Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 23, 1994 TAG: 9405250072
SECTION: NEWSFUN PAGE: NF-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By NANCY GLEINER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Nancy Ruth Patterson, who lives in Roanoke, writes children's books and gets some of her ideas from her own life. Her first book, "The Christmas Cup," was about a girl named Megan, but really, ``Megan was me when I was growing up,'' she said .
``I changed a few things to make it a better story, but almost everything in "The Christmas Cup" happened to me. The family in the book was my family, the house was my house, Nannie was my grandmother, and the Christmas Cup really existed," she said.
Patterson is director of CITY School, a Roanoke school for high school seniors with advanced classes in writing and other subjects, and director of writing programs for Roanoke City Schools.
She goes into classrooms and talks to students about writing and helps teachers learn to teach writing. She also talks a lot about reading because ``you have to read to be a writer.''
The first time she realized how rewarding it is to write was when she received a letter from a young girl named Molly, who wanted to be a writer. The letter made Patterson feel good that she had done something someone else enjoyed.
When she read Molly's letter, Patterson realized that, even though her own grandmother had died many years before, she still lives in the pages of Patterson's book, and that Molly had just met her.
``When you write about someone, they will live forever. That's part of why writers write - to save the lives of the people they love so that you never forget them,'' she said.
When something special happens to you, whether it's a birthday celebration, a good baseball game, doing well on a test or sharing a nice day with your family, it can be a wonderful beginning for a story.
And if you're writing fiction (an invented story from your imagination), you can begin with real events and change them or the people you write about to make the story more interesting.
Patterson's second book, "The Shiniest Rock of All," was about a real student of hers named Robert. In a story he did for class, Robert wrote about being made fun of because he couldn't pronounce his r's, so he couldn't say his name correctly.
His story "made a sound in my heart,'' she said. ``Most good books (or stories) come from the heart, from things that really matter to you.''
Find the things in your life that make you happy and that you would like to share with other people. It can be a special day or a class trip or riding bikes with your best friend, Patterson said.
Everyone has a story worth telling and only they can tell it in their own special way. ``You don't have to be brilliant or perfect in grammar or live in an exotic place to write a good story,'' Patterson said.
Patterson is working on two more children's books. She said she thinks writers write ``so that, maybe, because we write the world will be just a little bit better for somebody.''
She found out that is true sometimes. A mother wrote to her and said that when she couldn't afford to buy a Christmas gift for her child, she borrowed "The Christmas Cup" from a library and recorded it as her gift to her child.
It showed to Patterson and to anyone who hears that story that ``the magic of words is one of the greatest gifts anyone could give.''
by CNB