My writing student and I spent the evening working on our respective stories. Dueling laptops!

She commented that we rarely write together anymore, rather wistfully so. She gave me pause. You see, I rejoice in the fact that she does not need me to write with her anymore. She is so very talented and I oft marvel at her craftsmanship at such a young age. Now, we write together and take breaks sharing what we've written. We discuss her word choice and plot direction (after I've savored the new bits she's written for a few moments) and return to our own tasks.

But as I think about her remark I realize that I, too, miss those times.

When we first started, she was but twelve. The first time we talked, I asked her to tell me her strengths and weaknesses as a writer and what goals she might like to set. I was surprised to listen to her self assessment and smiled when she said that "someday I'd like to write a novel." For me, that "someday" should always be today.

She started with three stories, dropped to two after a few months because she wisely realized the historical fiction story was beyond her reach if she were to write an authentic piece, and dropped the second once after moving from being homeschooled to public high school put so many demands on her time. While I would have preferred her to stay with the popular fiction piece written in first person, present tense, she chose her Camelot-like piece. I marvel, I am humbled actually, at how easily she falls into the speech patterns and cadence for such a story. Over a hundred pages later (singled spaced no less), her story has such life.

When we started, we would sit at one computer together and write. We started with some of her pieces and began reworking them. I would type until she saw where I was going and then she would take over the keyboard and mouse. In short, most of my instruction was modeling. We would also, of course, talk through her work to cover grammar and literary elements instruction. For the most part, though, we collaborated together in the purest sense.

Perhaps we should take the time to write together now...having moved from teacher and student to equals in composition...of course, all the good bits we'd do would have to go into my story...hers has plenty of them already!