Hey writers, it’s harvest time

Posted on March 5, 2016 by Julie Stroebel Barichello

I live in farm country. Each spring is planting season here in central Illinois, and when fall rolls around it’s harvest season.

But for writers, it’s planting and harvest season year-round.

I know what you’re thinking. What are authors farming? Words? Stories?

In this case, the answer is inspiration. Everything in our environment can plant ideas, and if we keep our eyes open, we can harvest inspiration daily.

And what better way to harvest ideas than by writing them down in a journal?

I know, I know. Every writer already knows the value of keeping a journal. But I feel like I need to remind writers why they’re useful. Mostly because I’ve been reminded lately why they’re useful.

I’ve kept an idea journal for years, but I’ve had the bad habit of leaving it at home and not having it with me at all times. Lately, though, I’ve made a concentrated effort to keep it within reach 24 hours a day. And I’ve been surprised at how often I find myself reaching for it.

Examples of notes the past week or so include:

  • While watching an episode of “Chopped” on Netflix (cooking competitions on Netflix are my guilty pleasure), all of the contestants were food truck drivers. In the brief interviews conducted with the four contestants, I got a snapshot of life on a food truck, and I took notes based on those interviews in case I want to write a character who’s a food truck driver in the future.
  • At work, I was editing an obituary when I came across the name Clell. I jot down any names I come across and would like to use for future characters.
  • The surname Pilkerson popped into my head one afternoon (it’s a real surname, although I haven’t found the source where I originally encountered it). I jotted it down with a note to give a character the last name Pilkerson and nickname them “Pilkey” throughout the story.
  • The beginning of a story (but not the middle or end) occurred to me while driving home one afternoon, so I jotted down two pages’ worth. (I wrote it down once I got in the driveway, not while I was still driving — I can barely turn on the radio without drifting toward the shoulder, so I definitely couldn’t manage penning two pages with one hand on the wheel).

The journal pages get filled with tidbits here and there. It may not be the same as the bushels or truckloads of grain farmers haul away from an afternoon’s work in their fields, but those daily tidbits of idea and inspiration on the page can turn into full stories or books later.

To look at it another way: Some of the grain that gets harvested by farmers has to be stored to be planted next year. All of those little ideas we harvest eventually get planted and grow into something far bigger and better.

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Sorry for my absence; here’s a joke to make up for it

Posted on February 25, 2016 by Julie Stroebel Barichello

As much as I promote unplugging from technology, I might have unplugged a bit too much. I realized this morning it’s been almost a month since I’ve updated this blog.

Even though I encourage unplugging for imagination and play, I realize the importance to stay plugged in for education, work, and even social networking (to an extent). But I promise I’ve been unplugged for a good reason — I’ve been doing a lot of reading (especially Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett … if you haven’t read any Discworld books, I recommend them, by the way).

20160225_134421

Two journals from my sister, and Webster for good measure.

On the down side, I haven’t done much writing in my weeks away from the keyboard. And I have no excuse for that, since my sister gave me two great journals for my birthday. Technology isn’t necessary to write, after all. (Although it makes the editing and revising process much, much easier.)

To make amends for my absence, here’s a joke:

Where should a novelist never live?

Do you know the answer? It’s good.

In a one-story house.

And since I currently live in a one-story home, I’m going to blame my lack of recent writing on the house.

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Plug in now and then, researchers say, but not for too long

Posted on January 28, 2016 by Julie Stroebel Barichello

I am an advocate of the unplugged imagination.

What do I mean when I say that? The unplugged imagination is daydreaming and play that doesn’t depend on toys or games requiring cords or charged batteries. Promoting unplugged play encourages role playing, make believe, imagining objects to be more than they are (like turning a blanket into a magic carpet or a tree into a giant), and outdoor activity.

But even a lifestyle with dominantly unplugged play still has room for screen time. In fact, research in the United Kingdom indicates an hour a day of computer or video games can be beneficial.

In a Future Learn blog posted by The Open University,  the results of the study were shared:

Dr Andrew Przybylski and colleagues at the Oxford Internet Institute surveyed nearly 5,000 British boys and girls aged 10-15 years.

They found that, compared to children who played no computer games at all, those who played for around an hour a day:

  • had higher levels of sociability;
  • were more satisfied with their lives;
  • had fewer friendship and emotional problems;
  • and were less hyperactive.

Overall, research findings in this area show that moderate time spent playing computer games is a positive experience for most young people socially and academically.

Those definitely aren’t the doom and gloom reports we frequently see about computer and video games.

However, the key here is moderation.

The video Digital Devices and Children on Parents.com paints a picture about how pervasive screen time is in children’s lives. In the video, Jim Steyer, co-founder of Next Generation, says the average child spends seven and three-quarters hours with screen time daily — more time than they spend at school.

“We talk a lot about limiting screen time, and that’s the number one thing that you, as a parent, can do,” Steyer says.

Growing up, my mom gave my sisters and I an hour of TV time per day. (Exceptions were made for holidays, occasionally when friends visited, and on Friday nights — those were the days of TGIF, and the entire family would gather at 7 p.m. to watch the TGIF block of programs.)

