Living Life Twice

  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.  Just click the blue links to discover more... Developing Personal Writing Projects 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. Creating Opportunities For Kids To Publish 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 avai...

Author, Annie Dillard says she has to maintain in her head a running description of the present. She needs to call to attention what passes before her. I fully understand how important this rehearsal is to a writer. I am continually in the grip of word storms. They bounce around in my head. Phrases and ideas form and reform continually as I go about this critical pre-writing phase.  Much of this word play remains invisible until it is ready to reveal itself upon the page. Eventually these words, tumbled and reshaped, will spill onto the page and from there further refinement will be undertaken. Non writers will not appreciate this. They will not understand.    Every day the words I hear, the words I see and the words I absorb, sing in my head. Yesterday morning while enjoying breakfast a song delivered the following words. They stayed in my head all day. ‘Let me be close to you So, I can understand Let me be close to you Under your ceiling fan...’ Later in the morning I w...

In my many conversations with teachers, the subject often turns to writing beyond the classroom. I urge both the teachers and their young writers to write beyond those four walls. -Write around the school, and weather permitting occasionally write outside of the classroom. Write at home.  Make a conscious effort to write somewhere else, somewhere different and see what it brings to your writing experience. Taking the time to write in a different location allows a broader range of sensory elements to influence your mind, your writing.  Consider your notebook as a travelling companion. Tuck it under your arm and write in wild, unfamiliar spaces. Actively challenge the notion that writing is something we just do at school.  Make it a form of portable magic, just like reading. Let's re-imagine writing as a free-range activity! Some writers need a special place to write. They can only write in that space, that particular location -by the sea, in the mountains, in a cottag...

When young writers first begin to gather ideas for writing, their ‘gatherings’ are quite often not all that extensive. That’s not so surprising, given their relative inexperience as writers. It provides a clear signal that some proactive input is required. The teacher responsible for guiding the writing development of these young writers assumes a critical role in shining a light on further possibilities. The goal being to broaden the view of where the developing writer might venture to unearth potential writing ideas. The terrain is vast, ideas plentiful… So where to begin? Here are some ways the writing landscape can be opened up and explored more thoroughly to reveal a host of potential ideas. Writers are thinkers. To stimulate thinking and expanding the vision is the driving factor here. These suggestions are presented in no particular order. They are presented to support the growth of possibilities for young writers. Ideas are a writer’s oxygen. These suggestions are l...

  This week, I changed over my writer's notebook. Once more with feeling fellow writers... Mixed emotions swirl around me when commencing a new writer's notebook. The prospect of filling the fresh pages brings with it anticipation, presenting as a prospect to be enthusiastically embraced. Honestly, after almost forty years of notebooks, my delight remains undiminished. To see newly generated words spread out across previously unmarked pages, delivers a buzz. The very act of capturing the raw stuff of my writing life, delivers order and a sense of accomplishment to my active mind. The harvesting of words and ideas adds to the energy for writing in this new place. I am akin to the farmer ploughing a new field.  I make a conscious decision to choose a notebook with different dimensions and qualities to its predecessor. Some writers select the same notebook each time a replacement is required. I embrace the notion of change along with the unique shape and form of the potentia...

Curiosity Writers are well served by the presence of natural curiosity. Curiosity about a wide range of things. The great thing about curiosity is that once it takes hold, there is no cure. A curious writer is never in danger of becoming bored.  At least that's how it has always been for this curious learner... Curiosity frequently leads me to writing. It is a natural form of learning and helps us to become more attuned to observation. By becoming a collector of information-whether trivial or significant, I can apply the findings to my writing projects. Writing provides a powerful outlet for the learning and observation we have acquired. Writers learn to observe closely the world around them. They read books, watch news and current affairs programs, they do a lot of people watching and examine things within their daily lives. They also ask themselves lots of questions about the things they've seen. Furthermore, they jot down their observations and then use their notes to help t...

  Writers  Collect Writing They Admire   Writers need to read extensively. They often read a wide variety of things and are frequently drawn to words and ideas written in particular genres, styles and forms according to their individual interests and writing projects. Writers frequently collect different kinds of writing. Why? They harvest these extracts, quotes, words and works for amusement, inspiration curiosity and fascination. Writers often closely study such pieces in order to develop their own writing; their own technique and ideas. The point I’m making here is that it is quite legitimate to collect such words in your own writer’s notebook. By doing this, you allow yourself and your words to be guided and inspired by writers you admire. Hopefully the words nestling beside your words encourage you to strive to emulate your writing mentors. For many young writers, the thought of collecting examples from writers they admire might never have crossed their minds. ...

The Gathering of Your Own Words I have been reflecting on my advice to teachers regarding the necessity to create time for writing. A question that has frequently arisen is -How does a teacher go about finding time in a busy life to become a teacher who writes? How do you do this?  I always do my best to answer the question. Essentially this is what I say when prompted: Every time I pick up a pen to write, the rest of my world defaults to standby. Every thing else comes to a halt. Only the writing matters. Mel Levine in his book, The Myth of Laziness describes writing as ‘exquisite synchronization.’  At this point my mind is pried open and thoughts begin to flow. I am connected only to the page. The challenge of the blank page takes over and must be attended to, immediately. The first words to spill onto the pages of a notebook are often raw and untamed. It doesn’t all glitter.  As writers, we just want to trap those thoughts and ideas before they evade us. To do this we ...

I do not keep a writer’s notebook. It keeps me. It keeps me writing. It keeps me thinking. It keeps me closely observing my world. As Ernest Hemingway declared, ’I belong to this notebook and this pencil.’  I write most days and on the days when I don’t write, I am usually considering what I want to write next. I cannot stay away. My notebook beckons to me continually. None of my notebooks would be considered a journal or a diary. They are quite clearly writer’s notebooks. Meant for the collective random gatherings of my life and the sometimes scatty world inside my head. Something pops up and I feel the strong compulsion to write it down just in case I might need it later. Fleeting thoughts sitting comfortably alongside more considered comments.  Creative bursts of reflection and scattered recollections are scattered across the hungry pages of my notebook. I do not use sections in my notebooks. Nor do I number pages or keep an index. I tried these things once and they only br...