New program brings writing mentors to Whitefish High School

Scientist and author Cristina Eisenberg still remembers the C she got in her college English class.

“I flunked English 101 on how to write an essay,” she said. “The teacher said I couldn’t write and I didn’t write again for 20 years.”

Eisenberg last week recalled the moment to a group of young writers at Whitefish High School.

“I taught myself to write as a way to nourish my soul,” she said. “It started when I had two little kids at home and I wanted a way to do something creative. I took a writing workshop. I spent a year writing before I was published.”

Eisenberg is the chief scientist at Earthwatch Institute and as an ecologist she studies wolves and fire in the Rocky Mountain ecosystems. She has published two books on predators and is working on a third focused on climate change. She serves as an editor for the Ecological Society of America’s scientific journal and on the editorial board of Oregon State University Press.

Even through she is writing her third book, Eisenberg noted that it hasn’t gotten any easier. She’s currently struggling with a chapter on polar bears.

“But that’s when your voice comes out,” she said. “When it’s one o’clock in the morning and you’re on draft 23. There’s no real short cuts you just have to surrender to the process.”

The Whitefish Review and the Whitefish Education Foundation are working together to launch the writing coaches program at the high school. Last week’s presentation by Eisenberg and Brian Schott, editor of the literary journal the Whitefish Review, was the kick-off for the pilot program.

The writing coaches program will begin with two English classrooms. This spring, editors from the Whitefish Review and community volunteers will serve as writing coaches working one-on-one with students.

Schott said the Whitefish program is being designed based off the Writing Coaches of Missoula, a nonprofit that trains community volunteers to work with student writers in middle and high school classrooms throughout Missoula County. The Missoula coaches work with students coaching them through classroom writing assignments.

Eisenberg read some of her work during her visit to the high school and, along with Schott, offered tips on the writing process.

Don’t make your story too long — sometimes that means cutting the last two paragraphs. Revision is important — good writing can be poetry. Find a good editor — have someone that can help you delete those unnecessary paragraphs.

Importantly, they said, outstanding writers snatch their readers attention right from the first words and hold on through the ensuing paragraphs of a story.

“You have to have a strong lead,” Schott said. “You have to get the reader interested.”

“If I’m not hooked by the first paragraph, I’m not likely to keep going,” Eisenberg added. “The first paragraph is everything.”

In her book, “The Carnivore Way,” Eisenberg begins by recalling her personal story of moving from California to Montana during the mid-1990s. A National Geographic article profiling Highway 93 prompted her to pack up with her two small children and dog, setting out on a journey to find a new home. Eventually her husband joined her and they purchased a remote cabin near Bigfork on land with a “thick, second-growth forest and a large meadow.”

By the late-1990s, wolves began to naturally recolonize their land coming south from Canada. One day along with her daughters, she saw wolves hunting on her land. She watched over the coming years, as deer and elk had to be much more alert to avoid getting killed by wolves, thus reducing their impact on plants causing their once heavily browsed meadow to become filled with tall shrubs and trees. What she observed prompted her to become an ecologist.

Her personal journey became the introduction to her book after her editor rejected her first attempt and asked why she was writing the book.

“My editor pulled that piece of writing from me,” she said. “The reviewers all loved the introduction. It started with my personal journey and that established a relationship with the reader. The book is used as a science textbook and also in creative writing classes.”

Schott pointed to the section as an example of why Eisenberg is an effective writer.

“She weaves her personal narrative into the science,” he said. “Science writer can be dry, but if you want people to listen you have to figure out a way to write a compelling story about science.”

In closing, Schott gave the students a writing challenge, asking them to create their own story based on the idea of “change.” It is the theme for the next edition of the Whitefish Review.

“The Whitefish Review has always wanted to help writers along the way,” he said. “We want to take young writers with that spark in them and help them.”

Volunteer writing coaches do not need to have experience as a professional writer and will receive training before working with students.

For more information, contact Schott at brian@whitefishreview.org.