Continuing the Novel

As I've mentioned before, beginning a new story is easy, but continuing the story is pretty difficult for me. Once I have begun the story and have had some time to reflect on the beginning, I naturally begin making plans for the rest of the novel. I create expectations for what I want the next chapters to look like, which then form a roadblock for me when I try to actually write those chapters, since they never match what I have in my head. A different block that I get is when I know where I want the characters to end up later in the novel, but don't know how to bridge the gap between where they are and where I want to them to get to. 

The part of my personality that holds me back from writing is my perfectionism. I always want to be the best at everything I do, and I want to be there the moment I try something new. I don't often give myself room to do less than perfect when I first begin. For my writing, I've been actively trying to remind myself that I always edit my work later, but I still struggle with moving forward in my writing. 

So, I've barely written anything new since the last time I posted. However, just because Genius Hour is basically over, this project isn't over. After all, this Genius "Hour" project is really my Genius "Life" project. It began before this "Hour" began, and it will continue on afterwards. 

Beginning My Novel

For the beginning of this past week, nothing happened in the land of Genius Hour. No children books for research were read, nor was any writing begun. The land was barren, the Queen absent, and hope waned. The inhabitants of the land looked for their Queen, and called out to her, but she was battling the evil monsters of homework, and the enemy armies of events in her personal life. As the week neared its end, the light was setting and hope seemed a foolish waste of time, the Queen returned with force and wrote the entire first chapter of her book.

Writing a novel is not easy. I already knew that, from all of the abandoned beginnings that lie in folders on my computer. I usually have no trouble beginning something though, hence why my collection of currently abandoned stories (I hope to come back to each of them some day) is so large. I had assumed that I would have no trouble beginning a new project. I had also assumed that it would be a breeze to read about twenty children's novels. I was doubly wrong. I seem to always forget to figure homework into my plans, and if that wasn't enough of an obstacle, I just had to have things going on in my personal life as well that kept me from doing work on Genius Hour. Part way through the week, when I actually had a moment to spare, I had even tried to begin writing something, but as I wrote, every single word felt wrong on the page, my character had so little depth that she was the shadow from a cardboard cutout, and my plot was as substantial as steam rising from a tea kettle. There was no reason to prevent my hand from crumpling the piece of paper, because the contents were something that I never wanted to see again. The beginning of this wasn't actually such a bad time for me writing wise actually, since I did have a lot of creative energy, but it just directed all of itself to the YA novel that I've been working on for the past four years instead of towards the new project that I was trying to begin.

Friday evening was the moment that everything changed. It was late at night, around the time when I should be going to bed. My eyes were tired, and I had every intention of turning off my laptop and giving in to their heaviness. However, I was scrolling through Tumblr, and any Tumblr user will confirm that one does not simply walk away from Tumblr. So there I was, fighting with myself to go to bed, when suddenly I saw it. A picture of a gate in the middle of a forest.

Fairey-tale. "Forest Gate" [online image]. Retrieved from http://fairey-tale.tumblr.com/post/129743697224. 

The moment I saw this image, I had a story in my head. I wrote as much as I could before sleep claimed me, but the next morning I continued writing and finished the first chapter as well as the beginning of the second chapter. Most of what I have in my head is backstory, but I do have a fuzzy idea of where I want the story itself to go.

As I was writing, I noticed that my writing style was different. My YA novel is written from a first person perspective, and is very action and detail oriented. My children's novel has a third person narrator who drifts among the perspectives of several characters. While it is all action and detail oriented, the tone of the narration is very different. My language is much more simple, and the amount of time I spend describing the action in the moment is much shorter.

I've noticed that my style of writing has been influenced by several writers who I haven't even gotten around to rereading yet. I have adored Angie Sage's writing style ever since I read her first book, and notice elements of her style in my style for this children's book, that have not shown up in my YA writing. I had really wanted to reread Angie Sage's first book, Magyk, hoping that it would help me with my writing and finding my voice, but apparently I didn't need to reread it for it to benefit me. I guess you could say that I've been researching for this Genius Hour project since I began to read, and not for merely two weeks.

My "Not a Box"

This is my "not a box", or a drawing that began as a box and then became something else. The inspiration for this assignment came from a book "Not a Box" by Antoinette Portis.

Creativity is so important for students, and they should feel encouraged to be creative in the classroom. I know that for myself, I learn best when I feel curious, and I feel most curious when I have a chance for creativity. When students are given chances to present their work creatively, they are reinforced as individuals with a unique personality rather than as robot #345. Instead of spoon feeding our students information, we should give them opportunities to grow as critical thinkers who know how to sort through information, critique it, state an opinion about it and apply it to their lives. Creativity encourages the type of free thinking that allows students to see things from different perspectives and notice connections.

Doing Research

One week down out of four, and I am staying right on track for my Genius Hour plan. Week 1 was all about research, so I went to my local library and checked out a bunch of children's novels. I thought about explaining to the librarian why a twenty year old was checking out 4 children's novels, all the beginning of different series, but then decided that I didn't need to explain myself. Since when is there a rule that adults must stop enjoying children's novels above a certain age? Despite deciding that an explanation was completely unnecessary, I couldn't stop myself from excitedly telling the librarian about the project. She smiled back and told me that she couldn't wait to see my book on the shelves. I highly doubt that she was surprised to hear about the project, since when I was in grade 6 I had checked out every book that I could find about the Middle Ages, excitingly telling this same librarian that I was going to write a story set in the Middle Ages, and that I wanted it to be as accurate as possible.

