‘Wisconsin Writes’ video to feature Wilson
By Angie Landsverk
A Weyauwega-Fremont High School freshman is among writers from throughout the state being featured in a new educational video series.
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction series is called “Wisconsin Writes,” and Daisy Wilson is the local student who talked about her writing process while being videotaped for it.
Wilson is in the process of revising “Flight 55,” a novella she started in seventh grade and completed in eighth grade.
The filming for the DPI series took place Thursday, Jan. 28, in a W-F classroom.
“The point of the videos is to think about and talk about writing. The ultimate goal is to talk about writing with students, for them to use it in the classroom,” said Marci Glaus, a DPI English education consultant.
Last summer, Glaus began visiting authors in their usual writing spaces.
The idea is to provide a look at the habits, techniques and environments of writers.
Each author agrees to appear in two types of videos.
In one video, the authors demonstrate their writing process while working on actual pieces.
The second video is an interview, which includes the author giving advice about writing.
The series began last fall and includes New York Times Best Sellers, Wisconsin’s poet laureate, children’s authors and writers of non-fiction and fiction.
Installments are released approximately biweekly.
People may visit http://dpi.wi.gov/wisconsin-writes to watch the series.
The DPI is wrapping up the series around the end of the 2015-16 school year with the videos of Wilson.
Initially, the series was going to end with Nickolas Butler, author of the New York Times Best Seller, “Shotgun Love Songs,” Glaus said.
The discussion then turned to concluding the series with a teacher, followed by someone recommending that it end with a student, she said.
Glaus said one of the DPI’s literacy consultants connected her with Wilson and W-F Gifted and Talented Teacher Marnie Rotta.
That happened after Wilson, along with two other W-F students, participated in workshops last year at Cooperative Educational Service Agency 6, in Oshkosh.
Designed for middle school students, the workshops allowed students to share projects they were doing, Wilson said.
Wilson, who was reading well before she started kindergarten, began writing in fifth grade.
In seventh grade, she discovered Wattpad, an online writing community, and decided to write her own story.
She began with a few paragraphs and immediately had hundreds of people reading her work.
Her number of readers quickly grew.
Writing on a cellphone at the time, Wilson continued updating her work.
When Rotta joined the W-F School District last school year, she was interested in seeing Wilson’s work.
Wilson moved her story to a Google document and started attending CESA 6 workshops every few months, giving her the opportunity to continue working on her story.
The main character in her novella is Sadie, a college student on her way to Europe when the plane she is on crashes.
Wilson favorite genres are adventure and romance, and her story combines the two.
“Now, I’m in the editing process,” she said. “The entire plot is developed, but I’m revising all my writing from seventh grade.”
Berlin High School students provide feedback on her writing.
That started after Rotta attended a GT worshop and connected with a teacher there.
With a full schedule of classes and athletics this school year, Wilson is finding it more difficult to find time to write.
“By the end of the school year, I want to be done revising and editing,” she said. “I’m going to put it out on Wattpad then and hope a publisher picks it up.”
After writing for herself, Wilson is now figuring out how to write for an audience.
She loves Mark Twain’s style of writing and becomes aggravated when feedback from students is about her choice of words.
During last week’s videotaping, Wilson read some of the comments out loud as she tried to decide how to handle them.
Wilson says she does not want to “dumb down” her writing and plans to keep some of the words she truly enjoys in her story.
Rotta said Wilson develops her ideas before she writes them.
“She doesn’t compromise excellence,” Rotta said. “She understands it can have an impact, but she won’t lower her standards.”
In addition to writing, Wilson loves science and wants to be a surgeon some day.
However, her mother, Amanda Gilson, hopes she never stops writing.
“It’s been her passion for so long,” Gilson said.