Writer, teacher, and librarian Pat Ezell (aka wirelesslibrarian) attracted our attention with several charming Storybirds about mice, pigs, and talking trees. Given her pedigree, we asked her about the social side of writing and the influence of feedback on emerging writers.
Ernest Hemingway got up early in the morning so he could write in quiet. Truman Capote swore that he did all his writing lying down, crafting his stories either in bed or on the couch. Shakespeare would shut himself away in his chambers for days at a time when he was writing. Okay, I totally made up the bit about Shakespeare, but it sounds plausible, right? Writing has typically been thought of as a solitary and frequently clandestine endeavor. But is lonely writing the only good kind?
When I was in third grade, my teacher chose to “publish” a story I had written, thanks to the purple magic of the mimeograph machine. Yeah, I’m kind of ancient. Anyway, everyone in Mrs. Hall’s class got a fragrant, violet-inked copy of my masterpiece, and the whole experience was very powerful for me. Because my teacher saw value in my writing, I began to see myself as a writer. It made me want to write more, to write better, to create the most amazing stories ever read. That’s what a little bit of encouragement can do for you, and I think that writing in and for a collaborative community like Storybird can nurture the same desire to be a writer that Mrs. Hall instilled in me.
The world is seemingly a very different place today. Shakespeare and Hemingway and Capote did not have such a broad sounding board as we now enjoy, but I suspect that authors have always looked for affirmation and guidance. Jane Austen always read her work to her sister first. Rick Riordan shared The Lightning Thief with his nine-year-old son and then tried it out with his middle school students before he submitted it for publication. Stephen King always shares his first drafts with the grave digger at a local cemetery. Umm, that part about Stephen King is complete fabrication, but it sounds right, doesn’t it? The point is that maybe authorship isn’t done best in isolation. Maybe being able to connect with others to share our writing can make us better writers. With Storybird and other forms of social media at our fingertips, we’ve just got a bigger family to bounce things off of.
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Image: Fancy Fish by Victoria Usova
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Barbara De Santis 06.14.10 at 1:19 pm
I agree with Pat- writing isn’t a solo adventure. While my students are thrilled to get comments (either on the storybird site or my blog) about their work, I’ve also seen the collaborative nature of writing. One of my peers had each student begin a story and then rotate around the room to add to each other’s book. (This was done literally since our student email system doesn’t allow outside email.) Her fifth grade special education students loved this project and in turn, to celebrate Read Across America Day, her class shared their experience with a fourth grade class.
Thom 06.14.10 at 2:50 pm
My education teacher tells a story of his youth when he was a budding young poet in 9th grade English. A particular assignment was returned to him with the note, “Carl, you will never be a writer.”
Such words can obviously be devastating to a young writer. And they are always delivered in that misguided way, where a “writer” is identified as being a title or profession, and not the simple joy of someone using words to express herself. The entire mandate of Dave Egger’s 826 tutoring centres is that everyone’s life is bettered by writing. Not just novelists or journalists or tortured poets – everyone.
However, at some point a writer needs to learn to take criticism in stride. This is true not only if one expects to get published, but also if one simply wants to be a better writer. The internet has made instant admiration a kind of social disease (with its correlation in trolls and flame wars.) A writer must, at some point, learn to stand on her own and say I am writing for myself and the act of writing. For if an instant and positive response is necessary to continue writing, what happens when those responses are not forthcoming?
A simple example is on my blog. I turned off the comments. I still want people to communicate with me, but I realized at some point that I was spending too much time thinking about responses…or lack thereof. All the special tools and response mechanisms and Buddhist-themed writing programs don’t change the fact that when you get right down to it writing is you and a blank surface waiting to be filled with words.
Samuel Clay 06.14.10 at 3:31 pm
Thinking back to elementary school, when I would be systematically partnered with another student for the sake of collaboration, the artificial bridge between two writers was not welcoming or helpful. It didn’t make sense to force collaboration, because then you’re not allowing any one person to feel ownership of the work.
