Wednesday, March 24, 2010

A Haiku, by Em

Em is a writer. At 12, she has a much more mature 'voice' than I did at her age. It's in the vocabulary and--I think more interestingly--in the innate sense of humor, of irony, of sarcasm that she's developed.

(Her spelling and grammar, on the other hand, are atrocious. She gets that--along with a good amount of her talent--from her dad, whose ability to write dialogue is astonishing, but who, for instance, puts arbitrary questions marks at the end of statements. Drives me insane.)

Last night, as just a small part of her English homework, she had to write a poem. It wasn't five minutes between the time she told me she was going to do a haiku and when she came out, grinning, to read me what she'd come up with:

I enjoy talking.
I probably talk too much.
Just ask my teachers.

Self-awareness. It's a key writerly trait, don't you think?

6 comments:

Niksmom said...

ROFL! Priceless.

PnP said...

Perfect!

Magpie said...

That's terrific.

AB said...

A genius!!! Like her maternal grandmother.

My father died when she was 14 and she wrote a paper for school call My Father and the teacher failed her because she said that someone else wrote it, that L could never write that. My poor mother had to go to school and fight...

Writing runs in the family except for moi'.

EJ Willingham said...

Yes. I do think. Well done.

Roni said...

LOVE it!!