Local author Sarah L. Thompson led a historical fiction writing workshop for West Bath fifth graders on Monday as part of a daylong visit to the school to promote literacy learning. Students gathered in the school library as Thompson spoke about her writing process, read a chapter from her new novel “Deadly Flowers” and gave the fifth graders a writing assignment.

Thompson, who has written more than 30 children’s books and six poetry collections. She lives in Portland and has been writing full time since 2003.

“I think it’s so valuable for students to connect with authors to better understand the different audiences and purposes when writing,” said West Bath School librarian Laura Rosenburg, who brought Thompson to the school. “Connecting with authors really allows students to think about how they can share their ideas and words with a larger audience in a way that matters.”

Thompson has been talking to students across New England about writing for more than 10 years.

“I love coming to schools,” said Thompson. “I love reading out loud and watching the students’ reactions. When you’re alone in a room you don’t get to see how the audience is going to react. And I love demystifying the writing process for kids. I wanted to be a writer from when I was very young, but I was pretty sure you had to be famous and dead. It didn’t occur to me that it was something normal people did.”

On Monday, Thompson broke down the research, writing and editing process for “Deadly Flowers,” which follows an adolescent female ninja in feudal Japan as she tries to fit into an all-girl ninja camp.

“I had read a little snippet about girl ninjas, but I didn’t really know what ninjas did,” Thompson said to the students on Monday. “I had to know all of the stuff to make this story work, so I had to go do a bunch of research.”

After sharing what she learned about feudal Japan while researching for her novel, Thompson assigned the students with a five minute writing exercise. The goal was to come up with their own story ideas about ninjas in a feudal Japan setting, based on what they had just learned. Students then shared their ideas, and Thompson closed the workshop with a recommendation to “read as much as you can.”

“All of my ideas come from reading books,” said Thompson.

“I learned a lot of things about ninjas today, and a lot of different things about Sarah herself,” said fifth-grader Addie Hines. “I learned that she writes all sorts of books, not just historical fiction, and that writing is more difficult than it seems.”

Fifth-grader Shelby Emerson said that she “learned a lot of things” that she didn’t know before, including “all of the names of ninjas.”

“One idea that was helpful was laying out all the chapter ideas in an outline,” said Emerson. “That will make it a lot easier to write.”

Thompson said that her mission is to normalize writing as much as possible for students so that the process doesn’t seem daunting.

“I try hard to get a writing exercise into my presentations to get students to realize that what they just did in five minutes is what I do,” said Thompson. “I just do it for two years and then I have a book. When you look at the finished product, it’s hard to realize that somebody sat down with a pen and started with ‘The.’ It’s so much about the keeping going. I just want kids to know that it’s not about having a book at the end. It’s about having one sentence after another.”

bgoodridge@timesrecord.com