A How-To Poem

For the rest of National Poetry Month, I want to focus on writing poems.

How about a "How-To Poem?"

We all know how to do things. Some of us know how to bake chocolate chip cookies. Others know how to put on a pair of skis (I don't). Still others know how to take the subway. If someone asks us, we can explain how to do those things.

That's what a "How-To Poem" does. It explains how to do something, only we use our imaginations instead of explaining how to do something from real life.

For example: How to give a giraffe a bath. Or how to find buried treasure. Or how to put a bathing suit on a four-ton hippo. (Don't try that at home.)

What would you like to explain in your "how-to poem?" Use your imagination: the sillier the better. Here's my "how-to-poem" about putting a cat to bed.

HOW TO PUT A CAT TO BED

First, find a cat.

He may not cooperate.

Tuck him in with blankets.

Sing lullabies until he purrs.

Then turn away and wait

for the sound of

little

cat

paws.

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month, and that means it's time to write poems! Not that we ever need an excuse to write a poem, but April is a good time to remember how much fun it is to play with words.

So go ahead! Write a poem!

How, you ask?

Start with an acrostic poem. That's one where you use the letters of the person, animal, place, or thing you're writing about to start each line. Like this:

Always running

Moving quickly with her

Yellow braids flying.

Baby seagulls cry while

Early morning swimmers

Arrive with their

Chairs and towels

Hoping for a scorcher.

Use your own name, your street, your favorite ice cream, the best month of the year (in your opinion), or even the word "poem" to write an acrostic poem.

Practically no one writes

Ordinary poems.

Except me.

Maybe it's because I'm extraordinary.

A Bookmobile Story

When I was in Seattle last weekend, I saw this amazing, colorful bookmobile.

I love bookmobiles, even though I've always lived near a library and never got to actually use one.

To me, libraries are one of the best things about being alive. 

Think about it. In a library, you get to look at books, pick out movies, read magazines, listen to stories, and get your questions answered. They even let you take books home!

Now imagine all that in a bus painted with colorful characters...a library on wheels.

What if a bookmobile could talk? I bet it would have a lot of stories to tell. Think about all the people who have walked up the steps of this bookmobile and discovered magical worlds inside the pages of a book.

For fun, write a story set inside this bookmobile. Maybe it's a story about a boy who's looking for that perfect book on how to make cupcakes. Maybe it's about a girl who wants to find out how to care for her pet tarantula. Maybe it's about an anteater that wants to learn how to read. Maybe the story is about the people who painted the bookmobile.

Enjoy your bookmobile ride!

Once Upon a Time

It's spring break here on Bainbridge Island where I live, so I thought it would be fun to have a writing game.

This idea is from Nancy Lewars. Last winter, I took Nancy's class on improvisational acting, or "improv." In improv, members of a group "improvise" with each other. That means they interact in a group to create scenes and characters. It's really fun!

In Nancy's improv class, we played a game called "Once Upon a Time." It's a great game for writers, and it goes like this:

Round up a group of nine people, including yourself. The nine people can be your friends, family, or neighbors. They can be kids or grown-ups. Form a circle. Each person in the group completes one of the following lines, going around the circle until you have a complete story.

Once upon a time....

And every day....

Until one day....

And because of this....

And because of this....

And because of this....

Until finally....

And ever since that day....

The moral of the story is....

The "moral" of the story is the little lesson you can learn from it. (Oops, sorry, didn't mean to talk about lessons during spring break.)

Here's an example to get you started:

Once upon a time, a grizzly bear escaped from the zoo.

And every day, it would visit Mrs. Merckle's garden to eat her spinach.

Until one day, Mrs. Merckle....

What? What did Mrs. Merckle do? It's up to you to finish the story with the other members of your group. Have fun improvising!

Our Sense of Smell

I love the smell of freshly baked bread, chocolate chip cookies, pine cones, my cats' heads (weird, I know), sheets just out of the dryer, grass after it's been cut, the pages of a new book, and mint tea.

I'm not crazy about the smell of overcooked broccoli, dirty socks, dog breath, wet wool, cheese that's been left in the refrigerator (ugh), burned toast, and car exhaust.

What smells do you like? What smells do you dislike?

Our sense of smell is a powerful way to connect with our readers. I don't mean our readers will actually smell US. I mean we can use the sense of smell in our stories to draw our readers in.

An example:

When you smell freshly cut grass, what does it make you think of? The time you walked in the park with a favorite grandparent? The time you hit a home run in Little League? The time you got grass stains on your jeans and your mom was mad?

We all make emotional connections through our senses when we read. Smell is one of the most powerful of the five senses. We make a connection between a smell in a story, and an emotion we felt when we encountered that smell in real life. The smell in the story takes us right back to that emotion, even if the event happened three years ago.

Try this. Write a scene with two characters talking. (Any two characters: a police officer and the driver he's giving a ticket to; two worms in a garden; or a boy and his martial arts teacher.) Can you include a smell in your scene? Maybe the police officer smells the thick exhaust coming out of the old car. Maybe the worm smells the wet dirt. Maybe the boy smells the sweat in the classroom.

Most readers have smelled car exhaust, wet dirt, and sweat. Readers will remember those smells and make an emotional connection to your story.

Try using smell in your stories. What will it be? Overcooked broccoli? Or freshly baked chocolate chip cookies?

A "What If" Story

We all like to wonder, "What if?"

Writing fiction is fun because we can speculate, muse, be curious, puzzle, imagine, play, and make believe---all ways of saying that we can wonder, "What if?"

Try writing a story with a "what if" question as a starting point. Where does the question lead your imagination?

• What if a tiger walked into your bedroom?
• What if you invented a new kind of umbrella that earned you $1,000,000?
• What if it rained so hard that your house went down the river and landed in the next town--a town filled only with cats?
• What if you woke up and your entire family turned into erasers?
• What if you had three ears?
• What if you ate breakfast for dinner, dinner for lunch, and lunch for breakfast?
• What if the entire world was yellow?
• What if you watched movies on the bottoms of your shoes?
• What if your yard turned into Sea World?
• What if you found a taco that talked?

Have fun with your "what if" story. "What if" you wrote one today?

What's In a Name?

Harry S. Truman, the 33rd President of the United States, had an unusual middle name. It was the letter "S." (Sometimes the "S" is written with a period after it, and sometimes it isn't.) The "S" stands for both his grandfathers' names: Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young.

What if a character in a story had only one letter for a name? What if a character's name was A, or Z, or X? Who is this character? What does she or he want more than anything in the world? Who or what is stopping this character from getting it?

Have some fun with a character with a one-letter name. Write a story about this character and let your imagination go wild. The character's name may be short, but the story doesn't have to be!