An update from our thirty-first Writing Workshop (and the first of 2021)! A summary of the workshop held on Saturday January 23, plus some of the output published below To start our first season of classes in 2021, William focused on the idea of chance: the idea–or even the fact–that life and art is filled with twists and turns, and we don’t know the whole story until it’s over. He used several examples from the work of composer John Cage to explore the idea of chance in composition, the idea that the composer decides on a range of permutations that the performers and audience then use to produce the piece. Similarly, he talked about change ringing, the British tradition of church bell-ringing in repeating yet varied patterns, where mathematics chooses the notes, but the musicians choose how the pattern is heard and Maddie (piano) and William (clarinet) played some patterns. We developed some random word lists, and a numeric system for choosing 6 at random from them, and then everyone wrote for half an hour incorporating those words into their poem, prose or story. The Writing Challenge: Select your 6 random words using a system that truly allocates them at random(!), and use them in your writing at various points to move, disrupt, change or direct the action. Everyone had slightly different words to work with, but the master list included: guinea pig, and, dragon, destroy, watermelon, wolf, jello, global warming, cat, tree, happy, flame, whisper, cinnamon, green, basket, running, moderate, fall, hat, boat, suddenly, skull, mythology, stream, sing, soundlessly, furious… The Participants: Maddie, Peri, Julia, Helen, Leo, Eve, Lindsay, Lina K, Elbert, Kaidyn, Georgia, Reese, Simran, Katie, Samantha, Lucy K, Maggie, Yasmine, Lucy R, Julia A, Rachel, Ava, Margaret, Emma, Madeline, Nami, Siri, Pranjoli, Lena, Charlotte K, Anya, Anna, Aelin, Charlotte M, Grace, Alice, Liam, Sierra, Tilly, Olivia Z, Angela, Jonathan, Julia W, Hera, Louis, Enni, Elise, Nova, Emi, Sadie, Anya. Lena Aloise, 11Harvard, MA The Evolution of an Author Lena Aloise, 11 I remember standing at the very top of the jungle gym. While two chestnut braids swayed down by my hips And bangs, in need of a trimming, fell down over my eyes. And little dollhouse people bustled about below. I remember quietly, Quizzically surveying my domain. As a ravenous confusion gnawed away At a corner of my consciousness. Why did those surrounding me take such pleasure In filling meaningless shapes with garish crayon colors And standing at the front of the line? I remember opening the pink lunchbox My mother had lovingly filled that morning. And taking out a bunch of grapes Pretending I was a hungry dragon Going grape picking. Do dragons like grapes? I giggled at the thought of a bloodthirsty beast Eating a fruit salad. I remember Suddenly pointing to a thick novel, Collecting dust on an overhead shelf. Pulling it down And hoisting the cover open. Harry Potter I read And the Sor—-cer—-ers Stone “Maybe when you’re older.” my mother reassured me, Tentatively placing it back up on the shelf. But later that night Inevitably destroying my five-year-old innocence Hauling the book to my bedroom. Letting myself slip beneath the surface Into a place where words formed a perfect melody And the story rolled off my lips Sweet as spun sugar. I remember. Picking up that despised crayon box. Pulling out a shade of sparkling blue And making the words Once upon a time. . . Sierra E., 11Mountain View, CA The Guinea Pig Left Behind Sierra E., 11 The guinea pig shuffled around, pacing in her cage, and padding about on the soft scraps of wood beneath her paws. She had been waiting in a lonely, desolate classroom for nearly a month now, wondering if anyone would ever return. Blasts of scalding heat would occasionally float through an open window, and the soft, comfortable evening breeze would come along after. This guinea pig was quite a sociable one, always grateful to have the students and teachers around when they were, but now that there wasn’t a human in sight, she found herself bored from morning to night. It was a sunny, summer Sunday afternoon. A child sat in his backyard on the cool grass under the shade of an ancient willow tree that had been planted long before his birth six years back, playing joyfully beneath the chirps of cheerful birds. He lived right beside the local elementary school, where there were often mysterious whistling sounds echoing out of it. Today’s noise was especially loud, and the boy was also in the mood for adventure and mischief, so he sprinted around the bushes of his yard and past the school gates one building down the street. The guinea pig whined as loud as she could. Still? Still no one? Why did all of the usually friendly ones at the school suddenly want to starve her? She was always well-behaved. Up until now, at least. Gnawing