{"id":4349,"date":"2015-09-26T00:57:06","date_gmt":"2015-09-26T00:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/kids\/?p=4349"},"modified":"2016-12-06T19:45:49","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T03:45:49","slug":"kids-writing-workshop-overcoming-internal-censorship-and-silencing-your-inner-critic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/kids\/2015\/kids-writing-workshop-overcoming-internal-censorship-and-silencing-your-inner-critic\/","title":{"rendered":"Kids’ Writing Workshop: Overcoming internal censorship and silencing your inner critic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Next\u00a0week happens to be Banned Books Week<\/a>, held nationwide in libraries and bookstores every year on the last week of September to remind people that restricting and censoring\u00a0books that you might find “offensive” actually harms people because it restricts people’s\u00a0freedom\u00a0to read whatever they want. \u00a0All that follows is a less-informed, less-educated society, and who really wants that?<\/p>\n

In light of this, I focused\u00a0our monthly Kids’ Writing Workshop meeting\u00a0on the critic that lurks deep inside all of us–the one every great writer has had to overcome, even before they had to overcome other people’s\u00a0criticism and\u00a0hostility. \u00a0In order to write that great book that expresses your deepest truths to the world, you first have to recognize the nagging, nasty little voice in your head that tells you that you can’t–or worse, shouldn’t<\/em>–write it! \u00a0We wrote down what our inner critics say about us, and things that perhaps other people in our lives have said that make us doubt ourselves as writers. \u00a0And then we put those mean, harmful comments into bubbles and made a picture of a cruel movie\u00a0villain saying it. \u00a0Then we silenced those villains with big fat red “NO” signs. \u00a0This is very cathartic and children are encouraged to hang this up in their room or by their desk or wherever they write when they’re at home, to remind themselves not to listen to that horrible little voice!<\/p>\n

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We discussed other ways to silence our inner critic, such as remembering compliments and praise, and saying positive affirmations. \u00a0We each wrote down a few compliments that we have received in the past. \u00a0And I reproduced a few pages from a book tackling this subject very well:<\/p>\n

\"silence<\/a><\/p>\n

We also talked about how critics aren’t always right–in fact, they are often wrong and VERY stupid! \u00a0Here is a handout (with content I got from the ALA Banned Books website at\u00a0http:\/\/www.ala.org\/bbooks\/bannedbooksweek\/ideasandresources\/display<\/a>) \u00a0showing some of the stupidest reasons people have ever given for banning a book:<\/p>\n

\"cruel<\/a><\/p>\n

Then we did a written exercise, writing five “secrets”–three lies and two truths about ourselves. \u00a0Sometimes it helps to take something real from your life and mix it in with a lot of fictional stuff. \u00a0It makes the opening-up process easier. \u00a0I didn’t ask the kids to reveal which of their five secrets was true. \u00a0I just want the\u00a0kids\u00a0to get used to writing about their lives in a way that honors their own experience.<\/p>\n

I also asked them to “flesh out” one of their lies so that it is more believable. \u00a0For example, if their lie is climbing Mt. Kilamanjaro, talk about what the weather was like, if anything happened to you there, what wild animals you saw, what the air smelled like, etc. \u00a0Always good practice for doing more showing!<\/p>\n

\"five<\/a><\/p>\n

I hope today’s class inspired the kids to write more, and write FEARLESSLY.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Next\u00a0week happens to be Banned Books Week, held nationwide in libraries and bookstores every year on the last week of September to remind people that restricting and censoring\u00a0books that you might find “offensive” actually harms people because it restricts people’s\u00a0freedom\u00a0to read whatever they want. \u00a0All that follows is a less-informed, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,190],"tags":[169,228],"class_list":["post-4349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-writing","tag-banned-books","tag-school-age"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p71KT0-189","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/kids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/kids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/kids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/kids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/kids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4349"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/kids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4371,"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/kids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4349\/revisions\/4371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/kids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/kids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/kids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}