Book Clubs and Learning to Write

For the past year I have been wanting to join a book club. I haven't been able to because the clubs met too far away or were at a time of day I couldn't make. So, I was thrilled when Girltalk announced they were starting a book club. Finally, I could read a book (a really good book at that) with other people and experience it with them.

The ladies at Girltalk are assigning a chapter per week to read and a question about how the chapter pertains to your life. If you want, you can e-mail your answer to them and they will pick one answer to post each week. Of course, it is completely optional. They hope that the writing process will help you to put your thoughts together and learn more from the book. It probably will. But......

I hate to write. I've always hated to write. I used to cry in junior high because I hated it so much. I even cried in High School a few times over writing assignments. By college, there were no more tears, but it still was not my favorite thing to do. So normally I would opt out of this part of the book club. But, I need to teach my kids how to write. And the one thing I learned in college about writing is the more you do, the better you get. So, I am going to write each week and send it in to Girltalk. Then I"ll post it here because you probably won't ever see it there. I'm hoping that with the extra practice, I'll gain a little more confidence and sharpen my skills in order to better teach my kids.

This week the question at Girltalk was, "How does your life feel ordinary and how can it be truly extraordinary?" (We are reading Twelve Extraordinary Women by John MacArthur.) I had lots of great ideas floating around in my head. I re-read the chapter assigned. And I waited until the last minute, the day it was due, to write about it. Then we had unexpected company come for the night. Our computer is located in our guest room so I never wrote anything. My first lesson to myself on being a better writer is one my High School teacher Mr. Gier used to tell me over and over again, "DON'T PROCRASTINATE!" He even wrote it in my year book. Seriously, he did. It's so nice to be a grown-up now and not have my grade get knocked down because my paper was late.

Part of the reason I didn't write earlier was because I was on a cleaning spree. We start school in a few weeks and I also have been working on taking pictures of our house to post here and be a part of BooMama's Tour of Homes. (Even though I'm late in joining!) My husband gave me an A for cleaning, and my son even thanked me. I was also prepared for unexpected company! So it turned out alright.

But next week I'll write out my "paper" earlier in the week. I hope I've learned my lesson. My husband, who is a very good writer, has promised to help me edit and thus teach me a bit. And if anyone reads this and sees something that could be written differently, or fixed grammatically, please, please tell me. I don't have Mr. Gier to mark up my papers with red anymore!

If you want to join the book club, you can read all about it at Girltalk by clicking here.