www.janeharrington.com
  Before sitting down at my computer to write, I first do something VERY important -- gather munchies! The right snack food can make the difference between good writing and AWESOME writing, so I take it VERY seriously. (Well, why do you think there's an "ate" in "create"?) Check out a few examples of GOOD and BAD snacks in the pictures below...  This may seem like a good snack, but DON'T BE FOOLED. You'll spend all your time reading the fortunes, instead of writing.  Yes, of course, this is delicious, but it's a BAD snack for writing. Crumbs fall into the little spaces in the keyboard, which attract ants and other critters. You've heard of internet bugs, right? Well, the problem started with blueberry muffins. I'm sure of it.  Great food, but BAD for writing. Juice drips into the keyboard, causing keys to stick. Next thing you know, your name looks something like this: LUUUUUUCY  GOOD SNACK! They last a long time, your hands are free, AND they taste good! Lollipops are one of my favorite snacks for writing. (But not my VERY FAVORITE.  This is a good snack, too. Unless it has butter on it. (See next food for reason.)  BAD! Fries (and potato chips, too) make your fingers WAY too greasy, and they slip all over the place, making many typos that even the spell-checker can't figure out.  This is a good snack for writing (but still not my VERY FAVORITE). The intense chewing helps your brain to work better (according to snack scientists), and your parents will never yell at you for eating too many carrots. So, what IS my VERY FAVORITE SNACK FOOD FOR WRITING? Oh, COME ON! You know! It's...  CHOCOLATE!!! (Duh.) |
yeah, write.There are lots of ways to make your writing INTERESTING and FUN TO READ! On this page, I (LUCY!) will be sharing some of my SECRETS, so you can do COOL things with your writing. THAT WAY you can impress your friends and MAYBE even your teachers!  Use ALLITERATION. I know that sounds like something fancy, and HARD, but it's NOT. Alliteration is just the use of words with the same letter at the beginning. For instance, I would say that the E-Journal I have been writing lately has some exceptionally embarrassing stuff in it (usually involving the TWINS). The words "exceptionally embarrassing" both start with "e". (Duh!) Want another example? The things happening lately to my sister, Emma, are usually unlucky (but I don't always feel sorry for her, because she has been SO MEAN to Taylor and me). Alliteration is good if you use it here and there, but not a lot. It's kind of like sprinkles on ice cream. It adds a nice touch, but if you use too much, it tastes weird. Got it? Now for...  Exaggerate! Who says you have to write things that are completely TRUE? It's a whole lot more fun to STRETCH the truth, or exaggerate, like I did at the very beginning of my E-Journal last September:
I was writing about how I got STUCK some AWFUL place for an hour, but it FELT like WAY longer than that, so I exaggerated. I know, I know, you can't go around exaggerating all the time. Like if you get a bad grade on a writing assignment in school (which is something that happened to ME, and which I've been writing about in my E-Journal), it's probably NOT a good idea to exaggerate about the grade when you're telling your parents. (You'd get in trouble, and that's no exaggeration.) SO, onto...  Use words that make NOISE! Like BOOM! BAM! CRASH! Words that imitate sounds are called onomatopoeia (pronounced on-a-mot-a-pee-a), which is a long and strange word which doesn't imitate ANY sound as far as I can tell. Which means "onomatopoeia" is NOT an example of onomatopoeia. (HELP! I'm confusing myself!) ANYWAY, when I was writing in my E-Journal about that AWFUL place I got stuck, I used onomatopoeia, because I wanted the reader to "hear" the same sounds I was hearing -- to make it seem more REAL. So, I made up these words: ka-lonk (which is the sound of a doorknob hitting the floor after it falls out of a door) and ska-lunk-lunk-lunk (which is something I'm not going to tell you about yet). NEXT!  USE A THESAURUS! This GUARANTEES you better grades on writing assignments, because teachers are ALWAYS excited by GOOD VOCAB!! Most writing programs on the computer have built-in thesauruses, OR you can use a real, live, book-type thesaurus, which any library or classroom would have. I used one when I was describing the AWFUL place I was stuck for an hour. I got tired of using the same word (AWFUL), so I looked up that word (AWFUL) in a thesaurus. I got this awesome list of new words, including HORRIBLE, DREADFUL, GHASTLY, APPALLING, HIDEOUS and REVOLTING, which will come in handy for describing other things, too. (AND certain people -- like one of those TWINS, for instance. He did the most APPALLING thing at my birthday party!) ANYWAY, if you use the word "revolting" in a writing assignment, your teacher will probably be very happy. (I know that sounds weird, but teachers can be pretty hard to figure out. It took me MONTHS to figure out my teacher this year, which is why I was getting bad grades on my writing assignments. But you can read all about that when the next book comes out.) |
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