Tag Archives: education

Kids Ask a Lot of Questions

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A quick note from a recent flight.

I recently flew a dad and his two kids on a 50-minute flight in the Wickenburg area. The kids were aged maybe 8 (the boy) and 10 (the girl). These are estimates. I didn’t ask and since I’m not a parent myself, I could be way off.

My helicopter has a voice-activated intercom system. That means that anything anyone says into their headset microphone can be heard by anyone else in the aircraft wearing a headset. (And yes, I do have an isolation switch I can use to “turn off” my passengers, but I rarely use it.) I narrated the flight, as I usually do, and pointed out interesting things.

Now I’ve flown kids before, but these kids were different. They asked a lot of questions. A lot. In fact, they pretty much never stopped asking questions.

I have no problem with this. It’s great to see kids who are interested in what’s going on around them. And it sure beats the kid who almost fell asleep on one of my Grand Canyon flights years ago.

Since I don’t have kids, however, it was a bit startling to me. It made me realize the limits of a young kid’s knowledge. For example, they repeatedly asked me to define words I’d used — irrigation and skeleton crew come to mind. They asked a lot of “why” and “how” questions. It was a real eye-opening experience for me. It was also a pleasure to be in the position where I could share some of my knowledge with them.

But the part I liked most was defining those terms I’d used without a second thought, bringing my vocabulary down to a level they’d understand and perhaps teaching them a few new words and concepts.

Writing Tips: Master the Basics

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If there’s only one thing you do before starting a career as a writer, this is it.

Today, I’m doing a presentation for Wickenburg High School’s Journalism class. I suspect that they’re a bunch of seniors who are interested in journalism or some other branch of writing. Although I’m not a journalist, I feel qualified to speak to them about careers in writing. And since being asked to do this presentation, I’ve been giving the topics I want to discuss a lot of thought.

The Basics

The best piece of advice I can offer anyone considering a career in writing is to master the basics. I mean that quite literally: master the basics of writing. This includes the following:

  • Spelling. Yes, I know that there are spelling checkers in word processors — and even blog offline composition tools like the one I’m using to write this. And no, I’m not saying that you need to know how to spell every word you might ever write absolutely perfectly. But I am saying that you need basic spelling skills. This will help ensure that you don’t misspell a word that spells another word (and, thus, won’t be caught by a spelling checker) or use the wrong word (then instead of than, your instead of you’re, etc.).
  • Want more tips about grammar?
    Read “Grammar is Important“

    Grammar. Again, perfect grammar isn’t an absolute requirement, but a writer’s grammar should certainly be much better than average. Don’t use the grammar checker in a word processor — if you need to rely on that, you may as well give up on any idea of being a writer. The best way to learn grammar is to read and study good writing. I’m not talking about Dickens here. And I’m certainly not talking about blogs. I’m talking about The New York Times, NewsWeek, and other quality publications that are written and edited by professionals. Don’t get the idea that grammar rules are meant to be broken so they don’t matter. You need to learn the rules before you can break them.

  • Punctuation. This goes with grammar. Punctuation is pretty easy. If you can’t master it, you’re not going to impress many editors.
  • Style. Here’s where things start drifting away from what you can learn in basic English classes. Every writer should be able to develop his or her own style or voice. This is something that comes with practice — I don’t think it can be taught. Style includes vocabulary and word usage, as well as the rhythm of your sentences and paragraphs. I believe that the only way a writer can develop his or her own style is by writing and then rewriting. A lot. Every day. Once you’ve got your own style, you should be able to go the next step, which is to emulate (okay, copy) someone else’s style. In fact, a good writer should be able to write in whatever style he or she is called upon to write in.

Here’s the deal. If you try to start a career as a writer and you haven’t mastered the basics, there isn’t much of a chance of you getting a job as a writer. No editor is going to want to deal with submitted work that is fraught with basic writing errors. It’ll take too long to edit.

And if you expect to be a freelance writer, your chances of getting published are slim if you can’t submit an error-free manuscript.

It doesn’t matter what kind of writing you want to do — newspaper journalist, technical writer, advertising copywriter, short story author, novelist. If you can’t write, you’re not going to get work as a writer. It’s as simple as that.

A Story with a Point

And to finish this piece off, I’ll tell you — and that high school class — a true story. Back in 1978, when I started college, English 101 and 102 were freshman year requirements. These two courses took what we supposedly learned in high school to the next level.

I wasn’t very interested in taking English — I wanted to take a creative writing class instead. Fortunately, my college offered a way out. I could write an essay about a topic of interest to me and submit that for evaluation. if the essay was good enough, I wouldn’t have to take either freshman English class.

