In this post, I’ll share materials and ideas from my opening writing activity session for the UW-Milwaukee Writing Project Conference on the Teaching of Writing, presented on February 25th 2017. 

Picture credit: UW-Milwaukee Writing Project

When I work with student writers, I place priority on viewing writing as a process rather than a product. Writing morphs through multiple phases that don’t always have a set order, and the joy of it all is watching the piece emerge like a sculpture emerges from the clay beneath a sculptor’s hands. But before I get too poetic for my own good, I’d like to start this post with a question–not about the sculpting process at all, but about the clay that we begin with.

Where does that clay come from? Writing needs a starting point. Where do we find ideas and inspiration in the first place?

This is the question that I chose to explore when I was invited to present an opening writing activity at the 2017 UW-Milwaukee Writing Project Conference on the Teaching of Writing. I was excited to attend this year’s conference and be surrounded once again by the collegial, buzzing atmosphere of Milwaukee area teachers all jazzed up about the teaching of writing: a consistent feeling at all UWM Writing Project events. I knew I needed to come up with something that would honor the plentiful energy and creativity my audience would bring to the table. While brainstorming one afternoon, I hit “play” on one of my go-to motivational tracks: “Nonstop”, from Lin Manuel Miranda’s Broadway hit musical Hamilton.

“How do you write like you’re running out of time? Write, day and night, like you’re running out of time? How do you write like you need it to survive–every second you’re alive, every second you’re alive?”

Those words from Hamilton cut to the very core of my instinct to create–whenever I feel the dangerous creep of malaise, I can tap into a surge of motivation when I think about how frantically, ridiculously prolific Alexander Hamilton was during his short life. As someone who never enjoyed the study of history via cold, hard facts, I find it almost laughable that I can be inspired by thinking about the first United States Secretary of the Treasury… But thanks to the literary and musical genius of Miranda, I’m able to hear a new voice that reinvigorates that stolid figure on the 10 dollar bill. That’s the power of writing; it’s not just in which stories we’re telling, but in the style we’re using to tell them. As I thought about all that, I realized that I had brain-wandered my way straight into the very idea that I wanted to talk (and write!) about.

The result is my presentation “Old Stories, New Voices,” which explores how historical source material can work as inspiration for new writing, using language as a transformative agent. Here, I provide some examples from Hamilton, as well as a fantastic book of vintage classified ads called Strange Red Cow by Sara Bader. Also, of course, there’s an opportunity to write! Enjoy this historically inspired mayhem, and feel free to adapt it to your own classroom writing adventures.

Session Handout linked here <Click for handout.

Accompanying presentation:

Many thanks to the UWMWP for inviting me back, and for the sensational work you do alongside Milwaukee-area educators!