Things that are Brown in October

I have been working hard on my Master’s thesis, which it turns out will be 9 weeks of lesson plans on creative writing.   After much research, I’m now on the “writing lesson plans,” portion. It’s been good for me to delve into the writer’s process again.  I think I know this stuff because I am a writer, but there is always more to learn (or sometimes to re-remember).

Two things that have struck me in my reading: one is that we know how important modeling can be for students in the classroom.  In order to have a writing classroom, you also have to be writing and sharing your work, suggests one of the books I’m reading.

I’m editing, but I’m not really writing.  I haven’t been in a while, because it feels rusty and wrong.  The stuff I write isn’t much good these days.  Although who knows how much of my writing was good before, I was just producing so much of it that plenty of good stuff came out with the bad…

On to the second thing.  Which stems from the old writing cliche that stories come like water from a faucet.  When you have turned on the faucet after a long time of disuse,  I found in a quote, you need to get all the rusty crap out of the line before good writing starts to flow again.  It takes a minute to get back into clear waters.

And so in the interest of clear waters, I’m doing some list making.  After all, it’s in a lesson plan I’ve made for 14 year olds.  What’s good for the goose and all…

This one is of Things that are Brown in October.  And other times too, some of them, but they are things that are around and that matter.

1. The California Buckwheat in Caroline Park
2. Starbucks bags
3. The seat of Asher’s pants when he forgets to have careful feet at the park
4. the fake trees in the Halloween village
5. Cinnamon, Cloves, Nutmeg, Coco powder
6. plain wooden cars that go “around, faster and faster Mumma.”
7. The wig of my Princess Leia costume
8. The wooden box that holds a beloved cat’s ashes
9. A cinnamon broom from Trader Joe’s
10. Teabags in a canning jar
11. The Sweet Pea Hedge that died in the summer heat
12. Morla’s mulch
13. Many kinds of Halloween candy
14. The hills in the distance off the 210 freeway
15. Brian’s hair
16. McDonald’s hamburgers, even when the playplace is closed
17. Bunnies with white tails that disappear into the buckwheat when a small boy speaks