Welcome to my blog.
Writing is hard. All that sitting and thinking and creating. But not writing is even harder. All that guilt and those nasty self-recriminations. So tiring! Plus someone else will eventually pluck YOUR brilliant ideas from the Neverland where unborn ideas go to swirl indefinitely. Productive, writing bastards.
What I want to do here is encourage you (and myself) to write every single day. Whether it’s a short poem that sprang to mind while you were hanging out the washing, an idea for a TV show (damn knows you’ve got something better in you than Mrs Brown’s Boys), a gratitude post, and everything in between. Let’s come together daily to write about whatever moves us.
Welcome to my new blog – Write Now With Tea.
About Me
I’m Kris, and I love writing. Well, I love it and loathe it. As Dorothy Parker so aptly put it, ‘I hate writing, I love having written.’
I’ve felt compelled to write for as long as I can remember. In primary school I wrote an epic series with a friend titled ‘Midnight and Patches’. It remains a travesty that the whacky adventures of those 2 leading cats remains unread by the world. Nevertheless I persisted.
My first foray into poetry was at the tender of age of 12 when I churned out the following poetic masterpiece:
The sound of the waves in winter
Fills my heart with joy
The strong, hard waves crashing on the shore
That’s what I live for.
K.Kennedy circa 1992
Throughout my entire time at primary and high school, I can remember a grand total of 2 teachers offering me any form of encouragement about my writing. The first was Ms Nikolaides who heralded my piece titled ‘Bruno’s Lips’, as the NEXT BIG THING at St.Columba’s College. I was duly sent around to other Year 7 classes and forced to read my work to them. I was not unaware of the rolling eyes and sarky remarks from other students about what a tool I was for sharing my recollections of being kissed by the foulest child in primary school during a harrowing rendition of ‘A – You’re Adorable’. I was tasked, obviously, with acting out K – You’re so Kissable. Spare me.
The second teacher to see beyond my teenage angst was Mrs Panayotis, my year 9 English teacher. She read a piece I’d written from the perspective of Sonic the Hedgehog, and his horror at being eternally stalked by a disproportionately high number of murderous creatures. Mrs Panayotis gave me some useful feedback, but more importantly, she gave me her time.
When I decided to become a teacher I held both of these women in my mind. I wanted to ensure my students knew I would recognise their already unique voices, while also guiding them to become better writers. Above all I wanted them to know that I would notice them.
I believe that all teachers of writing need to be students of writing. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for teachers to give meaningful feedback to their students when they are unaware of the challenges that the writing process presents us, because they rarely, perhaps never, experience it themselves. There’s a quote that sums it up like this:
It’s hard to learn how to swim if your instructor never gets in the water. The same is true for students learning how to write.
http://www.TeachWriteAcademy.com
My intention through this blog is three-fold: to encourage myself to write every day, to encourage others (especially teachers) to write everyday, and to share some ideas about how to incorporate a writer’s notebook into your daily life.
And all the while, I’ll be sipping my cup of tea.
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Write Now With Tea 