moonbridgebooks

At the St. Louis Big Read celebration earlier this month, I discovered a unique book that encourages parents and children to write together. Family Writes: Parenting with Pens, Pencils, and PCs is written by clinical psychologist Joel Epstein and his educator mother Peggy Epstein. They provide 77 activities that parents and children can do together that will encourage writing for fun as well as help discover the value of writing. These activities for elementary and middle-school age children include writing shopping lists and menus, creating sports journals and family newsletters, journaling together, special activities for some of the holidays, plus a section on the lost art of thank-you notes.

The familywrites.com website states “Through writing, everyone in the family learns how to express their feelings to one another, resolve conflicts more easily, grow closer as a family, and get to know each other better. Better yet, families share time together and create lasting memories.”

If you think about it, writing is one of those life skills that is incredibly valuable, from writing letters and thank-you notes to resumes and presentations. The Orlando Sentinel recently stated that according to a recent nationwide survey of human-resource officers, nearly three-quarters said that recently hired high-school grads were deficient in basic writing skills. Like it or not, your writing skills tell others about you as a person – suggesting how educated you might be, how organized you are in your thinking, your attention to detail, how thoughtful you are. What better way to grow your children than to prepare them in a fun way to be better equipped to communicate and also to learn about themselves, their parents, and life. You may even learn a thing or two!

Linda Austin
“Cherry Blossoms in Twilight”
http://www.moonbridgebooks.com

To make your memoirs (or any writing) more interesting to readers, try to use descriptive words. Avoid the bland and meaningless words like “nice,” or “good” or “bad.” Think about using similes or metaphors. “I loved my blanket because I could feel my mother’s love in the quilting.” Explain things, add in descriptions that will help your reader picture a scene or feel an emotion, really understand what you are talking about.

Remember that you have five senses. You not only visualize (see) stories as they are being described, but you can also mentally smell, taste, touch, and hear them if you make use of all of your senses in writing your stories. The details you record will make your stories even more interesting, so take your time and rewrite and edit as you go from one section to another. You want readers to feel as though they are living the stories with you.

I attended a senior’s group writer’s club this month and was excited about where these ladies and one gentleman had been in their lives and of the experiences they’ve had. I mentioned these simple writing tips to encourage them to write their stories more fully, with dimension, so that readers could feel as though they were standing in their shoes. These same tips work well with children as they write stories and poems in class. The five senses go a long way.

Linda Austin
“Cherry Blossoms in Twilight”
http://www.moonbridgebooks.com