Snowy Writing Day

When I was a junior in high school, I had two English teachers that drove me batty. Even though I missed a lot of time that year and didn't necessarily see these teachers every day (different one for each semester), the angst of being in those classrooms is still with me. It was almost lucky that I had a home & hospital tutor during my fibromyalgia flare because she was able to help me prepare for the days I was there and to navigate the insanity. :)

When it came to class discussions, we had to earn "dots." You got a dot if you said something smart, unique, and actually added something to the conversation rather than just reiterating what someone else had said. (Our social studies teacher must have heard them mentioning this as well, but translated it into his own version, because he gave a "dot" just for raising your hand. He would ask a question, almost everyone would raise their hand, and he would use his pen to make dots all over the seating chart showing that we were participating. Then you just had to hope you didn't really get called on. Of course if you did, there was no penalty for not knowing the answer. Easy!)

So anyway, back to the "dots." Nobody liked the dots. Everyone worried about the dots. I didn't understand most of what we read that year, so I didn't often have something smart to say. The benefit of being a nerd is that while the Internet was in its infancy (1995/1996!) we could search for information about all these great classic books and then tweak the information to make it sound like it came out of our own brains. The teacher had already memorized the Cliff Notes and if you said something from there, you were wrong, not smart, and you lost a dot. Even if you hadn't read the CN for fear of that happening and just happened to say something that was in there, because, you know, the CN *did* make some sense and explain some things! It got to the point where I seriously bought a Cliff Notes guide to a book just to make sure I wasn't saying anything that was in there. She may have memorized the Cliff Notes, but she probably didn't even know about the Internet. We didn't steal completely or anything, we just used the websites we found to make sense of the confusing books and then made our own judgments and decisions.

ANYWAY.

Discussions were hard, but writing was even harder. Whenever we wrote an essay (in 5 paragraph thesis form but of course) the first thing we had to hand in was a sentence outline that passed the "because test."

What is the because test? I'm so very glad you asked.

I. This is the point I'm trying to make and I'm very sure it is correct....BECAUSE ....
     A. Of this reason. I'm very sure this reason is a good one ... BECAUSE
          1. Of this quote from the book. Which is a good quote BECAUSE...
               a. With my own explanation and analysis, but of course.
          2. And this quote too, which is a good quote BECAUSE
               b. Which of course I can explain and analyze deeply as well.
          3. And this quote because what good is it if I don't have 3 quotes? which is a good final quote BECAUSE
               c. Which I follow up with another spectacular (CN Free) analysis and description leading into a wonderful transition sentence into the next paragraph/reason.

So yeah. Then your rough draft was pretty much that outline without the letters, numbers, and periods. I never understood that.

Which brings me to my original point of writing this today, because it's the point that is on my mind.

The verb "to be."

On top of all that other stuff, we couldn't use any form of the verb "to be" in our papers. Is, was, were, etc. In reality, I could almost always find another way to write it, but there are so many forms of that word that I couldn't always find them and I always lost points for it.

I do not always follow this rule in my everyday writing because that would be impossible. I don't think about it when I'm typing on here, for example. (I should go back and count them. I'm sure it's embarrassingly high.) However, I am currently under contract to write a book. It's a short one, part of a set about different research skills for elementary kids. The opportunity arose from the editor of the book I had lesson plans in last year. So now as I sit here on my free day off from school and work on it, ALL I CAN THINK ABOUT is how they'll think I'm an awful writer if I have any form of that verb in my writing. I don't even necessarily think it's true, but it is ALL I CAN THINK ABOUT.

So I blogged about it instead. Now hopefully it's out of my brain and I can get back to being productive. :)