writing

This morning I had planned some lessons to do with the boys, and at breakfast, they reminded me of some things they wanted to learn, so we spent some time on the computer looking up videos to answer their questions.

My six-year-old’s question was: “What is bacteria, and how does it cause disease?”

My nine-year-old’s question was: “How do they turn trees into lumber?”

After watching a video for kids about bacteria and germs and also doing my best to explain it in easy terms, my six-year-old still wasn’t sure he understood what bacteria is or how it causes disease, but he was tired of trying to find out and didn’t want to explore the topic further. (Of course, I will at some point find a learning opportunity when I can help him understand this better. That always happens.) My nine-year-old enjoyed the videos though.

My nine-year-old also enjoyed the video about how lumber is made, but the six-year-old looked bored.

Then I had them watch a 15 minute video about the U.S. Constitution, which is in a series of videos on Amazon Prime. The nine-year-old said he liked it. The six-year-old was bored, and to tell the truth, I didn’t blame him. The video was more suited to my nine-year-old’s age, so I probably won’t make him watch these again. We’ll be going over U.S. History in many ways over the next several years.

Then I wanted to read them some books I got from the library which would hopefully show them the fun side of math. (We usually read fiction.) They were both stone-faced, sighing, and half falling asleep on the sofa while I read, so I fought the urge to get irritated and didn’t spend much time on those books. Then I told the six-year-old he could play while the nine-year-old and I worked on his science.

Unfortunately, in the science curriculum, we have finished the “experiment” (extracting DNA) in this week’s lesson, which my son enjoyed. Today we needed to finish filling out the experiment results sheet (I just required one sentence that I let him dictate to me), he needed to copy some definitions of vocabulary words (three words/one sentence each), and we were going to go over the memory work again (verbally). (The five kingdoms, which he hasn’t been able to remember, although we’ve gone over it several times already.)

My nine-year-old (who his entire life has loved science) isn’t as attracted to science when he has to actually write something. But it’s not just science. It’s any subject that requires writing. (Sob….since that’s all subjects!) It was a painful experience getting him to copy one sentence. It’s not that he can’t write…his handwriting is pretty good. He just hates doing it.

However, he willingly practices piano 2+ hours a day and memorizes the music fairly easy. And if you’ve been reading my blog all these years, you’ll know he’s quite an amazing kid who has accomplished many things. He’s smart and creative. But he hates writing. Obviously, this is a great argument for that whole issue of “Kids learn when they are interested in a subject. We shouldn’t make them learn things they aren’t interested in.” I am always wondering when to let go and when to push him forward.

While I want to homeschool my children so that they can spend more time on the things they are interested in, and I don’t like pointless busy work or excessive testing, I don’t think it’s wise to not cover certain areas of learning. I am not convinced that this will benefit every child once they are ready to move into the adult world. (Although, I’m sure there are examples of unschooled kids who go on to do great things because there’s always good examples in every educational option. Unfortunately, there are always bad examples too, which in my mind proves the point that every child is different, and every child needs an individualized educational path. Sometimes determining what that path is can be difficult though.)

The difficultly of homeschooling is that when I have these issues, it’s really only my husband and me who have to figure out the answer (not that we haven’t consulted with so-called “experts” on some matters). When kids go to school, you have lots of teachers and different people to ask their opinions about this or that. (This may be good or bad.) Sometimes there are extra services. You can opt out of them, if you don’t like them, but you can use them, if you want to use them.

You also have different people influencing your child. Again, this can be good or bad. Unfortunately, I think most of the influences children get in public school are not so good, but there are, of course, good influences. A child might perform better for his teacher than he would for his mother, etc. This is not a reason to not homeschool, but it is something to point out.

We usually have good homeschool days when I feel like we’ve covered a good variety of work and the boys benefitted from it. This wasn’t one of those days. That’s partly because I was trying out some new resources, and there’s nothing wrong with that…..I have to try things to see if they will work! Sometimes they don’t. But sometimes they do.

I feel confident that my nine-year-old will learn how to write well, though it may take him longer than some other kids. And I’m not even sure it’s correct to say “learn how to write.” He knows how to write; he just needs more practice.

I’m not sure how we’ll get over this hurdle, but I will keep doing what I’ve always done….take it slow, try different things, occasionally take breaks, occasionally push forward. I will ask other homeschoolers and the occasional “expert” what they think, but when it comes down to it, it’ll be up to my husband and me to figure out what is best for our son. Together we will ask our son, talk to him, encourage him, probably annoy him too, and eventually, I am sure, he’ll get it. He may never love writing, but I know he’ll be able to do it.

