All #Writing | Deanna Mascle Writing Evangelist

What is your quest?

This week my students kicked off a new unit. In this unit we will learn about rhetorical analysis and study well-known (often beloved) stories. One of the reasons I love this work is that sharing stories we love with the community and peeling back the layers of meaning found in those stories brings us closer…

Ancestors

While our writing group continues to find our writing inspiration in photos (see Snapshots and Ingenuity) I have been thinking a lot about Not My Ancestors by Bettina Judd. I know every time I look in the mirror or at my son that blood will tell. Certainly physical traits are passed on and so many…

Key Conversations

As my students dig deeper into the work of crafting their This I Believe essays I want them to think seriously about their audience and purpose. I never want their writing to simply be an academic exercise. I want it to matter, to connect with their real lives and real people who matter to them.…

empty classroom with rows of desks, white board and chalk boards and maps on the walls

Important Lessons

My first year writers are in the midst of drafting This I Believe essays and today I challenged them to think about the most important lesson they have learned. I used Brad Aaron Modlin’s What You Missed That Day You Were Absent From Fourth Grade to inspire their writing. I gave them this simple prompt:…

Ingenuity

As I noted in Snapshots, the Just Write group is finding inspiration in photographs. Our inspiration began with the poem mobile architecture by José Felipe Alvergue (and other related poems suggested on the same web page) and we picked photos of our families to inspire our writing. While some members of the group have dug deep into their…

Palm trees hanging over a strip of coastal beach on Guam.

The Weavers

Last week was the first week of classes at Morehead State University and I spent a lot of time selecting just the right poem to inspire my students’ writing about their beliefs and writing goals. In fact, the selection of the perfect poem was such a journey I wrote a blog post about it. I…

Snapshots

For this week (and two more weeks and counting) we have found inspiration in photographs. Our inspiration began with the poem mobile architecture by José Felipe Alvergue (and other related poems suggested on the same web page) and we picked photos of our families to inspire our writing. I brought this picture to our session because…

Memories

This week our writing group brought items of personal significance to inspire our writing. This is a long standing form of writing inspiration that reminded me of a children’s book by Mem Fox, Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge, which I have used so often for so many different communities of writers that I have multiple copies…

Arizona

The final stop of the 2023 Write Across America virtual writing marathon was in Arizona where we explored layers in a geographical, historical, and personal sense. We can all benefit from exploring the layers of our existence, places, and relationships. How much better would we be as a society, a nation, a world if we…

California

This week Write Across America took us to California where we explored social issues through poetry and photography. We were invited to write about the social issues pressing upon us and our communities. We were also invited to find inspiration in the ideas and words and images shared with us. What is heavy on your…

Connecticut

What do local stories and legends tell us about a place and the people who live there? I lived in Connecticut for one of the most pivotal years of my life and so I spent some of Write Across America’s recent visit to that state writing about that year. I might not have been inspired…

Virginia

What haunts you? What will you haunt? What places and decisions and events haunt you? This week Write Across America visited Haunted Virginia: Sneak Peak and Slide Show for Haunted Virginia visit.