TV time encompassed any activity in front of the screen, whether it was a TV show, video game, or movie. As we got older, my sister and I often would pool our TV time to play two hours of Nintendo together. The same compromise had to be used for movies.

Once the allotted TV time was used, Mom would move us along to a different activity.

Like my mom, parents have to be the rule-setters about allotting screen time. But some experts say parents also have to be example-setters.

In the Digital Devices and Children video, psychologist Michael Thompson says:

“It’s very, very hard to limit our children’s involvement with the digital world. It is partly hard because we are addicted ourselves. Kids see us doing this. They believe that this is where they lives are going to be lived and they are drawn to it. Parents are having the hardest time teaching their kids to turn it off, to go to bed, to not take cell phone calls at dinner. And that’s because Dad maybe taking cell phone calls at dinner or Mom might be taking cell phones at dinner.”

This is an area where my husband and I will have to improve once we have children. I spend a lot of time reading (and writing) online, plus writing books, taking calls, and updating social media. And that’s just for my author platform. It doesn’t even account for the time spent plugging into our smart phones to stay plugged into our newsroom.

Screen time has its benefits, though. Whether it’s social time playing a game with friends, an educational TV show or app, or even reading on an e-reader, there are positive sides to living in a digital age.

So go ahead and encourage the kiddos to watch TV or play on the computer or gaming system for a while each day.

But after an hour or so has passed, it might be wise to pull the plug.

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Today is Multicultural Children’s Book Day

Posted on January 27, 2016 by Julie Stroebel Barichello

It’s Multicultural Children’s Book Day!

One of my favorite multicultural books growing up was “Julie of the Wolves” by Jean Craighead George. (It’s not like the titular character’s name is what originally attracted me to the book … or like I spent the weeks after reading it insisting that other kids on the playground call me Miyax instead of Julie …)

julie of the wolvesThe book tells the story of Julie Edwards Miyax Kapugen, an Inupiaq girl native to Alaska whose culture is facing changes forced upon it by an outside culture. The tale recounts the struggle of balancing the modern Alaskan lifestyle with being true to Eskimo tradition.

There are a few reasons I loved this book. First, most of the wilderness adventures I read (like “Hatchet” or “My Side of the Mountain”) featured boys surviving in the wild. In “Julie of the Wolves,” I got to read about a girl adventuring in the wild. Also, the Alaskan landscape and what it takes to survive there were all new to me. I was fascinated by the native Alaskan culture and Julie’s (or Miyax’s) life.

This book also was my first introduction to native Alaskan culture. As a young reader, I thought of Eskimos as people wearing parkas. The concept of Eskimos being a people with their own culture and traditions was a learning experience.

Did you have a favorite multicultural book in childhood?

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The ultimate children’s story prompt generator

Posted on January 23, 2016 by Julie Stroebel Barichello

Last night I passed the Wal-Mart clearance section on my way to the auto section. My goal was to enter the store, find fuel injector cleaner, and leave with spending less than $5.

It was hard to pass up the clearance section, though. I talked myself out of a new $50 pillow-and-comforter set and $36 in matching curtains. I exercised my willpower and didn’t browse through the marked-down office supplies. And I almost made it to the automotive section empty-handed …

Until I spotted this.

FunnyPhrases

Now, this Leap Frog Tag Funny Phrases game (which was on sale for $9) doesn’t do much for my car’s ailing engine. But it solves another problem.

Recently I’ve begun experimenting with the children’s short story form, with the goal of eventually writing a picture book. Unfortunately, my practice has been stalled by lack of ideas. I have a handful of ideas for picture books I’d eventually like to write, but I’ve been saving those until I’ve had more experimentation with the form.

This delightful toy, though, is a kid lit writer’s dream of story prompt generators. Each tile has two words (one on front, one on back) to offer more than 250,000 sentence combinations.

That’s a whole lotta prompts.

All a writer has to do is select a tile, either deliberately or randomly, and place it in the corresponding color spot at the bottom of the board: orange for an article or pronoun, red for an adjective, brown for a noun (subject), yellow for a verb, and blue for a prepositional phrase.

My first creation of the night was “The crabby pirate slurps at top speed!”

The story possibilities started pouring into my mind. Why is he slurping at top speed? Does he have to eat quickly so no one steals his rations? After all, he’s among thieves and scoundrels, so it stands to reason someone would snatch his bread and watered down stew. Or maybe he has to eat hastily to get back on deck because a sea monster approaches.

Come to mention it, why is he crabby? Something must have made him grouchy. Unless, of course, he’s crabby in the sense of being crab-like. Perhaps the character is a crab who lives on a pirate ship.

Although if you’ve ever seen a crab eat, they tend to nibble more than slurp …

Anyhow, you get the point. The Funny Phrases board offers the spark to ignite a story. The majority of the stories inspired by the board and written from the prompts will never see the light of publication, but the practice and simple joy of writing make the exercise worthwhile.

The toy is meant to be used with a Leap Frog Tag Reader to help children up to to 7 learn word recognition, sentence building, and sentence structure. But I couldn’t resist adding it to my collection of writing tools. Once the husband and I have kids, the mini Barichellos of the household can commandeer the Leap Frog Tag reading system. It will be one among the many child literacy-building tools in the house.

But for the near future, I’ll be the one playing with this gem.

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