In software, collaboration happens organically and pervasively. But it often occurs when there is a person who guides the collaboration and is considered the owner of the code. By having this hierarchy, ideas that stem from collaboration have a way of being integrated without being unnecessarily bogged down by the inequality of an even split of work.
For a teacher, I think this translates to a potential idea: instead of artificially joining students and giving them equal share of a project, perhaps they could all have their own writing ideas, but then collaborate with 2-3 other students on the other students’ ideas. This way you still have the sense of ownership and autonomy that is a necessity for passion and hard-work, while still offering the benefit of sharing and curating ideas from others.
Darrelyn Saloom 06.14.10 at 6:41 pm
I agree that social media can provide inspirational feedback for writers. My friends are musicians, painters, doctors, nurses, homemakers, etc. Not many are writers. So I don’t connect daily with writers expect for the internet. Through social media I have made close friendships with scribes from around the world. And through social media and my guest blog for Writer’s Digest editor Jane Friedman, I enjoy valuable feedback that inspires me to plug away on my keyboard and face the dreaded blank page. So, yes, I wholeheartedly concur that with “Storybird and other forms of social media at our fingertips, we’ve just got a bigger family to bounce things off of.”
Wireless Librarian 06.14.10 at 8:34 pm
Thom -
I loved your comments, although they did reanimate some of the nagging ideas that I had intentionally excised from my earlier post. Foremost among them is the certainty that telling everyone they’re already terrific isn’t really conducive to fostering excellence. Yep, that one has been with me for years now, a spectral being grumbling behind me as I purposely ignore the grammar and spelling errors of my students in an effort to summon rather than squelch the author inside them. Is that the right thing to do, I ask myself, and my literary dementor rasps, “Noooooo!” As you may imagine, life is never dull inside my head.
You are spot on about a writer ultimately having to realize that “I am writing for myself and the act of writing.” That was beautifully said, and something I’ve acknowledged to myself, but only as an adult. I don’t think that kids generally have that internal locus of control. Neither do some grown-ups, for that matter. Thus, for me, it’s a choice between ignition and demolition. Do I want to try and spark a desire to continue writing, or effectively crush any further interest in working with words, which may have been Carl’s fate. I guess I will continue to be conflicted about this matter, thanks to my writing spectre. He’s such a stickler.
Mary Beth Hertz 06.14.10 at 8:55 pm
One thing that we sometimes fail to remember is that writing was NOT a solo art form. Many writers gathered together in cafes and lounges, or at each others’ houses to discuss their ideas, their work, and critique each other.
What makes tools like Storybird so amazing is it turns the whole WORLD into a writers’ cafe or lounge, allowing for feedback from an exponentially large audience. I agree with many of the commenters, along with the author, Pat, that the act of publishing student work makes all the difference. The day we publish our Storybirds is often the only time my students have ever published anything in their entire lives. They are beaming with pride.
Paula Naugle 06.14.10 at 9:28 pm
I must be two writers in one. Sometimes I want to collaborate on my writing, but sometimes I want to write all be myself. As a fourth grade teacher, I know when I write lesson plans, assessments, school improvemet plans, and rubrics, I like doing that collaboratively. Having input from each others helps us get more done and I think a better finished document is created. When I am wiritng a blog post or essay, I want to be in a very quiet place to think through what I’m trying to express.
As a teacher I can see times when children should be writing together to offer support and ideas, and times when they need to let their creativity flow without interference from anyone else. I really think the type of writing might determine how much collaboration should be going on.
Mark 06.14.10 at 10:51 pm
I agree with Paula. Context is everything. There’s a difference between supporting someone’s ambitions (Pat’s teacher) and giving feedback on the quality of their work (Thom’s comment). Both have their place and are crucial to developing self-confidence as an artist and a human being. The tricky part is that the interwebs has made it easy to indulge in both the giving and receiving of support and feedback. This can be healthy in moderation, as Darrelyn’s mentions. Too much of it, though, and you get an interaction surplus where the noise far outweighs the signal. (Ask writer Laurel Snyder. Her addiction to Twitter and the response loop blindsighted her for months.)
