Living Life Twice -MOST POPULAR Posts of 2025

 


Here are five of the most popular Living Life Twice posts for 2025. Thank you for your continuing support and interest in teaching writing and all it involves. Here's a chance to reconnect with writing ideas. Ideas you can easily carry forward into 2026. 

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In this post I wanted to challenge the long held practice that the first logical action after identifying a writing project is to always immediately start drafting. For generations schools have reinforced this approach. It does the young writer a disservice. It does teachers and learning outcomes a disservice too.



A recent question from a teacher prompted me to think more deeply about publishing student writing. She was searching for professional reading that dealt more deeply with the publishing phase of the writing process. My own search revealed that many of the available texts deal more comprehensively with the lead up (revision, editing) to publishing than publishing itself. It doesn’t seem to get the attention that it deserves. Publishing and all it entails is only lightly explored in many professional texts. 


A student once asked me an interesting question  during a share time ‘What was writing like, when you were in Grade 5?’ The subsequent discussion lead to the writing of a poem relating my writing experiences as a young student.



I understand rehearsal is critical to my writing. I willlingly embrace it. I know it assists me to clarify my ideas; find my direction.  Playing with words and ideas in the head is such a critical part of the writing process. Think of it like a tumble drier with thoughts and ideas rolling around and around until they are ready to be taken out. Warm and fresh. This posts puts the case for quarrantining time for inexperienced writers to engage in rehearsal for writing. 



Sentences can be mighty impactful when used effectively. Assisting student writers to incorporate a variety of sentence structures into their writing pieces instantly improves the quality of the writing they produce. This post outlines some ways to introduce sentence variety and vitality to the writing classroom.






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Slice of Life Story- Raking Leaves, Rehearsing Words

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This morning as I raked and removed another carpet of discarded leaves thrashed, bashed and scattered by last night’s torrent of rain, a poem began to form in my head. The writing mind seldom rests... It further reminded me that so many of our writing ideas come calling when we are not actually engaged in writing. So there I was raking and rehearsing... Wintery Days Shadows And gathering clouds Raindrop on footpaths Spits and dollops Splashing Forming puddles and pools A season of heavy coats Scarves and gloves Sheltering Helter- Skeltering Miserable breezes Unforgiving winds Sniffles and sneezes Ah choo! Alan j Wright
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Slice Of Life Story-The Trials Of A Left Handed Writer

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Amazingly I learnt to write using my left hand. An achievement against the prevailing beliefs of the day. My very first teacher saw it as her mission in life to ‘fix’ the poor, wretched little boy suffering from what she clearly diagnosed as left handed disease. She must have thought, 'This child must be re formatted! If he remains left handed he will be forever condemned to writing in a scrawl that no one will be able to read. Ugly hand, ugly hand.' ...They tried to say it couldn't be done, it mustn't be done. They took the pencil out of my left hand and placed it in my right hand. It felt unnatural. It felt weird. It was not right. More to the point it was not left. I was not about to conform. At least they didn't try tying my hand behind my back. Watch me I said. I may be an oddball, left handed scribbler but I am a determined oddball. I mean how boring would the world be if everyone wrote with their right hand? So I dug my toes in –and my hands to...
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Exploring Themes in Poetry With Emerging Writers

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There is so much more to poetry than haiku and acrostics. Yet, so many young poets never get to experience the rich breadth of poetry beyond these highly structured forms. Why? Primarily, it’s about their teachers comfort levels with poetry. We often teach to what we know, meaning that being adventurous and taking young poets into new realms is not part of the poetic landscape for many. This sells young poets and poetry itself short. Last week I had the pleasure to again work with a group of young poets from Derrimut Primary School grade 5/6 in Melbourne’s west. We have been exploring patterns and repetition in poetry. We have explored personification as a literary device to develop the writing of poetry. We delved into the idea of writing through a mask to provide inanimate and animate entities with a voice. They told stories in words from their own perspective. On this occasion we again went to the edges and began to explore poetry through themes. We discussed a range ...
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Writing Opposite Poems

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 O pp o s ite  P oem s In his book, ' How To Write Poetry,'  Paul Janeczko presents the idea of opposite poems. Paul suggests they could also be referred to as antonym poems. This is wordplay and it's fun to try. Here are some examples Paul provides to help us see very clearly how these short little poems work. I think the opposite of chair Is sitting down with nothing there What is the opposite of kind? A goat that butts you from behind Paul Janeczko You will  notice the poems are written in rhyming couplets. They can be extended so long as you remember to write in couplets. Paul shows us how this is done. What is the opposite of new? Stale gum that's hard to chew A hot-dog roll as hard as rock Or a soiled and smelly forgotten sock You might notice that some of Paul's opposite Poems begin with a question. The remainder of the poem answer the question posed. Opposite poems are a challenge, but it is a challenge worth trying. Not eve...
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Learning How to 'Zoom In' When Writing

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It is important for young writers to understand that not all parts of a story are equal. There are parts through which a writer moves quickly, and important parts where the writer slows down and lingers a while. This is where the writer might intensify the action or reveal the character’s reactions in greater detail. Young writers need to know that this is a deliberate strategy on the part of the author. The author consciously zooms in. The writer uses a magnifying glass to view a part of the story more closely; to focus on a moment and to slow down time. When an important part of the story is enlarged upon, it   is a signal to the reader, that this part of the story is important. The strategy of ‘zooming in’ goes by many names: ‘exploding a moment’ ‘magnifying a moment’, ‘hotspot’ ‘snapshot’, ‘adding detail’ or ‘slowing the action.’  What ever the name, the idea is the same. The author writes in a way that expands a significant part of the story with the intentio...
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