A Leap Day Visit with 102!
I was so excited to meet a group of new friends on February 29 – Leap Day! Thank you Room 102 for inviting me to spend the afternoon with you. I am so glad you enjoyed No TV? No Fair!. You asked great questions that really made me think, and had great ideas of your own. I loved how the more we talked, the more we made “les connections” with one another.
Thank you for the GORGEOUS bouquet of flowers, made with so much creativity and care. I love looking at them! I know that if Chloe was a student in your class, she would have enjoyed designing, crafting and creating right along with you!
Oh! I almost forgot. Do you remember how we talked about how writers don’t just sit down once at their desk, do a little writing, and voila – a book is done? I have a few pictures to prove that’s not the case!
Here’s a picture of my complete, published, finished, as-good-as-it-can-be book Lights! Curtains! Cows! (the one that looks like a book!) beside the book the way it looks printed out once my computer.
And HERE is a picture of that same book beside all the revisions I did to get it into its final shape.
Wow, right? I must have printed it out at least 10 times! And each time, before printing it out, I made changes — again and again! Some changes were HUGE – like taking out whole chapters and writing new ones. Some were small, like changing a few sentences around, or adding or taking out a word here and there. But I really wanted to share the best story I could with readers. I wanted my readers to picture the action, feel the feelings, laugh and be held in suspense like I was in my own head when I imagined the story. Well, that took a lot of tries!
So you can see that no one gets it perfect the first time (or the second, third, fourth time…). Even authors who have published books make a rough draft, then go back again (and again) and change things to make it better and clearer. When a teacher suggests that you might want to make some changes and improvements to something you’ve written, just know that there’s nothing wrong with your writing. In fact by making changes, you’re being a writer!
Well, once again — I enjoyed talking about writing with you (and pickles…and pizza… pineapples…and hockey…and all sorts of things!). Thank you also for being the very first audience for my unpublished adventure story, which just happens to take place on Leap Day. You were a great audience and have given me and my co-author Anita Lebeau lots of inspiration to keep on writing (she loved hearing about Room 102!). We hope to have more to share with you soon.
In the meantime, keep on reading and writing and doing the activities you love and thinking about the things that make you curious.
Till we meet again!
Karin Adams