An analogue for me is a comment The Lovely Bone’s author Alice Sebold made when asked about the influence of living in New York on her craft: “New York didn’t make me a better writer,” she said. “New York made me a better New Yorker.”
Nick Bouton 06.15.10 at 12:46 am
I thought I’d drop in (thanks, Mark, for the link) and chime in on the advantages of collaborative writing and storytelling.
To give you a little background on why I’d have any insight here, I run a site called Protagonize that caters to amateur and professional writers who enjoy both solo and collaborative creative writing. There are a number of sites out there on the ‘net that focus solely on one aspect of writing or the other, but Protagonize allows authors to dabble in both sides of the equation, working together and providing feedback to each other along the way.
Ms. Ezell’s post resonates with me in that I’ve had a number of school teachers and university professors contact me since I launched the site, particularly secondary school instructors, letting me know that they’re using the site with their students, and what features would be more useful to them. The collaborative environment really serves to enhance their ability to teach, giving interested students motivation to participate and learn to provide feedback to their peers, along with giving them the opportunity to be critiqued (or praised) by other authors of varying ages and talent levels from around the world.
It’s quite interesting (and very gratifying) to be able to sit back and watch the impact it has — I’m thinking of one American secondary school teacher in particular who has invited her entire high school class to write on the site. A number of her students are among our most active authors, and the quality and range of their work is improving and broadening daily.
On the other hand, based on the last two years and change of experience running an active, social writing community, I’d have to strongly agree with Thom’s analysis in the second comment. The instant gratification of having your friends pat you on the back immediately when you publish something new can have a negative impact on new writers to the point of dissuading theme from trying to improve.
From a community operator’s point of view, some of this has to do with altering your internal systems to encourage the proper type of feedback, and some of it has to do with educating your users as to the drawbacks of being overly positive in their responses. You have no idea how much time I’ve spent poring over the designs of various ratings, commenting, achievements/reputation, and recommendations systems in order to try and figure out something that works well. But to be honest, this affects nearly all online content-driven communities, so it’s not something we’re alone in dealing with. Nearly everyone has the same problem, be it Flickr, YouTube, Storybird, or anything else. It’s definitely not a unique issue in a socially-driven web environment.
As an aside, I would note that there are other ways around the positive feedback loop problem aside from restricting input to preventing users from gaming or abusing the system. We’ve had a group dedicated to authors participating in the yearly NaNoWriMo competition that really encourages folks to put out great content. Writers of all calibre on our site have banded together to focus on quality over quantity, to the point where the community has begun to be a little more self-policing, so-to-speak, actively trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, and I’ve been supporting them from a technical standpoint as best I can. It’s encouraging to see the effect this is having on our members, particularly the younger folks, who are notoriously difficult to capture the attention of.
In any case, there is definitely a case for collaborative writing out there as a boon to developing writers and helping them in ways that weren’t nearly as possible even two decades ago. It’s fulfilling to be a part of it and I’m glad that there are sites out there like Storybird that appeal to an even younger audience than the pure writing sites.
Apologies for the wall of text. Apparently I got carried away somewhere along the line.
Cheers,
-nick / protagonize
Nick Bouton 06.15.10 at 1:05 am
Oh, and totally off topic, but Ms. Ezell was actually dead-on regarding Stephen King, although off by a career or two. Mr. King has actually verified his gore-laden facts with a local physician’s assistant for the last 36 years or so, as per Wired a few months back.
Michael Fisher 06.15.10 at 9:14 am
What a great conversation unfolding here.
When I work with teachers, most of them believe that when I talk about 21st Century skills, I’m talking about something related to the computer.
While the computer and the internet and the myriad applications that go with them are plentiful and transforming, the most important 21st Century Skills have to do with thinking, connections, and collaboration.
