Mary woke up and broke her foot. Nobody was in the house. Her closet doors were shaking. She got up very quickly. She went to the kitchen to get the telephone and called 911. When the police got there she was on the floor dead.


The above beginning of a story was written by Claire Lerner who was visiting our home two years ago with her parents, Higgy and Renee. I love the accidental ease with which Claire, age 11, just "fell" into her story. She did this while we, the adults at the table were talking. Bored, Claire opened my laptop, which is always on the long white pine trestle table in our kitchen (in all of our kitchens since 1972) here in Florida. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Claire tickle the keys a little. Then, satisfied she had a good beginning, she quit typing and went outside.

Claire's facile typing produced, I think, a good beginning. A springboard for more, and more. I don't know if she ever wrote another word, but it doesn't matter. In such good beginnings, the story lies in wait for the writer to return.

Here is another from a young writer in New York state. His reading teacher, an old friend of ours, Fred Burstein is a very gifted man -- poet, story writer, picture book author, fine woodworker, sculptor, former actor on daytime TV -- all rolled into one. But it's Fred's finesse and intuitive skill as a reading coach that has made him one of the best teachers in America. His student Joshua wrote this --

In the Woods
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by Joshua Kenneth Swartz
>
>
>I don't know the last time I was in the woods. I don't live by the woods.
>The last time I was in the woods I had a tick on my shoulder and it was
>sucking the blood out of me. It was this big, about 2 inches, dangling
>from my shoulder. Another time I had two ticks on my leg. My mom used a
>hair clip or something with a rubber tip. She tried to burn the tick off
>with it and instead she burned me. Then she took her name tag with a clip
>and she grabbed it with that and then pulled it out. When she burned me it
>really hurt.
>
>In my back yard there is a water falls like Niagara Falls. It makes
>a "D" and I tried to walk through it and my hand got wrapped around a
>thorn. I don't know how. I can take prickers and regular thorns but not
>blood thorns. Those are the long red ones. That's what I went through and
>they went into my skin. I didn't bleed because I took them out a certain
>way. You have to twist the thorn right a little, then twist it left twice,
>then push down gently and you yank out quickly and put your finger over
> the hole and it doesn't bleed.
>
>Once I was in the woods and I heard a branch start to crack so I
>stood under it so it would hit me. It didn't really hurt. Then I just
>walked home.

Good work, Joshua and Claire, keep those stories coming. With a good beginning, the story will practically write itself.
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