A Writer’s Notebook is….

An incubator……..a protective place to keep your infant ideas safe and warm… a place for ideas to grow…..and survive….. A WRITER’S NOTEBOOK, Ralph Fletcher

An empty ditch……. An empty space you dig in your busy life…. …a space that will fill up with all sorts of fascinating creatures……. If you dig it……..they will come… ……………. A WRITER’S NOTEBOOK/Ralph Fletcher

Nothing more than a blank book…… But…..within those pages you have a powerful tool for writing and living……… Ralph Fletcher

….gives you a place to live like a writer…. It’s a place to write down what makes you sad, angry or amazed…. Ralph Fletcher

…a place to record what you notice…. …and don’t want to forget.. …to record what your grandmother whispered in your ear before she said good- bye for the last time…..

… a place to wonder……….. ………….. a place to reflect ……………………a place to discover your voice

…Important …Uniquely your own …Essential

A writer’s notebook is a way to fuel up with superior, supreme unleaded…. …and it’s free……. Naomi Shihab Nye

Rereading notebooks is like reliving your life… … more important than money in the bank…. NSN

Photographs…quotes, the language of other writers, newspaper clippings, notes from research, personal letters, daily entries, struggling rough drafts…… All of these and more, are part of a working writer’s notebook… Louise Borden

The secret of writing is… There is no secret….writers are not hatched out of thin air

Good writing happens when writers take particular steps to take control of their sentences, to make their words do what they want them to do…. …there is no secret to good writing, but there is a process…..a writer’s notebook is a part of the process……..

So….. Let’s start digging that ditch in our busy lives. Trust that marvelous things will get trapped within the pages of our writer’s notebook! The school-wide journey begins!