The Four

Post 1 of 20

April 19, 2018Katerina ManousakisAdults, Language Teaching, Writing

Firstly, I am so sorry for the terribly long radio silence. It has been a busy month and a half with Nanowrimo (I didn’t finish), the holidays (they are finished), and finalizing the classes for Inkreadable Kids (hopefully, they will never finish). It is the 23rd of January and it’s here! That’s right, I have my first class today. I have three students in this first class. It is going to be a riotous exercise in the power of the girl writer. I have been talking to the girls’ parents through email and they are so excited to get started. They can’t be as excited as I am. I have been looking at tons of online resources and gathering material to teach. Not only is it the beginning of the classes, I am teaching the beginning of a story. I am teaching several things today, among them what the beginning does, how to write a beginning, and the hook. What is a hook, you ask? Why it’s that thing that you catch s fish, or a reader with. It that interesting question, that makes you go, hmm, I want to learn more. It can be a question, dialogue, or a great piece of action. My favorites always contain something noire to them:He looked, rather pleasantly, like a blonde satan.That’s from my favorite of all the hardboiled writers, Dashiel Hammett in The Maltese Falcon.

Literature has great lines too:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Mr. Dickens, I think you’re sentences are a bit long, but I after I waded through the above, attempting not to edit, I agreed.

Writing that makes you go hmm.

Anyhoo, to back Inkreadable. So I have three students today, and one tomorrow. One plus three equals four. Phew, I learned something in math. Thank you, Tom O’Mara and Sam Smith.

Here they are, the four. They come from Murch and WIS and are in for a great time. They also made my life a bit easier because they’ve been bitten by the writing bug already. I can’t wait to see what they come up with.

Finally, before I go, major shout outs to my inspiration, you all know her as the Monkeybread Musings girl, Madeline, but to me, she is Maddie, without whom, I’ve have been more of a nervous wreck than I already am, and to my awesome sister Alex, whose support with marketing, and tips on art materials, made this project fun, even before it started. Lastly, thank you, Tina Thuermer, for making the WIS community supportive of its alumnae and our “make a difference”.

Right, that’s all she wrote. For now. Stay tuned, as I regale you with “It happened on Thursday”.

Source:: Inkreadablekids

This article was written by Tina

"Tina made it fun and helped me to come up with lots of ideas. She made me want to write more!! I love the book I wrote and will keep it in a super, safe place." “This class is very fun. We do fun writing prompts. I also really liked my writing prompt. It was “A genie gives you three wishes. What do you wish for and why?” I want to do this class again!” “This was Inkreadable. Once my pencil touched the paper, I couldn’t stop writing. And once I was I was done, I wanted to write more.” “I liked that we got to write our own stories, but we helped each other and read Ms. Tina’s story too.”

The Students

“Tina inspired my daughter to write more and helped her to gradually come to understand the formal structure of a story. My husband and I really appreciated both of these aspects, as writing, like any activity for young children, requires nurturing that is a combination of solid guidance and age-appropriate motivation to sustain interest! We highly recommend Inkreadable Kids, and will return for another session!” “My daughter learned a lot from Tina about the process of creative writing, and most importantly, had fun doing it!” “My daughter enjoyed the writing class very much. It motivated her to create stories in a non-judgmental, safe atmosphere. She loved it! Tina told her the first class, “Words are magic” and she was hooked.”

The Parents

I got to read it to my parents. I got my own book to keep forever. I got to feel what it was like in the story. I think I would recommend this writing class because it’s fun. You get to learn about the beginning, rising action, the climax, the descending action and the end. It is a great class, interesting and helpful on how to organize a story. I had fun with writing for my story, and thinking up a story to make. I liked learning about the climax. I think other kids should come!

The Students

When I announced to my boys that I registered them for creative writing workshops, they were not so excited. But once they started, they were very happy and found the classes very interesting and exciting. I am really happy to see how Tina made the classes interesting, and that I did not have to drag them to come to class.

The Parents