on the bars of her cage which suddenly felt like a prison cell, she broke free, and took a flying leap off of the dresser that she had sat on for so long. She fell painfully onto the gray-speckled tiles of the classroom floor, whimpering harder than ever. The boy ran faster. And faster, into his classroom he had spent so much time in the previous year. “Patches!” he shouted, “Patches? Is that you?” The child burst through the door of Room 302, shocked to find the beloved class pet lying abandoned on the ground. “Patches!” he cried, worried, as he kneeled down to lift the creature into his hands. The tiny guinea pig turned up its small, piebald-colored face to view the child with its own dark eyes. The creature smiled the best she could, feeling comforted at last. With that, the boy took off running again, and disappeared down the school halls and all the way back home, ready to care for the guinea pig that would be his for the remainder of summer. Lindsay
Flash Contest #27, January 2021: Write a science fiction story about a character who lives one hundred years in the future–our winners and their work
Our January Flash Contest was based on our weekly creativity prompt #134, challenging writers to project themselves 100 years into the future. Entrants took us on journeys to other planets, introduced us to amazing futuristic inventions, launched spaceships and created inventive architecture. Like a lot of the best science fiction, our writers used elements of the present to project us into a possible future. We met realistic characters encountering real problems (such as the longer term effects of climate change), as well as alien creatures and sentient robots. Well done to everyone who worked so hard on their stories, we really appreciated the quality of all the entries this month. In addition to our usual 5 winners and 5 honorable mentions, we selected one entry for publication on the Stone Soup Blog in the coming weeks. Thank you for sharing your creative visions of the future world with us! In particular, we congratulate our Honorable Mentions and our Winners, whose work you can appreciate below. Winners “Stranded” by Rex Huang, 11, Lake Oswego, OR “The Turning Point” by Kaidyn Robertson, 11, Sooke, BC, Canada “A Knock on the President’s Door” by Ava Shorten, 11, Mallow, Cork, Ireland “The Meteorite” by Julia Wang, 12, Wynnewood, PA “True Self” by Yasmine Weinberger, 11, Washington, DC Honorable Mentions “Lunar Scavenger Hunt” by Riya Agarwal, 10, Portland, OR “Zen the Space Robot” by Ender Ippolito, 9, Portland, OR “Bobbo” by Cathy Jiang, 11, Portland, OR “Under the Sea” by Grace Mancini, 12, Glenside, PA “A 100 years by Anaiya Nasir”, 12, Bellaire TX Chosen for the Stone Soup Covid-19 Blog “2020” by Eden George, 10, Brooklyn, NY Rex Huang, 11Lake Oswego, OR Stranded Rex Huang, 11 The cool breeze whistled Anya to sleep as it always had. There were so few comforting things here, she had to talk to the rocks to keep her sanity! The world has long lost their charm of the bright holo screens or the rainbow colored outerwear. No, all that has sunken beneath the waves, across the miles and miles of vast empty sea that was once known as earth. Thankfully, Anya had found a patch of ground not yet swallowed by the ocean’s expanding belly. She still shivers at the thought of her little sister screaming at the top of her lungs “Help me Anya, help me! Help me!” but both of them knew it was hopeless. The ladders, destroyed. Fire escape, long gone for luxury reasons. And the hoverdrones? This makes her shake her head in disappointment. The people were drowning and the wealthy wanted to watch them die? She screamed and screeched at the flying tortoises but to no avail. She could even hear the faintest bit of laughter. But that doesn’t matter. Any day, the water will swallow this tiny patch of land that she has called home for nearly a year. She had been living, surviving each day by drinking the rain water she collected in a bottle that washed ashore, and was eating the tough coconuts from the tree next to her. She guessed they were not ripe, as she had eaten some before and they were much more soft. She had always hoped for the government to make an effort to drain the water, so that she could at least return home albeit without her family. And yet, she knew in her heart that her death by the sea, which agonizingly only came up an inch each day, was inevitable. She stomps the ground in frustration, remembering this, but when she lifted her foot, she found a piece of paper. The paper was really only the second she had seen, besides the sheet from the museum labeled “Ancient Civilization”. She picked up the paper, ever so gently. It shows a drawing of an island similar to hers. It illustrates an island having the crescent shape of a banana with a pin straight at the top. Could it be? She had always