Commonplacing is a practice of recording quotes and passages to synthesise learning and create a personalised reference resource for personal encouragement and academic projects. It's a practice I've cultivated for myself and shared with my children and students as part of their own educational journeys. Below is a free quick guide to the art of commonplacing. In this guide I share my own experiences with commonplacing and tips for how I've introduced this to my students as part of our English and History lessons. Download it. Try out some of the ideas. Share your experiences by contacting me or leaving your comments below. Share photo's of your own commonplacing books and add #artofcommonplaceguide so we can find you.
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Serenity blue. Muddy deep reflects sky light, heart mirrored water. Welcome to my own personal booklist of good reads from my bookshelves. Here you'll find an ongoing list of books I have read about teaching and writing, and great stories I've loved reading - for myself and with my students. I hope you find inspiration, encouragement and great books for your own learning, reading, and writing life. And perhaps some friendly bookworms as well! Have a suggestion you'd think I'd like to read - please share it in the comments. My Bookshelf in 2019
So, here I sit on a rainy Saturday morning, many months after my first round of manuscript submissions and manuscript rejections, which come in many forms, including silence. Silence. Yup. I got a big fat zero response. I can now tick this off as official submission experience #1. And what have I done about it? Nothing. Well, nothing yet. The fact is life has been overwhelmingly busy, with family and teaching consuming my waking, and sleeping, hours. The truth is that although I have not had the time or head space to follow up on my manuscript submissions, or to even write for that matter, these months are not lost. An important writing tip for wanna-be writers is to live life. Life is our classroom and life provides compost for our story-seeds to sprout. The fact is I need space in my life in order to hear my own thoughts and add those thoughts to paper, and I just haven't had that space recently. The truth is that I need to find the physical space, time space, emotional space, and mental space I need to write. It's my responsibility to take myself seriously as a writer and carve out that space, on purpose. Author Jerry B. Jenkins has a helpful article outlining a series of practical steps on How to Write a Book. The first two steps, establishing my space and assembling my tools are what I have been working on recently. A copy of this article is now laid out on my desk, in full view, to remind me to keep working on my writing and to continue guarding my writing space as a new term of teaching begins. So, here I sit on a rainy Saturday morning, ready to dust off my writing journal and my pen. To begin, again, practicing the art writing in my day. Every day. To mull over the life lessons of the past few months. To take hold of courage again and continue working on my current writing projects.
And so I begin... And so I procrastinate... ...#8 on the list |
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