“I’ll show you my artifacts if you show me yours!”

That was one of the last things I said to fellow NC author, Joyce Hostetter, on Wednesday afternoon after a day of planning our upcoming workshop at NCCAT. Joyce got into the theme of an archeological dig as she brainstormed off my reproducible "Mining Your Lives" from Teaching the Story. Thinking about how adult authors can "dig" into their own experiences to springboard into their writing, led us to an entire week's theme of digging, exploring, and finally, at the end, sharing "artifacts" (their written creations from the week) with one another. Is There a Children's Book in You? will be a week complete with time to "Voice Your Character," "Dig Into Problems," "Discover a Setting," and "Explore a Mood."

We had spent the morning at the Gaston County Library collaborating on our upcoming workshop for NWRESA, Using Life Experiences to Pump Up Your Writing. Joyce bounced off of my "Exercise Muscle Words" worksheet, played with the wrestling metaphor, and decided that each segment of the day would be labeled "Rounds." We're expecting the day to be a "knock out" for NC teachers who live in the northwest portion of our state.

This is the joy and fun of collaboration. As we laughed and bounced ideas off of one another, we thought of things that we might not have considered working on our own. For example, I would not have thought of posing with a statue outside the library. Joyce, as you can see in this picture, is a natural "let's think outside this box" person. Score a point for adults, as well as students, benefiting from the unexpected surprises of collaboration.

Remember the story about the blind men with the elephant? In this Asian tale, each man describes the same animal in a totally different fashion depending on his perspective. Check out Joyce's blog about our day together and discover how two authors can write about the same event in a totally different fashion. Hmmm…sounds like a good lesson plan for any grade teacher!

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Joyce Hostetter, collaboration, NCCAT, NWRESA, Teaching the Story: Fiction Writing in Middle School, teaching writing
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