The One With Shared Nerdy Writing #sol15

Every Tuesday, I participate in the Slice of Life challenge at Two Writing Teachers. If you want to participate, you can link up at their Slice of Life Story Post on Tuesdays or you can just head on over there to check out other people's stories. For more information on what a Slice of Life post is about, you can go here. 

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I'm seriously pooped! I've been at Nerdcamp since Sunday and it's been as amazing as ever. That means seeing friends, sharing ideas, packing as much into my little brain as possible and it's the best but also tiring. I'll keep this short and share more later but yesterday I led a session on descriptive writing in non-fiction writing. I shared examples of great non-fiction mentor texts and talked about how to look at great writing students can model their writing after. I loved seeing familiar faces from last year coming to learn with me again. 

One of my all-time favorite pieces from NPR is "Don't Overlook The Unsung Umpire; Referees Can Be Pretty, Too" by Frank Deford. The audio is amazing and the text that matches is available. There is amazing imagery in this piece and so much to soak in but at the same time, he outlines details about referees in various different sports. I also shared a more recent NPR article highlighting the US Women's Soccer Team win entitled 

"U.S. Women Win World Cup Final 5-2, After Spectacular Start" by Camila Domonoske. We stopped to soak up this line that I loved:

"Japan's players, after fighting hard all game, 

stoically applauded the victors 

as Team USA was showered with gold glitter."

We did a free write on our experience at Nerdcamp and took bits of writing from a few different people and pieces together something new. I adore shared writing and love the power of combining sentences. If you haven't read Jeff Anderson's newest book, Revision Decisions, it is definitely a must-read.

Here is what we wrote together:

"After fielding the question, 'Parma? Where's Parma?' I realized it didn’t matter where it was, I knew I had to go to Nerdcamp. An untraditional conference where I can be with passionate people who challenge my thinking and leave me in awe.

I arrived - alone - and knew absolutely no one except for the people I may have Twitter stalked! Weaving through the labyrinth, collecting Nerdcamp swag, highlighting my name, scanning the crowd for faces from my feed."

This is only a snippet of the excitement many of us felt as we made our way to Nerdcamp. Many of us in the group were here for our first Nerdcamp. I'm happy to have been at all three and hope we continue for a long time. Maybe you'll think about joining us next time? Maybe YOU've never heard of Parma...but that didn't stop hundreds of us. Please think about joining us next year!