thought of her island more like the funky flower pots at home, but she started to visualize the possibility of the bottom of the banana being flooded, she realized this map was about her island! She was excited to the bone, and kept examining what the paper had to show. There was a dot trail from the rose bush she had stumbled upon when first reaching the island leading up the very palm tree beside her feet. This was it! She had heard stories of the olden day’s pirates finding treasures as many times as she had laid in her bed! But there was no big fat X as the old stories had said. So, she flipped the paper, and on that sign there was a mutated grasshopper face. She knew what that meant. It was the new world’s sign of labor and duty. Which meant she had to dig up every place on the island. She quickly assessed the size of the island, and quickly came to the conclusion that it was at least as large as 9 parking lots. No chance. She frantically scanned the paper for any extra clues. And after a couple minutes, she found something. There were trees drawn where the actual trees on the island weren’t. Wondering what this meant, she walked up to a tree and realized what type of tree it was. It was a Corrion tree. Then it struck her: Corrion leaves were notorious for being more moist when being close to metals! She frantically felt the leaves, knowing she had little time to find whatever was buried deep beneath. She eventually found out that it was facing to the very center of the line, and began digging as fast as a dog who knows there’s a bone, knowing that treasure awaits her. She soon found a large metal cone striking out of the ground. This is it, she thought. There has to be some absurd piece of technology hidden beneath, hopefully one that could get her off of the wretched island that was bound to sink as low as all that sunk before. Digging some more, she found. . . another piece of paper. She bellowed in frustration so hard that she made a seagull that was on a nearby Corrion tree squall and fly away. After overcoming this frustrating moment, she had the
Art Activity: Telling a Story with Multiple Perspectives in a Single Image
Procreate Emi Le’s artwork, “Invisible to Human,” is one of those deceptively simple pieces of art that reveals more, and poses more questions, the longer you look at it. There are so many intriguing things about it. Its title makes me stop and think as I focus on the strange, many-limbed creature on the right. Maybe the human astronaut can’t see it, even with their flashlight apparently focused on it, but I get the feeling it can see the human–the subtitle could be “Visible to Alien”! I find my eye constantly drawn into that big, single eye with its blue center, one of the only colorful things amid the different shades of gray. Looking at the whole image, I love the way Emi has used diagonal planes of light and dark to illustrate what is visible to each of the figures, and what is not. The alien’s tentacle vanishes into the blackness of the human’s experience, while the human steps forward into what they perceive as lonely darkness, somehow behind and unable to see the presence of the creature the viewers are so aware of in the foreground. The different degrees of dark keep the mood somber and somehow secretive. One of the things that gives the image power is the strong sense of a story behind it. How did either of the creatures get here? Will the astronaut walk behind the alien, or right into it? Will the alien turn around and move those tentacles around the astronaut, or will they just glide past one another, the alien remaining forever “invisible to human”? It’s mysterious, and just a bit sinister. The Activity Click on the link to see a higher resolution version of “Invisible to Human”. Spend at least 5 minutes studying the image, observing the details discussed in the paragraph above and noting your own thoughts about the use of color, perspective, dark and light, the outlines, the shapes. How does the image make you feel? What story is it telling you? What is it about the way the image is made that makes you feel those feelings or understand that story? Think, too, about the impact of the medium on the art. Emi used a program called Procreate, which is a piece of digital drawing software for iPads. There are many other digital art programs, some of which are free of charge. If you have access to one of those devices or programs, use this project as a chance to experiment with what you can do. If not, use your favourite pencils or pastels to make your work. Imagine your own scenario in which a human and an alien encounter one another. What happens? Think about who can see what (the human, the alien, the viewer of the art), and try to show the different perspectives. Tell your story and create your mood with your use of line, color, perspective, and light.