The books that I have read so far have been Jane, the Fox and Me by Fanny Brit and Isabelle Arsenault, Midnight for Charlie Bone by Jenny Nimmo, and I am currently reading Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer. Other books that are on my list to read are Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (The Harry Potter series), The Bad Beginning (The Series of Unfortunate Events), The Magician Nephew (The Chronicles of Narnia), The Capture (The Guardians of Ga'hoole), The Field Guild (The Spiderwick Chronicles), Coming Home (Heartland), Dark Sunshine (The Phantom Stallion), as well as others that I took from the library that I can't remember anymore. I don't know how many of these books I'll actually be able to read, but I certainly won't be able to say that I couldn't find anything for my topic. Many of these books I chose because I read them before, loved them, and found them inspiring, while others are new. I had planned to only research fantasy novels, but happened to pass by the shelf of novels about horses, and couldn't resist grabbing two books from there that I had loved as a kid. This experience made me realize that we are shaped by many books and genres, not just one. Although reading contemporary novels about horses may not be directly related to fantasy, the techniques that the authors use to describe the characters and pace the action will be useful to me. The very first book on this list, Jane, the Fox and Me, is actually a book that I had to read for a different class, and while it is a contemporary graphic novel about bullying and self-esteem, I decided to hit two birds with one stone and take notes on it for this project while I was reading it anyways. I am reading the first books from a bunch of series because most children's fantasy novels are part of a series and because I wanted to get a wider range of writing styles rather than just reading from just one author throughout their entire series.

I am absolutely loving this experience. Although I love writing, I am notoriously bad at setting deadlines and motivating myself to work. This project is the perfect booster to get me to do what it is that I want to do. I love the fact that Genius Hour is so open and free, and that I don't have to do any "academic" readings for my research. When I have my own classroom, I will definitely implement Genius Hour as a Friday afternoon activity for my students. 

Choosing My Genius Hour Question

When you are about to dedicate four weeks of your life to a project, you want that project to be a good one. I spent a fair amount of time humming and hawing about what I wanted to do my project on. I knew that I was going to do something do with creative writing, I just didn't know what. I thought about doing a research project looking at how creative writing impacts students, and I liked the idea, but... it just didn't seem like The Project that I would remain passionate about for four weeks. What I finally did decide to do is almost the same question, except I switched out "research about" to "make". Well, I'll still be doing some research, but not from any academic writing located on jstor like I had originally considered. With this reworked idea, my research is coming from reading children's books, and I'm using this research to imitate the best features from those when I create my own story. That's right, my Genius Hour question is "How can I teach a moral through a children's story?" I shall track my progress by keeping a record of how much I write per week and what I find difficult or challenging about the project. Going through this process to find my question has taught me that I prefer to actually do something rather than read about it. I feel as though I can do more good for children by actually writing a story rather than talking about how stories can benefit them.

The Importance of Citations

We live in a society where it has become increasingly easy to find and download images or video online. Even though it should be obvious to us that each of these images were uploaded by a person, the fact that we are accessing these through the internet where we probably don't know the person who uploaded the image often makes us forget this fact and we seem to think that the image simply exists. when a friend shows us their artwork in person, we realize that we need to ask their permission before using their artwork. When we discover an image online, we often use it without thinking about seeking permission to use this image. We often don't see a name attached to an image, either because the person who uploaded it didn't provide any information or it was shared by someone else who didn't cite where they got the image from.

This is an issue because the moment that someone creates an image, it is automatically given a copyright, meaning that the creator legally owns their image; if someone else uses their image without permission, they are stealing the image. Many people who post images online allow people to use their images so long as the person using the image credits the artist.

It is not difficult to cite images. It may seem confusing to people who have never cited an image before, but if society in general were to adopt the habit, people would be aware that they need to do this and would also learn how to do it. As teachers, we need to teach our students how to do this, and explain to them why it is necessary. We can ask them to imagine what it would feel like if they had their artwork stolen by someone who posted it online and claimed that they had created it.

San José Library. (2008, August 23). Children using the computer [photograph]. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/sanjoselibrary/2839835109

San José Library. (2008, August 23). Children using the computer [photograph]. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/sanjoselibrary/2839835109

Hello

To all those reading this blog, hello and welcome!

My name is Nicole Horlings, and I am currently in the beginning of my consecutive education course at Brock University. It is incredible finally starting this course since teaching in an elementary school has been a dream of mine ever since I was in elementary school. I have always had a passion for learning, and for sharing information about the things that I have learned with other people. While I was in elementary school, I had several fantastic teachers who really inspired me to become a teacher myself after I saw the impact that they had on myself and my fellow classmates. I am quite vocal about this passion, and as a result, one of my friends from high school told me about an English for Kids camp in Quebec that she thought I would enjoy volunteering at. I have volunteered at this camp four times now, and it is one of the most memorable experiences of my life. I have also volunteered at the elementary school that I attended as a kid, which is a really fun experience since I have gotten to see the other side of education.

For my undergrad, I studied English Language and Literature at Brock University. I am passionate about storytelling in any form. The genre that is closest to my heart is fantasy, since it was the genre that first turned me into a reader. I am currently working on writing a novel of my own, and also enjoy writing poetry.