Writing Because We Love To: Homeschoolers at Work by Susannah Sheffer

This is the 8th post in my series about books related to teaching, learning and homeschooling.

(See my earlier post for a description of the series.)

Writing Because We Love To: Homeschoolers at Work by Susannah Sheffer is a book about "what children do when they are in charge of their own writing lives." By "in charge," Ms. Sheffer means truly in charge—not simply free to choose from a teacher's pre-selected list of writing options, but free to decide what, when, how and why they'll take the thoughts in their heads and turn them into words on a page.

Typically, teachers are the ones deciding what will go on during a writing lesson and what kind of feedback they'll offer their students. The problem with this approach is that it turns students into passive recipients. Or, as Ms. Sheffer writes:

"If you're sitting in a class that you didn't choose to take, being taught something you're not sure you wanted to learn in the first place, it may be difficult or even impossible to think about what you want from a teacher and whether you're getting it."

Contrast this with a situation where a student has "sought out a teacher because [she] has already come a certain distance on [her] own and now thinks a teacher would be helpful." That's the situation my homeschooled daughter was in when I first contacted Ms. Sheffer back in the late-1990s.

At the age of seven, after two years of public schooling, my daughter had lost nearly all her early interest in writing. The way in which writing was being taught in school killed her desire to write. She felt frustrated and betrayed by her clunky fine motor skills, which couldn't keep up with the pace of her thoughts, and so she abandoned writing altogether for almost an entire year. (One of the perks of homeschooling was that we had the freedom to set aside a despised subject for a while and take it up again later.)

During her year off from formal writing instruction, my daughter learned how to touch type (thanks, Mavis Beacon), and when she was able to type fast enough to suit her purposes, she went back to writing poems, stories and journal entries. Her passion for writing had returned, as I'd hoped it would.

By the time she was approaching her teens, she had written stories she didn't particularly want to show to her mother—not because they contained anything particularly shocking or inappropriate, but because she knew the sort of feedback I was likely to provide wasn't what she needed at the time. She sought an impartial mentor, someone who could give expert, unbiased advice on how to make her story more compelling. She might ask me later to proofread her work before she submitted it to a writing contest or magazine (such as Stone Soup, New Moon, or Teen Ink), but during the early stages of her writing process, my copyedits were not the answer.

So I was grateful when I found a notice for Susannah Sheffer's services in an issue of Growing Without Schooling magazine (discontinued as of 2001, unfortunately). After calling to make arrangements, I slipped my daughter's cover letter and printed pages into a large manila envelope, with a check to cover the consultation fee, and put them in the mail. Within a week or two, the pages came back with Susannah's edits and responses to any questions my daughter had asked. It was exciting for her to be treated like a real writer, getting feedback from a real writer, and it inspired her far more than any contrived writing prompt or scripted exercises ever had.

As for me, I learned from Ms. Sheffer that it's important for students to be able to tell their teachers, "Here's what I'm deciding to write about, here's why I'm writing it, and this is what I want from you." As a home educator, I had examined hundreds of writing tutorials and mountains of "language arts" curricula, but none of them advised me to start by asking my kids what—if anything—writing meant to them. (Well, that's not quite true: Families Writing by Peter Stillman came pretty close.) Looking back now, I shake my head when I recall the times I attempted to "teach writing" to my children by focusing on their spelling, grammar and punctuation. It's not that writing mechanics don't matter, because of course they do—eventually. It's just that learning how to write well demands so much more of us.

About a year ago, I found a paying job doing work I love: I'm currently an editor for Author Accelerator, and I help writers who are eager to finish and publish their books. Every week, my writers submit their pages to me electronically and, within a few days, I send them back my detailed feedback. Over time, I get to know the writers with whom I'm working, and it is always a privilege to be on the receiving end of their stories. Like Ms. Sheffer, I "will always struggle with how best to help them, how to respond appropriately, meaningfully, and in ways that they can truly use." And I'm continually awed by the courage and tenacity of those who are determined to improve their writing and get their novels finished.

Looking back now on the work that Ms. Sheffer did with my daughter, I realize she must have felt similarly about the students she helped. In the Introduction to her book, she writes:

"More than anything else, I hope readers [referring to readers of her book] will come away with an appreciation of the competence young people can achieve and the insight and reflection of which they are capable. . . . We can all learn from these writers who are writing because they love to rather than because they have to, and who have the time and the opportunity to figure out what best serves their work."

I wish you and all students of writing the precious gift of time and opportunity to express yourself with words.