Much of the research around effective instructional strategies focus on strong connections, which come from motivation, engagement, creation, evaluation, images, interaction, discussion, and working together. All of these, and more, are accessible through Storybird when we ask kids to consider visual elements that inform storytelling, which inform what kids know and are able to do with their writing, and then offer opportunities for peer assessment, discussion, revision, editing, etc.
Pat mentioned the power in feeling valued around her publication. How awesome is it that through these great web tools we have the opportunity to provide this experience to all children?
-Mike Fisher
Ian Hancock 06.22.10 at 4:02 pm
When I was Grade 3 (which seems an eternity now!), I went through a phase where I loved everything Sherlock Holmes. I even had the deerstalker hat! Recognizing this interest, my teacher suggested I write a mystery story based on the stories of Sherlock Holmes. Writing at that time what seemed like a very long story, I submitted to my teacher who, after making some suggestions, asked if she could send it into the local paper. Surprised, I agreed never thinking that anything would come from it. A few weeks later, my mom opened the paper to find my story. The power that had for me was incredible, knowing that it had extended beyond the confines of the class held powerful implications for me presaging my intense interest in social media tools in education.
Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Dickens, and those that came before and after all knew the power of Words. They are not satisfied to be confined. They are only powerful sent out into the world where they can inflame, excite, create, build upon and inspire. This is the opportunity and power that social media has today. They take away the stranglehold that publishing companies and critics have on publishing literature that is created by those practicing the craft and finding their voice. For the last few years, my students have ended the year with a poetry unit. Unlike previous years, the goal for this year was to produce a published book of poetry that would be disseminated beyond our class. This had the effect of changing the whole motivation for the students. Realizing that it was not just going to be produced for me, the teacher, students created wonderful, inspiring poetry that they hoped would be read for years after they moved on. When the actual books arrived, the students were so proud of their achievements. First they sat, mesmerized, reading their words on the page. Then they ran out showing whoever they could find the poetry books that THEY wrote. I also included books in the school library where they are still being signed out today.
The power and motivation that the students had when writing was taken outside the context and confines of the classroom, changed the whole paradigm of writing for the students. No longer are they writing to just please me. They are writing for a real, world-wide audience of readers and writers. Emerging writers need this. They need to know that their words are important in a grander scheme.
Teachers can give these opportunities or we can stamp them out. However, I believe we also need to guide students to understanding that, while their words can have this power and importance in a wider setting, there are standards and expectations. Those are important to help students gain and keep their audience. As has been mentioned in the previous comments, I have to be careful in my class with motivation. On the one hand, we want to encourage the students to make the difficult task seem easier but I think that the praise needs to be sincere and focused on the task. Po Bronson, in his book Nurtureshock, describes the interesting findings in the effects of praising students. He found that students excelled more when praise was focused on the output and specific. Opposite to that, students did not perform as well when praise was vague and not sincere. His findings suggested that students even at young ages understand when praise is vague and not thought out. Not only that, but students did better and work towards expectations more when given criticism specifically aimed at their work; criticism that was done without harsh tones and not directed at the student themselves. Students who were just over praised or not praised for specific things did not build internal motivation. I don’t always necessarily find that this happens with online communities and social media tools unless it is specifically and deliberately built into the system and even then I have not found that it happens too often. While Mark mentions that “maybe being able to connect with others to share our writing can make us better writers,” in my experience connecting with others is great but the experience and the “person on the ground” with the students is where the learning and building of the writing skills happen.
So I think that while social media tools, like Storybird, have the power to build motivation and can excite students to build their writing tools and skills, teachers still need to be there to motivate by providing criticism and praise that is specific and given with the intention of helping the student to grow. It may feel “tough” but in the end, as the research shows, students understand the expectations better and know how to achieve as writers. It is the teacher who, I find, guides the students to developing the craft and skills in the student. Coupled with a tool like Storybird, you can build a strong desire to write because students know that their voice will be heard and understood.
Sorry for being long-winded but it is such a good question and topic to discuss. I hope it made sense!
Ian