FORTUNATELY, UNFORTUNATELY

Several months ago I agreed to write an article for a professional journal.

Fortunately, the a topic is one with which I am familiar and knowledgeable- writing processes.

Time has flown,  however, and  I have busied myself with other tasks that I must also complete.  I am adept at procrastinating by doing things that I really have to complete as a way to delay, avoid, or ignore other equally important tasks. See related post on Procrastination and Writing.

Fortunately, I have recently done several presentations which have given me a logical structure for some sticky parts of the article and I have also finally settled on a framework for the entire article.

Despite having defined the skeleton, until the past several days, I was unable to add flesh to the bare article bones.

Fortunately-- and meanwhile-- I have been wrestling with the perennial writer's conundrum--how to get started, I was inspired to modify the bones and to come at the whole thing from a different angle.

Fortunately, I now have about half of the draft written.

I have way too much already--there is a word limit.
Fortunately,  I tend to be wordy --and my writing gets better as words are subtracted.


Fortunately....


I just finished reading Neil Gaiman's newest offering for children.
I love this latest addition to what I call the Good News Bad News genre.

Father has stepped out to go to the store so his children can have milk on their cereal.
As he attempts to return home, his encounters and adventures in other worlds, in other times are hilarious, with just a hint of danger.

In Fortunately, the Milk, as he recounts the journey to his children once he is home, his salvation throughout the tale hinges on the milk he holds (or falters on the milk dropped).

Along with every young child I have ever met, I love the juxtapositions between the good news and the bad news, the best case scenario and the worst case, the fortunately and the unfortunately---- the back and forth drama as it unfolds in bits and pieces.

There are several books that I include in this genre.

My all time favorite picture book of this type is Remy Charlip's Fortunately.

Fortunately, Ned has been invited to a party.  Unfortunately, the party is in Florida, and he lives in New York.
His good and bad news involved a borrowed plane, and exploding engine, a  parachute that has a hole... and more.
The events in his life quickly turn from bad to good to bad to good--each cliff hanger solved by the fortunately on the next page.  Does he make the party?


Michael Forman has constructed a tale in which the fortunately hinges on Granny's umbrella, which Milo sets off to return to her in  Fortunately, Unfortunately.  His adventures finally land him at Granny's house, unfortunately having weathered a storm (Fortunately he had the umbrella), fought pirates, dinosaurs, aliens and more. Unfortunately, the pirates have tracked him down to Grandma's house...


Margery Cuyler keeps us guessing in That's Good! That's Bad! Just as we think we have correctly identified the bad or good the script flips and events turn, as a little boy takes to the sky hanging onto a run-away  shiny red balloon.

 A similar, closely related word that will also turn our story on a dime and catapult us into a new world, time, location,or an adventure is meanwhile... 
.
Like the good news, bad news structure, this one word also allows us to imagine beyond our wildest realities and unrealities to create cliff hangers and surprises.

In Meanwhile... by Jules Feiffer, Raymond learns from his comic books just how powerful meanwhile can be.

Raymond's eye caught a word in the middle of the page. It was a word comics always used to change the scene. MEANWHILE.... but with three dots after it. What it meant was that where ever you were in a story, just plain MEANWHILE... was going to take you somewhere else.
What if I had my own MEANWHILE... wondered Raymond.

And one last  book of this type,Meanwhile: Pick Any Path. 3,856 Story Possibilities., will provide hours of fun as you actually pick the path and select the particular meanwhile in this unusual comic in which you follow the path  of your choosing to select the adventure or the meanwhile that you want to follow.

While all the books shared above take us to fabulous and imaginative places, we can also use the Fortunately/Unfortunately structure to narrate our real world situations and thoughts.

A quick search in your favorite search engine will result in several poems by both adults and children written in this framework. Here are links to several of my favorite finds:

• Fortunately, Unfortunately by ReallyMePoetry ( adult)
• Fortunately/Unfortunately by Jane8 (adult)

• Fortunately, Unfortunately Poems by Students

Finally, I must share the most unusual discovery I made while researching this blog.  Fortunately: Websters' Timeline History 393 BC-2007,  comprehensively traces  the history of the use of this word in history, literature, and so forth.    You may want to check it out just for fun.

Today's Deeper Writing Possibilities

Think about an imaginative story or real-life events.

Select  either Fortunately/Unfortunately or Meanwhile as a framework for your ideas.

Write a story or poem using this framework.

SACRED PLACES

Some places inspire us to run and play and  laugh and dance.

Some places hum with the voices and activities that once filled that place.

Some landscapes and buildings are so packed with memories, encounters, and emotions that as soon as we step into that space, we are there again--we remember.

Other places are so hushed-still that you are tempted to hold your breath so as not to disturb the sacred silence.

There are places we love, places we fear, places we long for, and places we never want to go again.

Katherine Bomer writes of  the places that form and inform her life in Writing a Life:

I grew up in New Mexico where the landscape of mountains and desert, sand and rock, the clean smell of pine trees, and the crystal quality of the light all formed my writer's soul.  Other people have forest in their soul, or ocean shores, or gentle streams.  Still others have skylines and buses and street lamps.  The landscape outside us when we were little lives inside us too, like a map of the heart, and we can return to it in our writing to find memories and comfort.

