Me again!

It’s Monique Polak, back for Day Two of my Orca guest blog. It’s just after twelve noon in Montreal and I’m feeling a little like the pumpkin in Cinderella who’s about to be turned into a carriage! That’s because at one o’clock, I change from being a writer into a college teacher. On good days, having two jobs can feel like a bonus. Teaching and writing can feed off each other. For example, I get story ideas from my students. Last week, on the first day of class, one of my students must’ve been in the mood to escape (I know it’s hard to believe, since she has ME for a teacher!!!) and I heard her zip up her pencil case with great gusto. And I thought to myself, hey, I can use that in a book! It would be a way to show that my character is not that into school, without my having to say so. You may have heard about the writing tip that says, “Show; don’t tell.” I think it’s a great tip. Readers don’t like to be told what to think. They like to figure things out (just like the rest of us).

So, writing-wise, I’ve been working away at the revision of my schoolbus story. I’ve made all the easy corrections, and now I’m working on the harder ones. Today, I made one of the boys on my bus offer to help out the bus driver, who just had a meltdown. I just re-read a bit of the previous sentence in this blog (”I made one of the boys”) and I thought I’d say something to you about how fun it is to “make” your characters do things. Here’s a confession: I think I like this part of writing because I’m not that good at getting people in the real world to do things for me (for example, getting my husband to take out the garbage — I usually end up doing it first). Come to think of it, that may also explain, in part, why I enjoy teaching so much. I can make my students DO things, such as assignments, and this week, I’m forcing them to attend the Montreal Film Festival. Some of them asked me, “What does it have to do with our class?” I smiled and said, “Nothing. But you have to write about your experience and I’m going to mark it!!” See what I mean?

Well then, your pumpkin correspondent is off to do a little more work on the bus book before she turns into a carriage. (Gee, there were a lot of vehicles in that one sentence.)

Hey, I got a response from writer Anita Daher on yesterday’s blog. Very exciting! Anita liked the Hemingway quote. And by the way, Anita has a very cool blog that you can access from the Orca site, under Blogroll. Check it out. Have a good day. Remember: show; don’t tell!