Category: Resources
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Mary Amato’s Tips for Keeping a Diary
A diary is a place to write down your own life experiences. Keeping a diary can be rewarding, even if you’re not interested in becoming a writer. If you speak to its pages with honesty and emotion, it becomes the most amazing keepsake possible: a record of your life. Writing in a diary is: Comforting—a…
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Mary Amato’s Tips for Keeping a Writer’s Notebook
A writer’s notebook is a place where you can write all kinds of things: ideas, questions, thoughts, true stories, invented stories, rough drafts for poems, songs, or stories, bits of dialogue that you overhear, and more. It’s different from a diary, which is a record of your own life experiences. If you are interested in…
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Mary Amato’s Tips for Parents: How to Encourage Creative Writing
Create a time and place for writing. Children will want to write if you make it a fun activity to do together. “Let’s write a story!” Accept your child’s ideas. Your child may create a character/story you don’t like. Be open, and your child will want to keep writing. Allow your child to dictate to…
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Mary Amato’s How to Become a Writer
Write a lot of stories, poems, songs, essays, articles, plays: whatever you’re interested in writing. Your work will improve if you keep writing. Read like crazy. Read for enjoyment first; but if you really love a book, read it again. Try to figure out what techniques the writer used to make the book so good.…
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How to write to an author
You can find a lot of information about authors on the computer. But nothing beats writing a real letter to a real author. If you write an author, you need to send your letter to the writer “in care of” his or her publisher. Here’s how. Look in the hard-cover edition of the author’s book…
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Mary Amato’s How to Make Mini-Books
Materials needed: Heavy 8 ½ x 11″ 110-lb. paper, such as “heavy card stock” copier paper Standard copier paper Stapler Black masking tape (optional) To make the cover: 1. Cut card stock or heavy paper in half (lengthwise). 2. Cut into thirds. The template below will give you an idea of how to cut and…