Blog, Blog, Blog...

What makes a good story?

I have to really think about that one, now.

That sounds like kind of a stupid question for a writer - don't we ALWAYS wonder that? But you see: I'm not one of those writers who sits around, agonizing over craft. Well, actually, I've had my moments of agony, of course, and I can sit around with the best agonizers, agonizing away...

And sure - agony of that sort can be fun. In its own, agonistic way. But it isn't very productive. And I really like to be productive. Anyone who's ever bothered to count the pages of Inkless Tales (there's nobody out there who really has the time for that kind of thing, is there?) or who's ever bothered to Google how many blogs I keep, or who's ever snuck downstairs to my office and seen the prodigious amount of prolific work I produce knows that the one thing I do is PRODUCE.

See: to me, writing is, well, surely, a craft. But to get better at any craft, you have to actually DO it, as opposed to agonizing over it.

But now, I really DO have to do some agonizing, instead of writing and then looking at it and saying: Hmmm? Is this any good?

Because it turns out the Inkless Tales Podcast for Kids is now getting some serious traffic. Moreover, some classrooms are starting to use the stories - and analyze them, to evaluate whether or not they're any good.

Yikes!

So: that actually gets me excited. I'm being graded!

I hope I pass.

I love it when someone raises the bar.

It's Time to Start Thinking Poetry.

Of course, for me, it's always time to be thinking about poetry... but I'm getting ready for American National Poetry Month and I'm mulling over launching a contest on Inkless Tales, my web site for kids, at www.inklesstales.com.

I want to encourage classes to read as much as they can during the month of April -- and I'm trying to figure out what kind of prize would be a good incentive.

I'd like to offer a free workshop, a free concert... hmmm.

What to do, what to do....

Gigs in General

I LOVE Gigs. Playing and singing for kids is the absolute best. I've been performing since I was 12 years old, and I'm used to the typical scene: you break out the guitar, sing your heart out, and people can basically ignore you while they talk, eat, or go about their business -- maybe drop a dollar in your guitar box, no matter how good you sound.

But children? They are interested in everything you do. Because they are so grateful that you care enough about them to come sing for them.

So it makes you try harder to find songs for them that will teach them something, like the one I found for this gig: Follow the Drinking Gourd.

Follow the Drinking Gourd is the last remaining "coded song" sung by slaves seeking freedom via the Underground Railroad.

Although seemingly simple, and to unknowing plantation owners, mistaken for -- perhaps -- a hymn, it was written by an itinerant carpenter named Peg Leg Joe. As he traveled from plantation to plantation, ostensibly working for the slave owners, he would secretly teach this song to the slaves, who would then use the "map" in song to run for freedom in the north.

The song gives explicit instructions for a route from Alabama and Mississippi to Ohio, via the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers. Because the song makes use of Polaris, the North Star, even NASA gives an explanation of the song on their web site.

I bring an easel with me to gigs, with huge poster boards for sing-a-longs. For Follow The Drinking Gourd, on one side of the board, I created a map for the kids to view the route. (For my own little joke, I colored the southern state Confederate grey and the northern states Yankee blue.)

Then, as I taught the kids the song -- to Peg Leg Joe's everlasting credit, it's an easy song to pick up, even for kids -- I flipped the board, and along with the words, I had photographs of the actual route -- the double hills and valleys of the rivers, pictures of dead trees referenced in the song, etc.

Everything I do, I try to sneak in some learning -- while the kids have fun.

I have the best job in the world. I really do. Not only do I get to learn, but we have SO much fun together.

Gig coming up at the Interactive Museum

As I spoke to the woman in charge, I asked her: "What is it, exactly, you'd like me to do?"

She was a little confused.

"I mean, do you want me to simply give a concert -- or do a poetry workshop, too? Either way, I'll be bringing my guitar and some musical instruments."

Still a little wondering.

Poetry comes alive for kids when they hear it set to music. Particularly with an electric guitar. It means that their words -- words in general -- are relevant, real, now -- and THEY can do it, too.

Cool.

Critiques from Kids

You have no idea how handy it is having an 8-year-old on hand.