Where did you grow up?  

What images, scents, and feelings flood your mind when you think of that place? 

What comforts and fears come to mind as you remember this place?
What landscape lives inside you?

Place is important when we write, whether we are remembering our own lives and writing a personal narrative or creating a fictional life, whether we are writing creative nonfiction, or constructing a poem. 

Place lives and breathes in our writing as much as the people do.

Place can almost function as another character.

Who is this place?

In  Live Writing: Breathing Life into Your Words, Ralph Fletcher quotes Louise Borden:

A sense of place is key to all my writing ... I think when I am writing I picture every scene in my mind and the words that come out in the writing are just describing that scene as simply and truly and clearly as I can.  It is almost as if I must become the place.

What words will you use to describe the place you are remembering?
What small details will bring the images you see in your mind's eye to the page for others to read.
What place will you become?

Several authors offer us a glimpse of places they love, describing these places in vivid language and at the same time, offering us ways we might  describe the places we love.

Eli loves his family's farm and all the places that surround his home.  In her classic poetic language,  Patricia MacLachlan allows Eli to take us to all the places that each person in his family loves, as he shows these places to his new baby sister in All the Places to Love.

 In response to her daughter's inquiries, a mother tells her daughter of life in the rural south where she grew up in Momma, Where Are You From? by Marie Bradby. So lovingly  is her picture of her childhood home painted, that her daughter wants to go there.

Nikki Giovanni shares her love for summer in her birthplace in her poem, Knoxville Tennessee.

With whom can you share the places you love?

Who can you ask to share a place they love with you?

But what if we did not love the place in which we grew up or lived for a while? What if we hate the place in which  find ourselves now?

Some places are not remembered  fondly.

In An Angel For Solomon Singer, Cynthia Rylant writes about the tremendous effect a place can have on our spirit. Solomon lives in a drab, dreary place in which he is cannot add personal touches and is extremely lonely.

It is important to love where you live, and Solomon Singer loved where he lived not at all, and it was his that drove him out into the street night.  It was dreams of balconies and purples wall that took him to the street. Solomon Singer wandered.

In Life Doesn't Frighten, Maya Angelou writes about a place that is downright frightening.  The young narrator, however, shouts  with confidence, with bravado:

 The shadows on the wall and noises down the hall 
Life doesn't frighten me at all.    

The brave declarations are accompanied by the bold angry images painted by Jean-Michel Basquiat, of things that may do her harm  in her urban neighborhood.

What places frighten you?
How did you deal with the fear?

Some places we revere and honor.  We come as nations to the monumental. We come as congregations to the sacred.

We come to celebrate, to mourn,. to stand together in awe.

We come to remember, to praise the fallen, to celebrate our integrity and intelligence, to recall our power, our humility and our humanity.

In a variety of poetic forms which celebrate beauty and magnificence,  architecture and artistry, creativity and construction ,  J. Patrick Lewis takes us all over the world to well-known monuments in Monumental Verses. Through his poems, paired with dramatic photographs, our tour includes the Great Pyramid of Cheops, the Statue of Liberty, Stonehenge and the Great Wall of China.

Monumental poet J. Patrick Lewis will be one of  our keynote speakers at the Columbus Area Writing Project Fall Forum in October.

Like Monumental Verses, in Sacred Places, Jane Yolen takes us all over the world to 12 holy places --magical places which take us beyond ourselves--the oracle of Delphi, the Wailing Wall, Easter Island and Cathedrals-- places that call us in book end poems to hush...

What places take your breath away?
What places inspire awe or profound stillness



What places live inside you?

Today's Deeper Writing Possibilities

What are the places that are special to you?

This may be a childhood home or haunt, or a community of which you are a member.
This could also be a  place that you fear or hate.
You may also think about the monumental or sacred places your have visited.

You may want to sketch or map your place.
As you add details, you will find you remember more and more.
You may want to label  your sketch with phrases or keywords recalling  memories invoked, encounters, people, conversations, objects, feelings, and perceptions.

Write about your special place.

You may write a narrative, essay,  or poem.  You may want to pair your writing with images--either actual photographs other artwork.

INCITING MOMENTS

We can all look back on our lives  and pinpoint a moment in time when everything changed.
A specific moment when the world flipped upside down and became forever different.
A precise moment when we were personally  transformed and life from that point presented a new path.

For Helen Keller, that life-changing  moment was when she connected the sign Anne Sullivan made in her palm with the substance simultaneously  flowing over her hand.

For Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, and for all those who live in South Africa, life forever changed in 1994 when the first multi-racial, democratic elections were held.

For African slaves in Texas, Juneteenth (June 19, 1865) became the liberating moment in history.

For our nation, September 11, 2001 changed the lives of those who died, those who rescued many, and those who still mourn.

Are we now as a nation standing on the precipice of an inciting moment as we wrestle with our role and actions in Syria?

For Langston Hughes, one important moment occurred as he rode the train and realized the role of rivers in the lives of Africans and African Americans.  This lead to his now famous poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers  This story is told in Langston's Train Ride.

