Resource Sharing: Reading as Research

Check out the amazing presenters in this year's ReFoReMo.

Early in 2016, I found a link to something called ReFoReMo (Reading for Research Month).  I promptly signed up.  After all, since I'd committed to reading 1,000 picture books in 2016, I might as well get the most out of them.

Boy, did ReFoReMo help.  A wonderful community of writers shared tools for keeping track of reading, approaches to texts, and success stories from authors who had truly turned their reading into research for their own stories.

I discovered some of my new favorite picture books during ReFoReMo last year, and I look forward to seeing what I'll discover this year.  Sign-ups start on Feb. 15.  I have my calendar marked.  I hope you'll join me.

Find out more at ReFoReMo 2017.

Resource Sharing: My Write Club

Screen shot from My Write Club.  I'm gravllo. Add me as a friend. 

One of my very favorite things about NaNoWriMo is the little bar graph that tracks my daily words.  At the end of NaNo last year, I looked around for a similar way to track my work and found and interesting website, My Write Club.

The interface is simple.  Sign up, set up projects, then start sharing your progress on what seems to be an unlimited number of projects. 

You can link your account to friends and keep track of their progress, too.  Seeing the line creep upwards on the graph gives me a thrill.  I’m tracking seven different goals this year on My Write Club. And I can see my friends’ goals and their progress.

 We can also write each other notes.  My friend says she appreciates being able to see that I’m on track even when we aren’t writing together. 

Me, I just like the graphs. 

If you, too, miss the lovely graph from NaNo, take a look.   If it seems useful, sign up and start tracking.  Feel free to add me as a friend.  I’m gravllo. 

Resource Sharing: Romelle Broas on Using Mentor Texts

I've read over 300 books so far in 2016.  These are some of my favorites that have 

become my mentor texts.  

Before I started on my ReFoReMo journey this month, I downloaded Romelle Broas’ carefully critical Mentor Text Worksheet from the ReFoReMo blog.  I didn't print it out, but it was so thoughtfully arranged, I saved it on my desktop and tucked it in my mental file—To Deal With Later.

Then as I read through the mentor texts, I fell in love with a few of them. I read and reread them, trying to figure out why I found them so compelling. They were books I wish I had written, books like the ones I wanted to write. 

So I opened the Broas’ worksheet and looked at it again.  Then, I made a little folder on my desktop, copied the PDF into a Word document that I could easily edit, and began filling in the worksheets for the twenty or so books that I’d already decided I wanted to study from the first week's reading. 

Broas’ talks about how to approach mentor texts (and how to use her worksheet) on a guest post in Carrie Charley Brown’s site, but Broas' blog is also a rich resource.  On Feb. 8, 2016 she posted a wonderful analysis of breaking the fourth wall in picture books.  I signed up for her blog updates.  I can’t wait to see what she’ll do next.

Resource Sharing: Jane Yolen’s Poem a Day

One of the inspirations for my poem-a-day practice is Jane Yolen.  In Dec. 2014, I saw a tweet from her offering me a poem a day, delivered to my email inbox.  I signed up.  Since then, I’ve been getting her words everyday, usually before I wake up. 

Today’s poem was a beautiful evocation of rain in Scotland with an epigraph by Tess Gallagher.  In many of her poems, you can hear the children’s poet.  In others, you can hear the grieving widow.  In still others, you can hear the writer playing with language, playing with prompts, struggling with words.  What’s more, she shares poetry resources: websites that have prompts and poems and forms I hadn’t heard of. 

I love the grown-up poems I get from Poetry Daily, American Life in Poetry, and Poets.org, but it’s inspiring to get a poem every day from the same author.  An author with over 325 published books.  An author who could sit back and relax but who, instead, shares a poem with those who request it every day. 

She’s been doing this for over five years now.  Through loss (her husband) and pain (her back), she’s been sharing her work with me across the ether.  I don’t pay her for it (though she does ask that I buy one of her books or borrow one from the library each year).  That’s an easy price.

So, thank you Jane Yolen for your generosity and for the daily inspiration.  Though I’m not yet ready to send out a poem a day, I encourage you to write to Jane and accept hers.  You'll find the directions in the tweet above.