I wrote the essay. It was about how high school fails to prepare young people for life. I was 17 at the time — please don’t do the math — and already thinking about these things. The essay was a hit. I was exempted from freshman English.

This story has a point. Before I got to college, I had already developed above average writing skills. This served me well throughout high school and college — I aced almost every report and essay test question, mostly because I already knew how to organize and present my thoughts in writing far better than most other students.

These are the kinds of skills every writer needs to develop before beginning a writing career. If you want to be a writer, master the basics now.

Writing Tips

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Some wisdom from the trenches.

My meeting the other day with a wannabe writer made me realize that there are a lot of people out there who want to write but simply don’t have a clue about many of the basics. So I thought I’d start a new series of articles here. The idea is to share some of my insight with the folks who understand that they don’t know everything and that they can learn from other writers.

I realize that this sounds sarcastic, but I think it’s pretty close to the mark. So many wannabe writers simply don’t understand the basics of writing — or writing for a living. They have this glamorized idea of what it’s like to be a writer. They think it’s easy. And while it may be easy for them to write, it isn’t easy for most folks to make a living as a writer.

And that’s what it all comes down to. As a commenter here said, writers write. But if you can’t get paid for your writing, you’ll probably have to work a “real” job to earn a living. And that might not have enough time to write. So the goal of anyone who wants to be a writer should be to get paid for writing. Then they’ll have plenty of time to write.

My goal in this series is to not only provide tips to help you be a better writer, but to help wannabe writers or new writers understand how they can make a living as a writer and what that living might be like.

I’ve already written a number of posts that you might find helpful if you’re interested in learning more about being a writer. I’ve listed the ones that I think are best here:

I learned two things in the hour it took me to compile this list:

  • The list is a lot longer than I expected it to be. I wrote a lot about writing since I began blogging nearly 5 years ago. This list doesn’t include all the posts in the Writing category, either.
  • Before writing Saturday’s post, I hadn’t written anything worthwhile about writing since February 2008.

I urge you to read any of the posts listed above that you think you might find interesting. Comment on them, too. Your comments will help me develop ideas for new posts about related topics.

In the meantime, I’ll use the “Writing Tips” title for a bunch of short new posts that cover some of the basics. I promise not to be too chatty.

BE a Writer

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It’s a lot more than just taking a few courses in college.

The other day, I met a 20-year-old guy named Doug. (Not his real name, of course, but it will do.) Actually, he introduced himself to me. He’d heard I was a writer and wanted to meet me. He thought I wrote novels and when I explained that I wrote computer how-to books, he seemed disappointed. He told me he was going to school to be a writer. He wanted to write fiction.

I asked Doug what he’d written so far and his response disappointed me: “Nothing,” he said. “I’m only 20.” He then went on to tell me that he was still learning how to write. That’s why he was studying it in school. So far, he’d learned that stories had “a beginning, a middle, and an end.”

Wow.

To understand my take on this poor misguided soul, you need to understand that I’ve always wanted to be a writer. And I began writing when I was about 13.

I didn’t always want to write computer how-to books. Computers — well, the desktop kind, anyway — didn’t exist when I was a kid. I wanted to write fiction, just like Doug does. But I didn’t have any illusions about going to school to be a writer. (At 13, I didn’t expect to attend college when I finished high school.) So I started writing on my own. Practice makes perfect, right?

Years later, after following a career path that didn’t interest me and paying my dues, I found success writing computer how-to books. I didn’t go to college to become a writer. All I had was two semesters of creative writing. (I was able to skip English 101 and 102 because of my ability to write an essay that proved I didn’t need these basic English courses.) But I had years of practice — and am still practicing here.

So when I met a 20-year-old who wanted to be a writer, I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t writing. After all, how can you be a writer if you don’t write?

I was disappointed and, in all honesty, a bit disgusted with Doug’s lack of insight and drive on his chosen career. (At 20, I already had my BBA and a full-time job.) But I didn’t want to be rude, so I thought I’d venture a suggestion. Doug was working at a part-time job that had a lot of down time — time he wasn’t particularly busy with job duties. I suggested that he spend his down time people watching. “Keep a journal,” I suggested. “Jot down bits and pieces of the character traits you see and conversations you overhear. You might be able to draw on these real-life characters when you develop your own fictional characters.”

As you might imagine, he didn’t seem very interested. And that’s when I decided to stop wasting my time.

What’s strange about all this is that I’ve been invited to speak to my local high school’s journalism class about writing. I’m not a journalist, but I’m pretty sure that the kids taking this course have writing interests besides journalism. I plan to share with them some of the “secrets to success” for being a writer. I think they’ll be surprised by what I’ve got to say.

