors for a while. I enjoyed the experience and hope to try it again next year, and maybe get further if I can wrestle my internal editor into the ground a bit more.

I can see various learning benefits from this story-meeting enterprise of ours, but the motive wasn't "educational" and it wasn't schooly at all. The intention was to make progress in something we all wanted to do, and it was also to have time as a family doing something we all enjoy and have in common. There were no obligations and because fiction-writing is something that spans all age groups, we were all basically peers and comrades in this.

When something works in our family as well as this did, I wish I could simply bottle the formula and apply it to everything! That is not the way learning happens though, it seems. If it did, then institutional "school" would probably work great because school could be defined as the attempt to distill and bottle and apply learning all across the board in a standardized way. Rather, I believe this story meeting has been such a good experience because it grew out of our family interests and relationships, because it was voluntary and organic and unique.

If there is some way I can apply what I've learned from this to other situations, it is to keep things personal; to not follow "rules" but to let learning grow out of an interaction of different elements. "Planting seeds" is an analogy that works for me.... you get a combination of the soil, the seeds, the nurture and the natural weather and elements, and you end up with something that is living and fruitful and blooming (or sometimes not! )

That is actually somewhat like how I do my best fictional writing, too, I've found (if the term "best" can apply to something that is still so rough and unfinished); by taking different elements, pondering, thinking and imagining, and then following the trail where it leads, with all the messiness and glimpses of magic. Not by reading a writing manual and applying the rules mechanically, and coming up with something that's "correct", but lifeless.