For the child in the front row of your classroom or seated at the table in your own home, earth may have stopped spinning on the day Dad left home and never returned.

The moment that changed your life may have been the birth of a sibling, the day you fell in love with the person created just for you, the first day school, or the day your family moved to a new city.

Or the moment may have been the day the doctor announced you had cancer or that your child was seriously ill.  It may have been the moment  the company eliminated your job.

There probably have been many inciting moments in your life.

I  remember the day my youngest step-son unlocked the secret to reading. He was five and had just started Kindergarten. I was doing the dinner dishes.  He sat nearby with an early reader in his lap.

There is the word the.   We learned that in school.   Oh look, I know here too.  

He continued to look at the page.

D- this word starts with /d/.
Oh- Oh-Oh!!
This is dog--there is picture of a dog!
Does this say Here is the dog. ?

Barely able to contain his excitement, he read the remainder of the book by himself ...over and over and over.
And we all listened...over and over.
This was 25 years ago
I often wish we had quick access to a cell phone with video capacity  so I could have captured that important moment.

In Writing a Life: Teaching Memoir to Sharpen Insight, Shape Meaning - and Triumph Over Tests, Katherine Bomer calls these inciting moments:

It is powerful to name one certain day, one certain event as the inciting moment, when the exact confluence of persons, times, and events combined and combusted into a moment that changed everything.  The moment may be literally that--a space of time from seconds to minutes to an hour. But is may also be one notch on a long timeline of events. The time it occupied might a week or even months, but from the long view looking back, it appears to be a moment in time.

And she challenges us to identify and write about those moments, asking ourselves:

• What are the moments in your life that you remember as important, as happy or sad? (question asked by Robert Coles of a patient in The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination)
• Can you point to a time in your life that your worldview shifted?
• Can you point to a time in your life when you figured something out that you didn't know before?  or recognized a feeling  of some truth being revealed?
• Can you point to a time in your life when you thought a certain way and then something or someone changed your thinking? (See related post  I Used to Think..But Now I Think)

We used  Bomer's book as our guiding text throughout one of the several years I lead a teacher writing group at Salem Elementary School. Defining our inciting moments proved to be one our best writing endeavors and led to deeper understanding of ourselves and each other.

We can help writers learn  identify and analyze these moments in their lives.  We can support them as they name the consequences and ramifications of their inciting moments.

Several books present characters, real and fictional, who face such moments.

In Love That Dog by Sharon Creech, the narrator discovers that poetry can give him a platform to name and share his inciting moment- the death of his beloved dog.

So much depends upon...

In Mississippi Morning  by Ruth Vander Zee, a small boy's life is changed forever the day he realized, after hearing about the hateful things the Ku Klux Klan had done in his area,  that the Klansman walking toward him is his father.

Ma..she seemed to worry about trouble and I don't know why. It was 1933 and life was good for me.

In Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, a teen lives with the aftermath-- and her own silence following a rape.

I almost tell them right then and there. Tears flood my eyes...They noticed...

In Through My Eyes, a grown-up Ruby Bridges looks back on her inciting moment-- looks back on her six-year old self as she, surrounded by US Marshals, walked bravely through a mob of hate and evil to enter her school.

It was 1960, and history pushed in  and swept me up in a whirlwind... In spite of the aftereffects of the whirlwind, I feel privileged now to have been a part of the civil rights struggle.

 For Anne Quinlan it was reading and books that created inciting moments for her.  She describes these moments and suggests several lists of books that may incite special moments for you, as well, in How Reading Changed My Life.

It seems infinitely mysterious to me that there are some of us who have built not a life but a self, based largely  on our hunger for what are a series of scratches on a piece of paper.

Likewise, Phil Schwalbe and his mother face her impending death though the pages of the many books they shared, mediating this inciting moment with the words of others. He tells their story in The End of Your Life Book Club (Vintage).

What are you reading?....one November day while passing the time between when they took Mother's blood and when she saw the doctor (which preceded the chemo), I threw out the question..

What moment changed your life forever?
What are your inciting moments?

Today's Deeper Writing Possibilities

Reflect on your like and identify one or more inciting moments.

You may want to ask yourself these questions as you look for moments in which your life changed:

• What are the moments in your life that you remember as important, as happy or sad? (question raised by Robert Coles to a patient in The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination)
• Can you point to a time in your life that you worldview shifted?
• Can you point to a time in your life when you figured something out that you didn't know before?  or recognized a feeling of some truth being revealed?
• Can you point to a time in your life when you thought a certain way and then something or someone changed your thinking?

When I  have used this writing possibility in the past,  writers found Marzano's Episodic Pattern Organizer  helpful as they analyzed their inciting moment. Click here to see this graphic organizer.  It is one of the several that I used regularly as we analyzed events in social studies or current events.

You may want to use one of the following phrases to spark your thinking and writing:

So much depended on...
I never thought...
In that time...
Then... now..
Because of.... I

Write about your inciting moment--a specific time, event, or moment that changed everything for you/your life/the world.

Write a poem or narrative or essay.  You may want to pair your writing with visual images.