Heads-up to those who follow my blog for professional purposes: For the next 31 days, if you see the orange Slicer logo, the posts will be more of a personal nature than professional.
Those who know me well also know that I love my new-ish gig as a librarian, so there will be LOTS of posts about my worklife as a bookpusher, I'm sure.
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I went back to last year's Day 1 to compare notes. My enthusiasm for my career hasn't waned in my second year in the stacks; I feel so suited for this job that it's hard to believe I was teaching in a classroom two years ago! As for 'Slicing' again, I think I'm just as nervous as I have been for the past two years on March 1st, with the same questions--Will I be able to sustain my writing for a month? Will I be boring my readers by Day 3? Why am I doing this again?
My fourth graders will be participating in their Writing Camp next week, and my recent library lesson was on opening lines of mentor texts. I told them that I would be writing, too, this month, and how nerve-wracking that could be for me. I'm glad that this Challenge exists so that the students and I can share a common goal and talk from a place of authentic learning for us all.
And as a point of reference for years to come, here is where I'm at today: Second year in the library. Still a wife, and mom of one away at college and one in high school. Still having issues with really messy desks at home and at work. Right smack in the middle of my spring book fair in the library.
And ready to begin a month of writing. Here we go!
Third year in and I reread previous slices this morning too! I love your lesson idea about opening lines in mentor texts. Noticing those may help my first-graders write more interesting topic sentences. Happy Slicing!
ReplyDeleteIt's a fun lesson to teach, and easy to do with so many great books to share! Thanks for stopping by my blog today; Happy Slicing to you, too!
DeleteIt's my first year in and I'm excited. So glad to have found you through your comments. Being a librarian is probably where I'm supposed to be too, but I don't think I'll ever make the leap. I want to be a writer of books more than a keeper of books at the moment. Advice for writing a book? Write. Write more when you feel uninspired. I re-read things that I thought were awful and I'm inspired by them as well. Sometimes those ideas were better than I thought. Lastly search the blog for how to write a pitch, how to query an agent, how to write the kind of book you are writing. It's all out there and the more you happen upon it and do your research, the more you will connect to how the process will work for you.
ReplyDeleteI will definitely keep your blog in mind when I decide to make the leap to writer, Kimberley! I think it will help that as a librarian, I'm now in contact with authors (we have several visits a year at my school), and in one case, an agent who lives locally. We even have a writers' retreat house here in Austin! Thanks for the advice and for stopping by my blog today; looking forward to reading your posts this month!
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