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Date: 11/3/2022
LONGMEADOW – Christina Uss, author and library assistant at the Richard Salter Storrs Library in Longmeadow, is teaching middle schoolers how to be authors by embracing themselves and their fears.
With the help of grants from the Longmeadow Educational Endowment Fund and the Longmeadow Cultural Council, English language arts teacher Pam Cangemi created a Writer in Residence program, bringing Uss in multiple times over the school year to teach Williams Middle School students how to write fiction.
Cangemi’s children had an opportunity to work with a writer and illustrator in their school district and it gave the teacher the idea to bring that to Williams.
The program began with the seventh grade. Uss will work with sixth and eighth graders later in the year. By June, the students will each have written their own piece of fiction.
“Every fictional book is going to have bits of the author in it,” said Uss. “Sneak into your stories.”
Uss spoke about her journey cycling across the United States at 22 years old. This adventure prompted her to write a book about a character taking the same journey. As Uss explained to the students, she used the journals that she had kept while on that trip as the basis for many of the events that her character experiences, both good and bad.
With this in mind, Uss gave each student a small notebook that could fit in a pocket and told them to write down “some vivid thing,” that strikes them, whether it be a scent, sight, conversation or another moment. She emphasized that the moment need not seem important, but those are sometimes the ones that inspire stories.
Uss told the students about how fear inspired her book, “Erik Vs. Everything,” which the students had read. After telling the class how she had grown up afraid of her piano lessons and embarrassment, among other situations, she asked the students what fears they had. Connecting with the class in this way, she talked about the universal feeling behind the book.
“If [something is] impacting you, it will probably mean something to other people,” Uss told the group.
Process
The author broke the writing process down into seven steps, beginning with a lesson she had already shared – “notice things” and “take notes.” After that, she told the students to “hunt for treasure” by rereading notes for the most vivid memories.
From there, the students need to develop their “elevator pitch,” one or two sentences that condenses an idea into the most “irresistible and intriguing” description. The next step is to start writing.
“You guys are all writers. You’re not published writers, but you’re writers,” Uss told the students. Committing to write something before getting out of a chair is one way that she makes herself write, she said.
The next step was again, something she had already talked about – “weave fact and fiction.”
Finally, Uss asked each student to ask for help. She invited them to come to Storrs Library and said she would try to inspire and support them in their writing.
Uss also addressed struggles the students might run into, including writer’s block. “Not giving up isn’t the same things as knowing how to move forward,” she said. She added that she did not know how to finish one of her books but decided that she was not going to quit. Eventually, she created the ending.
Questions and lessons
Students asked Uss questions at the end of the class. While many of the students wanted to know about her journey across the country, others wanted to know how she came up with ideas and what to do when stuck on a part of the book. She told one student, “Throw in something completely out of left field, even if you don’t use it. It breaks up the feeling of ‘stuckness.’”
When Uss returns to speak with the students after Thanksgiving, they will have started writing a about a “hero’s journey.” Uss will discuss how to handle criticism with the middle schoolers, a lesson that is particularly helpful at that age.
“Writing for 8- to 12-year-olds is what I’m made to do,” Uss told Reminder Publishing.