I guess what I’m thinking about all this is: if you’re 20 years old and you need to take a college course to learn that a piece of fiction has a beginning, a middle, and an end, you’re probably not going to be much of a writer.

To be a writer, you need to be a writer. The only way to do that is to write.

Abstinence-Only Sex Education Does Not Work

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Perhaps the Bristol Palin situation will put a spotlight on this.

One of the things that bugs me the most about the Religious Conservatives in this country is its policy regarding sex education. Basically, they don’t want it taught in schools.

Social conservatives — including, ironically, Sarah Palin — promote an “abstinence-only” sex education program. My understanding of such programs is that they attempt to teach young people to abstain from sex until they are married. There’s no deep discussion of what sex is and how it works. There’s certainly no discussion of “safe sex” or birth control. Young people are simply told not to have sex. Period. End of statement.

I’m pretty sure the idea behind all this has something to do with sin. Evidently, it’s a sin to have sex before you’re married. And since most high school kids aren’t married, they shouldn’t be having sex. Doing so would commit a sin. I’m not quite sure what happens when you commit a sin like that — eternal damnation seems a bit harsh, doesn’t it? — but it’s evidently a bad thing.

Now I could go off on a tangent and bring up the theories of Richard Dawkins, who claims that parents forcing their religious beliefs on their kids is akin to child abuse, but I won’t. Although I do agree with a lot of what Dawkins has to say, I believe that parents have a right to bring a religious (or non-religious, for that matter) belief system into their kids’ lives. (I don’t, however, believe they should force their kids to marry before the age of consent, as at least one religious cult is apparently doing.)

The trouble with this is that kids can be kids. Teenagers have raging hormones. Things happen. One thing leads to another. Not all girls (or guys, for that matter) are thinking about abstinence or sin or mom and dad on a date when opportunity (and something else) arises. It’s hard to stop once you get started. Anyone who has had (and enjoyed) sex can tell you that. (Which makes me wonder if these abstinence-only supporters ever enjoyed sex, but that’s something to debate another day.)

So when the moment of truth arrives and neither party remembers abstinence and holds up a STOP sign, where are the condoms? Obviously, they’re not around. These poor kids were never taught about safe sex and birth control. They were probably even told that birth control is a sin. Neither one of them would be caught dead with a condom in their possession. At that moment of truth, all they know is what their bodies are telling them they need to do. So they do it.

The very lucky ones don’t start a baby and they don’t share a disease. But maybe that just confirms that what they’ve done is okay. So they do it again another time. Or with another partner. And sooner or later, there will be a pregnancy or a disease or both.

Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, brought up in a religious conservative household by a mother who believes in abstinence-only sex education, is the victim of her mother’s policies. I don’t know the girl and I don’t know what she was taught. But I know she made a mistake and I can’t help but wonder whether the mistake was one of ignorance rather than stupidity.

I’m angry about this. I’m angry because the Republican party is simply blowing it off, using this unfortunate situation as proof that Sarah Palin is “just like anyone else,” with the same kind of family challenges that anyone has. This teenage pregnancy is okay to them. After all. Bristol is still going to have the baby. And she’s going to get married. So everything is okay, right?

Did anyone ever stop to consider what Bristol may have wanted to do with her life? Maybe she didn’t want to start bearing children when she was 17 years old. Maybe she wanted to finish high school and go to college. To become a doctor or a lawyer or — dare I say it? — a community organizer. In other words, maybe she wanted to start a career or have a bit of life on her own before getting married and starting a family. Or maybe she didn’t want to have a family at all.

Even if she did want to start a family when she was young, do you think she really wanted to be changing diapers for her own baby when she was only 17 years old?

Now although I’ll admit that I’m pro-Choice — as every woman who isn’t held firmly under a man’s thumb should be — I’m not for a moment suggesting that she abort the baby. While I think that could have been an option very early on, it should not be an option at 5 months into the pregnancy. (And yes, folks, there is a difference.)

What I’m suggesting here is that if Bristol — and the thousands of young women like her all over the country — received proper sex education, including safe sex and birth control information, she would not be in the situation she’s in. And neither would her boyfriend, who will soon find himself in attendance as the groom at a good, old-fashioned, shotgun wedding. (After all, why potentially ruin one life when you can potentially ruin two?)

Bristol’s lucky, in a way. Her parents are well-to-do. They have good jobs — hell, there’s a chance her mother might even be vice president. They have money. Even if Mom’s away on official business, there will be nannies around to help. Bristol might come out of this okay — if the media attention doesn’t permanently traumatize her.

But what I’m hoping for is that Bristol’s predicament opens a few eyes among the members of the Religious Right. Abstinence-only sex education does not work.

And now we have a poster child for it.