You never really know something until you teach it to someone else. I always thought this adage meant that you prove your mastery by teaching. Now I know that you groove your mastery by teaching – learning in real time, as you go. I owe the discovery to Nicki Fisher, a local alpaca farmer with […]
About Joanna Norland
Writing instructor, playwright and mother of twoA Valentine’s Day Fairy Tale
If your partner was a fairy tale character, who would he or she be? For me, the answer became clear over a Sunday breakfast, as my husband extemporised about yet another a quantum physics chestnut he’d been turning over in his brain. “I feel like I’m starring in a Sleeping Beauty mash up,” I said. “Instead […]
Words at Play: Writing Poems for My Family
Poetry is contagious. I caught the bug from my children. When they were little, they inhabited a technicolour sonic-world of rhythm and rhyme. Verse was their native tongue. “Yummy, Scrummy, in my tummy!” my son exclaimed one day, before tucking into a plate of beans. The words buzzed around inside me, and a few hours […]
Colour-As-You-Go Bookshelf: A Christmas Gift for a Book Lover
My eleven year old is at that precious stage of life when she gallops through books. She reads more swiftly by the year, and her disposable time is as yet uncurbed by the demands of secondary school or the responsibilities of adulthood. It may be decades before she is again able to spend so much […]
She Writes, Therefore She Can: Reflections on My Daughter’s First Writing Competition
“So what does winning mean to you?” I ask my ten-year-old daughter, after the initial excitement subsides. We had noticed Ginger & Pickles’ flyer advertising a Halloween poetry competition on a visit to their snug children’s bookshop in Edinburgh, during a family getaway. Their prompt was to write about a potion. I thrilled to see […]
Milestones & Magic: A Workshop
Can writing about your children strengthen your bond – even (especially?) when they aren’t there — and long after they are no longer children? Theresa Puckett, founder of Relational Parents, invited me to explore this question in a virtual workshop on Milestones and Magic Moments, delivered by Zoom, on Tuesday, September 21, 2021. From the […]
A journey to be savoured and shared: Illustrator, Judi Abbot talks about how to get more out of reading picture books with your kids
For artist, Judi Abbot, each book she illustrates is a journey, often lasting three months or longer. First, she reads the manuscript, “starts to understand the characters” and scavenges the text for clues about setting. “A reference to a scarf can suggest an entire world,” she notes. Then she experiments with exploratory sketches and researches […]
Three Pounds Fifty in Change: A Storytelling Workshop about Empathy
In my children’s story, Three Pounds Fifty in Change, Julian, an artist down on his luck, sketches a five pound note on a napkin — the note he wishes he owned. Nancy, the cafe owner, generously decides to accept his drawing as the genuine article, in payment for his cup of coffee. The magic happens […]
Let’s Hear it for the Boy(s) (and Girl(s))!
Parenting involves a modicum (read: perpetual avalanche) of correcting, warning and reprimanding. But to connect with our kids – and gain influence – we must encourage their strengths and potential. We can only encourage what we truly believe in. Therefore, as parents, we must periodically allow ourselves the essential luxury of basking in our sprogs’ […]
All the World’s a Page (The Power of the Notebook)
All things are created twice. First in the mind, and then physically, in the world. Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Before ideas make their way into the world, for many writers, there is a vital intermediate step: Creation by notebook. The Bible backs me up on this: “In the beginning was the word.” Words […]