Mar'ce Merrell

It’s terrific working with the grades 4, 5 and 6 classes and Mr. Chichak and Mr. Turlione. We’re working with the Learning Through the Arts model of teaching and that means we’re combining an art form and a core subject area.

What does it look like? Groups of students will be making commercials to “sell” their glider (paper airplane) or Mixture Separation Device (various techniques to separate the specific elements in birdseed).

Clearly we’re coupling Science concepts with drama/language arts. The students will be creating scripts, asking scientific questions as well as the questions writers ask before developing a commercial that they will work as a team to build and film.

I’ll show a clip of a commercial on February 5, the day after our final day of shooting!

If you’re interested in knowing more about the LTTA model or about an artist in residence program, send me an e-mail and I’ll fill you in.

Mar’ce

I bought this coconut. I wasn’t sure, exactly, what I’d do with it. I’d never in fact bought a coconut before- at least not in North America. I think I bought it because I wanted a shift in my every day. I looked for recipes of how to use fresh coconut. And I discovered through experimentation that fresh grated coconut tastes better after it’s cooked than before and that you can replace just about any dried unsweetened coconut with fresh. My blog here or here has the results of my cupcake recipe.

I also thought of the people in Haiti, not that I’ve been there, but I spent two months in Southeast Asia and the poverty I witnessed in Cambodia came back to me in pictures and smells and coconuts. I am saddened by the devastation, but I don’t think those words are enough. Just like I haven’t been able to adequately express the experience of traveling in Asia for two months, I cannot express my heartache over Haitian’s heart break.

I’m working on revisions of The Cake Princess, feeling vulnerable the way my characters do- that’s my news. I guess the coconut was a diversion down a familiar path of thought.

I take my camera everywhere with me. It’s a habit I started when I got my first job as a journalist for a daily newspaper in Ohio. Back then, we used film cameras and we had to adjust the fstop manually. Oh, and focus. My first months on the job, my photos were awful! Washed out. Dark. Out of focus. Badly framed. Eventually I learned. Now, my point and shoot makes picture taking easier. My son is trying to convince me to go back to the film camera’s version of figuring it out on your own. I consider it, but then an opportunity for a beautiful sunset from the car, (as I’m driving! Yikes!), comes along and I wouldn’t give up my automatic. It was a beautiful night!

I spent last Friday in Vermilion, hosted by the Buffalo Trails Public School Board. My session on The Reading and Writing Connection focused on helping teachers connect the text in their classroom resources with writing exercises that would improve their student’s literacy. I became very fond of my teacher participants; they were engaging and their ideas were interesting and funny. I think that’s because teachers are FUNNY! I don’t know if they know it, but I think they are very funny. Perhaps, like writers, their amount of face-time with adults is limited to recess, lunch time and meetings outside the parameters of their primary work environment. They are a surprisingly sane group of people when you consider the requirements of their profession. This, too, is similar to the day to day of a writer. Now, back to my cup of tea and my brainstorming.

In a few days of caffeine flurry, I made my way, mostly on foot, around Toronto.

Favourite meal: Spice Route on King Street.

Favourite run: Through the park near my niece’s place at Farnham and Avenue Road.

Favourite building: The inside of the Royal Conservatory of Music.

Favourite famous person sighting: Camilla and Charles.

I attended Packaging Your Imagination, a CANSCAIP sponsored conference, at the University of Toronto. My favourite speakers were Teresa Toten and Shane Peacock and the keynote presenter Kenneth Oppel. While the conference is geared primarily to the beginning author/illustrator, I went to further my understanding of author presentations/workshops. Power point or not. Audience participation or not. Not only did I gain what I went for, but I made new friends. Hello Maurizio and Stephanie and Janet.

I’m looking forward to integrating what I’ve learned into my presentations as an author. While in Toronto, I also spent at day with Learning Through the Arts. More on that later. (It deserves its own space!)

An inspiring place for writers.

I’ve spent the last three weeks in Banff at work on a novel for adults, Bitumen. This is a great place to problem solve. Long walks in the mountains seem to smooth the connective tissue between one idea and the next. I’ve added 50 pages to my novel since I’ve been here. I’m staying in one the Leighton Studios, an architecturally interesting cabin in the woods, where the only sound or distractions are the ones I create. Here’s more on the Banff Centre’s Leighton Studios.

September sends me into schools all over Alberta and Canada to present workhops on my writing and how writers craft scenes.

In one hilarous, student-engaging, drama exercise, (I call it Stranger Than Fiction), the students take over as the tools of fiction: character description, setting description, character thought and dialogue. A student director propels the students through a scene where the unexplained can, and often does, happen.

My workshops are about discovering the playfulness of a writing career, understanding why writers write, and transmitting energy and enthusiasm about writing and reading.

September 16: Vegreville. I’ll be presenting The Cake Princess (short story from Cleavage) to grades 7 to 9 classes.