Monday MetaWrite: What's Your Writing Origin Story?
Asking Students to Write about Themselves as Writers
Using metawrites (which autocorrect wants to change to meteorites, and I’m like, right??) in my creative writing classroom allows my students, who are 13-18 years old, to examine their writing talent, their ambition, and their projects from a perspective of a genuine member of the club of writing. They aren’t just in a writing class or finishing a writing assignment. THEY ARE WRITERS.
In the first few weeks of school, I’m asking them, in a hundred tiny ways, to think of themselves as writers. I tell them about the “already/not yet” concept: they “already” have everything they need to write - stories, voice, language, ideas - but they may “not yet” have the craft moves, skills, and courage to bring their biggest projects from inspiration to publication.
Metawrites subtly positions them to think about themselves as writers and their writing process as an individual operation that can be examined and analyzed. Only writers write about writing and write about themselves as writers, right?
Monday’s MetaWrite
In his book Storytelling Animal, John Gottschall says, “A life story is a “personal myth” about who we are deep down – where we come from, how we got this way, and what it all means. Our life stories are who we are. They are our identity.” If, as John Gottschall says, our life stories are our identity, what do your writing stories say about who you are as a writer? What kinds of mythic stories make up your larger writing story?
Open your writing notebook to the next blank page. I’m going to give you several sentence stems. Write down the stem, then finish it with your truth. Once you have written that sentence, write whatever follows naturally to unpack the original sentence - explain, define, illustrate, exemplify, categorize, narrate, demonstrate, and so on.
I will give you two-three minutes per sentence stem to see where that original sentence leads you.
My writing super power is . . . .
My writing origin story is . . . .
My writing mentor is . . . .
My writing weapon is . . . .
The writing quest I seek is to . . . .
My writing dark lord is . . . .
Student Sample
My writing superpower is my honesty. I’ve shared stuff the class probably doesn’t need to know about me, but I don’t really care. I have a great disregard for vulnerability.
The writing quest I seek is to document my life through poetry. I want people in the future to read my books and feel a connection to me, like they know me.
My writing origin story is because I always tried hard at English assignments and enjoyed getting praised for them. Then I became friends with Khalil and wanted to write to have something in common with them. I slowly developed the hobby and got competitive. I started sharing my work with friends.
Photo by Linus Sandvide on Unsplash