Beautifully crafted sentences lift my spirits, and sometimes that’s what one needs on a cloudy spring day. It’s been a slow week at Learning to Muse, but it certainly has not been a week without reflection and conversation. I found myself coming precariously close to skipping a post this week as I longed to craft a beautiful sentence and wasn’t quite satisfied with my efforts.
So…here are my musings on sentences…
For the past year I have
- been especially interested in sentences
- followed stories on NPR about sentences
- attended writing workshops where writers talk about the craft of sentence construction
- deconstructed Common Core State Standards to understand what students in K-12 are supposed to learn about sentences
- watched an amazing teacher in the United Kingdom discuss sentences with his students and with his colleagues
- summed up my current professional life in a single sentence
- taught my sons about crafting sentences
- shared mad libs for academics with my husband
- asked teachers in workshops to write one sentence summaries
- participated in a Facebook posting chain where I grabbed the nearest book, turned to a specific page, and recorded a sentence.
This week I read a superb New York Times article by one of my favorite fiction writers—Jhumpa Lahiri and then I read a favorite bedtime story with my 8 year old.
My spirits are lifted.
