Something Beautiful
Georgia peaches
sky writing at Walt Disney World
Leo
This week in my writer's notebook, I wrote an entry titled Something Beautiful. I'm lucky to be surrounded by so many beautiful things and to have so many amazing memories that choosing just one beautiful thing is so hard! To find inspiration, I scrolled through the camera roll on my phone and picked out a few of my favorite pictures. I posted them above to save as inspiration for future writing!
When I sat down to write my entry, I knew I wanted to write about something uncomplicated, but choosing the topic was hard for me. I wanted to write about a simple joy but something that wasn't too thought-provoking or deep, something I might see in the writer's notebooks of one of my beginning writers at school one day. I chose to focus on something simple and plain, and something that I feel is under-appreciated but very important in my life: Annie's white cheddar macaroni and cheese.
While this topic might sound silly, I wanted to write about it because of a more serious goal I have for myself this year. I want to appreciate the most simple things. Taking time to slow down and creating thoughtful entries in my writer's notebook has been a great place to start. I find myself having fun in my notebook and viewing it as a creative space for myself rather than another task to check off the to-do list. This is exactly the mentality I want to foster in my classroom during writer's workshop. I want for my students to feel excited to write and to see value in their writing because it can be so much fun!
After writing this entry in my notebook, I started to think about the ways that some of my favorite authors incorporate their own something beautiful into their writing. I found this to be especially true in Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming when she writes about the ribbons tied in the girls' hair for Sunday school or the way her grandmother smells of Pine-Sol and cotton. On page 121, Jacqueline Woodson describes how the girls hope to one day hear their grandmother tell them they will never have to wear the ribbons in their hair again because it means they will finally have grown up. I think this passage is so beautiful because only a few pages later, she describes how much she clings to her childhood memories once she has grown up into an adult.
Whether it is an entire dedicated page or just a simple line, I've noticed that authors have a knack for finding something beautiful and expanding on it in their work.
Brown Girl Dreaming, p. 121