- Make a list, on the orange card, of things you might like to write about. Two, three, four, five--right from the top of your head.
- Now read this list aloud to your partner. Your partner asks you this question: "Which of these is the most important to you?" Then, after you have answered this question, your partner asks you a second: "Why is this most important to you?"
- Now start writing on this "thing" that you have chosen. Blue card. Write on, freely. Maybe a list? Not consecutive prose, unless you want to.
- Now ask your partner to read what you've written. Or you can read what you've written aloud. After the reading, your partner should ask you, "Where do you think you'll go from here?" And then a second question: "Where will you begin?" Any other writer-talk is fine too. After the talk, write on again, write right to the end, still on the cards.
- When you've finished, you have your rough draft-to be expanded for next class. A few notes on choices I have made here. (You might consider going public with your reasons for what you are asking your young writers to do. If one of our objectives is to help beginning writers manage their writing, then knowing that there are choices, alternative strategies that they can use themselves when they write, is a step toward that goal.)
First, the cards themselves
I choose these because they are not paper, not a blank sheet. The writer is therefore less likely to feel that the first sentence she writes is the final draft of the first sentence of the completed piece. No "blue-book syndrome." Second, the order. I have alternated the individual and the social: writers work alone, and they work with others. Ideally, a writer chooses when to work alone, when to get responses from others. Practically, in a class of 24 writers, one stages it.
Another note on the order: I alternate between the centrifugal (center-fleeing) and the centripetal (center-seeking). Peter Elbow has called this "loop writing." I'm assuming here that at times as a writer you need to write away from your center. Peter has called this "the voyage out" and that at times as a writer you need to re-focus, to come back to your center ("the voyage back"). A note on your second class: if history predicts, you will have several new students in your second class. This means that to a degree you will be conducting two classes: one for those who were there for class I, and another for the students new to your section.
A slick way of dealing with this: have the veterans read and respond to one another's mid- process drafts; and have the new people do the card exercise. Before the end of class, set up pairs of new students and have them schedule a time to meet and read/respond to one another's writing outside of class, before the next class. Then, voila! By the beginning of class 3, everyone is on the same page.
