D.E.A.W.: Drop Everything and Write

This week is recognized as Drop Everything and Read Week. Sponsored by the American Library Association and utilized by many other library and reading programs, the event is celebrated in honor of children's author Beverly Cleary's birthday and brings to mind the "DEAR" tactic used by Ramona's family in Cleary's beloved book Ramona Quimby, Age 8.

Cleary herself advocated for DEAR in all of our lives, and extended the idea beyond the "official" celebration (which is kicked off on her birthday, April 12) to a Drop Everything and Read Month or, even better, a Drop Everything and Read Anytime. Her website proclaims: "We encourage you to 'Drop Everything and Read' every day throughout the year. The goal of the program is to prompt people to make reading a regular part of their routine... whether they’re reading solo or together with their classmates, parents, or friends. So, go ahead and join the millions of families, schools, bookstores, and communities who have participated throughout the years and pledge to 'drop' what you’re doing in order to read a good book.

I loved Beverly Cleary's books as a child and our family was one of avid readers.

But, when I was growing up, my parents started a similar activity that was geared toward writing.

I can't remember what Mom and Dad called it--I think it was just Family Writing Time--but it could have been called Drop Everything and Write.

My dad is a retired journalism professor who was always writing; I have fuzzy-colored memories of Dad sitting at the typewriter at his bedroom's writing desk working on his dissertation. The tome was huge--it towered high in my eight-year-old mind--and he made corrections with White Out and often retyped full pages. Today, he has more than 50 published books to his resume.

My mother taught high school English and also wrote as a freelancer for magazines. I remember the nights she'd come home from work, her arms filled with her students' journals; she assigned them to write in them everyday, and she'd give them big blue checkmarks if they completed their writing. (She didn't judge or grade them; she just wanted to make sure they were writing.) She discovered fiction in her later years, and today still writes.

They were the perfect parents to create a Drop Everything and Write Day.

In fact, they were parents who instilled a love of words in all sorts of ways. When we went on road and holiday trips to visit my grandparents, we'd have spelling bees. When my brother and I claimed that we were bored, we'd be given a stack of books or a Boggle game. When the Reader's Digest magazine arrived in the mail, we'd participate in learning the words from the "Build a Better Vocabulary" quiz.

It might sound boring, or too intellectual, to you. But with my parents it just worked. If not completely "cool," the activities were still fun; the quality time spent with my parents with words, books, notebooks, and pens is time I hold tightly in my heart.

Around the time I turned 11 or 12 (I was and always would be enamored with my books, but I was also discovering designer jeans and cute boys around the same time), my parents decided we needed a more formal appreciation of writing.

My designer-jean-wearing, cute-boy admiring self--along with a brother five years younger than myself who wanted to spend most of his time pretending to be a super hero or practicing his karate kicks--begrudgingly agreed.

Mom and Dad came up with a day of the week when we would spend some time devoted to writing. With the instructions to put everything else on hold for the next hour, Christopher and I pulled out our notebooks and wrote.

I wrote mostly journal entries (inspired perhaps by my mother's high school students) or stories about people in our neighborhood (inspired by my Dad's reporting classes at the local university, no doubt). Christopher designed and wrote comic books about karate-kicking superheroes.

I don't remember what Mom and Dad wrote, but I certainly wish those papers or notebooks could be located somewhere.

As my parents have started aging, they've begun whittling down and throwing things out. Just last week I visited them and they had a pile of board game boxes and office supplies ready to be packed up and given away. Over the last year, they've done similarly with stuffed animals from my childhood and various knick-knacks; my most treasured recent birthday gift was an album filled with photos from many decades past, which Dad had painstakingly scanned and printed out for me, along with greeting cards from long-ago celebrations and notes from long-gone relatives.

When I come to their house these days, Dad often greets me with: "We're really getting things cleaned up and squared away. Take anything you want."

It makes me a little teary eyed, that my parents are preparing me for a day when they will no longer be with us. I'm praying that it's many years from now, but how special that Mom and Dad know the value of legacy and memories.

As I consider the things they are parting with, I wonder...

If they still had their writings from those Drop Everything and Write sessions, what would those things reveal?

I imagine that Mom's writings would be entries in a prayer journal; she has spent years writing concerns and blessings in a notebook.

I imagine that Dad's may have been retellings of historical accounts; he's spent a lifetime researching and writing of both personal and greater histories.

Dropping everything and writing, you see, can do so much.

It can create a space that then creates memorable results--writing that can preserve memories, build characters, create a story, jumpstart a project.

It can also create memories with those around you. It's certainly admirable to drop everything and write alone, on your own. It's an excellent way to locate time to write and to commit to writing goals, but it's also a meaningful way to encourage writing with those near to you--your partner, you children, your writing friends.

As I think back on the memories of my parent-instigated writing times, I wonder it it's something I should do again.

Perhaps I could...

1) Locate a specific span of time each day, or on a particular day of each week. During that time, simply free write. Use the time to write on something other than a current project.

2) The next time I'm in the middle of a project and I get stuck by writer's block...stop, drop, and write on something completely different.

3) Get together with a group of writing friends and have a Drop Everything and Write Retreat. The retreat could take place for an afternoon at a park, or for a weekend at a local lodge.

4) Do a virtual Drop Everything and Write. Gather with other writing friends online and commit to forget about other responsibilities (doesn't that sound good?) and just write.

5) If you have children, do what my parents did and commit to making writing a family activity. They may not even be writers, but the activity may spark and interest.

6) Drop Everything and Write today and now.

I count it a blessing that I was raised in a home that valued words, by parents who valued writing.

It was a unique way of growing up--I know that there are probably few like me who had an upbringing where playing sports and writing, or holding down a job and reading, or watching television and playing Scrabble, were valued equally--but I wouldn't change it for anything.

It taught me the value of dropping everything to read

and to write.

It taught me the value of legacy and

what words you leave behind.