SOLSC Day 25

Well, I'm hitting the slice of life wall. In the words of Bruce Springsteen, "I'm just tired and bored with myself." My students are wrapping up some fiction writing, and as some have finished their pieces, they seem at a loss for what to write next. "Check your writing territories," I've advised, but it's been a while since we've revisited them, and I can tell by their glum looks that the ideas don't seem as fresh and exciting as they once did. So this week, I've done a series of mini-lessons and activities to re-introduce the students not only to their writing territories, but to their whole writers notebooks, too. I love my notebook-- it's a combination diary, scrapbook, research journal, writing exercise book, personal word list, sketch book, and laboratory-- and I want my students to have something like it for themselves, because it's so awesome and so helpful. Except right now, it's not really helping me come up with anything for my slice. I just can't find the common thread to connect the shark's tooth, Mrs. Dalloway, odes versus rants, and that crazy black squirrel I saw this morning (she flung herself from the bare branches of one tree into the flowering boughs of the next with utter abandon).