And, yes, part of me would love to just “unschool” him in this area. Let it happen when it happens. Or not. But for various reasons, I can’t and won’t do that. But we can, at least, go slow and look for ways to make it less painful for him.

{One thing I will be doing this fall is starting him on a keyboarding program. He might like typing better than handwriting, but we’ll continue to work on handwriting too.}

Note: This column was published in the Barrow Journal on March 2, 2016.

As an editor of a homeschool magazine, I get a lot of queries (i.e. “pitches” in the form of letters or e-mails) from writers wanting to write for us. I rarely respond to any of them because they rarely warrant a response. While I wish I could return each message with an instructional guide on how to make a proper pitch, it would be a waste of my time. Still, my heart goes out to these wannabe writers because many years ago, I didn’t know how to make a pitch either.

I have read books, articles, attended writers conferences and classes on how to write and make pitches to magazines. While I feel pretty confident I know how to write a decent query letter, I don’t write them often. That’s because most of the time even good pitches get rejected. That’s because of two reasons: 1) There are hundreds of other writers wanting to write for the same magazine, and 2) You just never know what the editor of a magazine may be wanting at the time you send your letter. They may list their needs on their website (which you should follow to a tee), but even then, you never know if your idea will suit them right.

As a homeschooling mom, I don’t have the proper time to do everything I must do to write a good query letter for a magazine, let alone research and write the article, and unless I’m pitching to a national magazine, the pay usually won’t be worth the effort. I love writing, and I’d do it for free (and usually do). But when time is limited, and my priorities are elsewhere, I have to weigh what’s worth my time. So I don’t query much.

But I wince at these queries I’m getting in my inbox. It makes it clear to me that most writers don’t go to any effort to learn not only how to write properly but how to contact an editor with an article idea. If you want to be a freelance writer, you should first spend a few months reading books, articles, and perhaps attending a writer’s conference or class on how to do it properly. Nothing is easy. If you want it to be, you need to do something else.

I’m not going to give instructions here on how to write a query letter because there are plenty of resources online that will tell you how to do that. There is an art to it, and you have to practice to get it right.

What I will tell you is the biggest mistake I’m seeing coming into my inbox and that’s that the writer knows nothing about our publication. For example, I’m listed as the editor to send queries regarding health and balance, among other things. So I get a lot of queries for articles about living a healthy lifestyle. The part that the writer doesn’t address is that we’re a homeschooling magazine. Hello? How does your article tie into homeschooling?

If you are not a homeschooling parent, student, or at least someone who comes into a lot of contact with homeschoolers, you probably do not have the right experience to write for us. Yet even homeschoolers make the mistake of not getting to know our publication. Recently a writer sent us a query more suited for a Christian publication. If she had read our magazine, she might have realized it’s secular.

I also have had people send me submissions for blog posts, which shows they didn’t look closely at our website. We do have a blog, and if we were making a call for bloggers, we’d have that on our website. But we’re not hiring bloggers. We are a magazine, and we accept queries for magazine articles.

Another mistake is to bug me on social media. Creating relationships on social media take time. Don’t rush it. Do not copy (cc:) me on every blog post you write and then post to Twitter. I don’t have time to read your posts, and you’re bordering on spammer. Or stalker. You will be blocked, and you will never write for my magazine.

One of my and my editor-in-chief’s pet peeves are the writers who write a cheerful note letting us know they are writers and available to work for us. Even if well-written clips accompany this e-mail, it’s not a query, and unless you’re famous and willing to work for what we can pay, it’ll go unanswered. Please do your work. Take the time to come up with a good idea that will add value to our magazine.

As I keep saying, most writers fail to read our publication. If you haven’t read at least one issue cover to cover, you will not understand our tone or the subject matter we’re seeking. And queries should not only explain your idea for an article in (brief) detail, you should be able to tell us where it fits into the magazine. And we want a short, succinct paragraph about you and your experience too. Many queries I get are one or two lines long. While brevity is good, this is too brief.

There are times when a writer sends a pretty good pitch, and my partner and I talk about it and consider it. But for whatever reason, we decide we can’t use it. I always respond to these writers and tell them their idea wasn’t quite right, but they should try again. Yet, I never hear from them again. Why are you giving up, I wonder?

Writing is hard work. It takes time to come up with a good idea, do the research, and even more time to find the right publication for it. And, yes, if you can’t find it in the library, you have to buy a copy of the magazine when you barely have two pennies to rub together. I know it’s frustrating. I know it pays crap. But if you’re going to do it, learn to do it right.