I played a new song for my daughter -- a song called "Dinosaur on the Dance Floor" -- an involved kind of opus that has real potential, but wasn't working for me, and I couldn't figure out why.

So I asked her to give it a listen.

"I keep waiting for it to get faster, like I want to dance to it," she said.

So, I said to her, it's like you have almost an anxious feeling in your belly? Like: when is it going to start to pick up?

That's it exactly! she said.

AAAHH! Voila!

Handy little loving little critic.

Love love love her.

Gig at the YMCA

Children enjoying themselves is probably one of the finest things to participate in there can be.

When I tell people what I do: give poetry and writing workshops for children, sometimes they give me that weird smile -- that "really, but you're so talented, why don't you work for grownups?" smile.

It gets worse when I tell them I give concerts for children. Especially when they hear my music.

"But you're so GOOD," they say. "This is like, real music. Why don't you play for adults?"

Well, I try to explain, we all have our niche. Mine's kids. Sometimes that satisfies them. Sometimes they simply walk away, shaking their heads, thinking I'm somehow "wasting" my talent.

Hardly.

Ever hear a five-year-old call for an encore? There's absolutely nothing like it. I don't mean it from the perspective of an ego-thing, either. I just mean watching the pure delight in their faces.

The venues I play and work in are small enough where I can see their faces still, where I can roll out my jet-black Ibanez electric guitar, and see their eyes widen: a rock star!

To be able to bring that kind of uncynical, unmitigated pleasure to ANYONE -- kid or adult -- well, I just feel like the luckiest person in the world.

-elizabeth

New Poem

For a workshop and concert I did last week, I wrote a new poem. Here goes:

All the butterflies I see
Elude my net evasively
No matter where I try to be
They zig and zag away from me.

I swing and fling – a wide wind blow –
Then fancy flutter-colors go.
To pause a pair of purple wings!
To cage some multi-colored things!

Those butterflies! Away they get
Despite the clever traps I set.
All the butterflies I see
Apparently
They need to be
Alive and free.
Too bad for me.

© 2007 Elizabeth Bushey

:: :: :: ^ ^ :: :: ::

What tremendous fun I had at Chorley Elementary School in Middletown, N.Y. last week.

What I love best is the way we start: I have a felt board with a large tic-tac-toe board. I seek a few volunteers to play with me, since even five-year-olds know the game. We begin: they're handed their choice of felt Xs or Os (a surprising number of them choose the bright green Os) and they go first, placing their marker industriously, obediently where it goes.

I place mine somewhere completely wrong. On the line, on top of their X, draped on the side of the board -- somewhere shockingly, totally wrong.

Universally, since I am the grownup, and not least of all, the new grownup there presumably to teach them something, the volunteer continues without questioning me, although the crowd typically murmurs.

Again, I screw it up. There is laughter as we continue, and I progress with more and more blatantly wrong moves, often, if the volunteer seems open enough to it, placing my O or X on their head.

I'll then turn to the crowd, quizzically: "What's the problem? Why CAN'T I play this way? But this is how I want to play. You mean there are RULES?"

Children, of COURSE, delight in explaining the rules to me, a grownup -- who mysteriously has somehow made it to adulthood without picking up this game along the way.

Eventually leading them to discover for themselves that even a game as simple and straightforward as tic-tac-toe is really no fun without playing by the rules. Funny to watch them getting broken, for sure -- but not really fun to play.

So too, I show them, poetry has "rules" -- called, instead, "poetic techniques" -- that make it fun to write. No rules, really, for what you write about: you can talk about anything from your shoes to your nose, to the firefly that glows -- even boogers could be a poem, if you're clever or funny -- but rhyme, meter, alliteration -- all of these are tools to use, like a carpenter and a hammer.

I even have a poem called Tic-Tac-Toe:

Tic Tac Toe
A game we know
At least, a game
We think we know.
Familiar with
The lines we make,
The X, the O,
The give and take –
In fact, we know it
Out and in –
So why is it
We never win?
Why is it so
On every try
No matter what
We always tie?

© 2005 Elizabeth Bushey