An update from our fourth weekly writing workshop A summary of this week’s project, plus some of the output published below The Stone Soup Weekly Writing Workshop is open to all Stone Soup contributors and subscribers during the COVID-19-related school closures and shelter-in-place arrangements. Every Friday, we meet for one hour via Zoom to respond to a new writing challenge, write together in our virtual room, and then share what we have written with one another. At our session on Friday April 24, we introduced ourselves and got straight into a discussion of this week’s theme: Trapped! William Rubel, Stone Soup’s founder, presented some images and ideas about being trapped, entrapment, and prisons of various kinds: Traps for birds depicted by Breughel; pulp fiction “Trapped by Love” book covers; ideas about mental traps that people set for themselves; fear of entrapment in humans and animals. Before getting down to our own writing, groups members shared some brainstorming ideas for some more specific ways of thinking about the theme. Brainstorming ideas: – trapping yourself in a bad friendship – you might know this is not a good person, but you do it anyway. – a personal barrier acting as a trap: you want something, but you somehow feel prevented from reaching it, without there necessarily being an obvious reason outside of yourself. – an emotional barrier, such as fear, anger, disappointment, being scared for something, or of what might happen if you take an action. – being trapped by other people’s expectations of you. – being caught out by an enemy (which could be a person or a thing), e.g. being trapped in a elevator. The Writing Challenge: What are your ideas around the idea of being trapped? This concept is as broad as you want to make it, and can include: traps; those who entrap; those who are entrapped (who are either very conscious of it or, for one reason or another, feel themselves not to be trapped when they are); and even those who dream of escape or have escaped! The Participants: Lena (10), Ever (10), Emily (10), Analise (9), Liam (12), Peri (10), Suman (10), Djin (10), Ma’ayan (13), Anya (13), Lucy (12), Georgia (11), Isabella (9), Emilia (6), Tristan (14), Gracie (12), Lauren (10), Maggie (11), Joanna, Sophia (10), Allegra (10), Arianna (9), Aviya & Kesed. There was a lot of free thought going on within the idea of being trapped–and as usual some great writing resulted from our half hour of concentration, which authors then read aloud to the group. There was some encouraging feedback for the writers in the chat section, besides lots of positive verbal responses to the individual readings. We are all overwhelmed by how talented all our workshop participants are, and how their ideas are just on fire for every workshop! Below you can read a few examples of this week’s great workshop output. Puppet Strings By Lena Aloise, 10 The Earth spins silently, In its unseen chains of gravity. The moon plays with the evening tide, On puppet strings. Our hearts flutter in our chests, Because our minds instruct them to. And clouds are pushed by the summer breeze. Are we all just things on our puppet strings, Being controlled by some greater force. Is the existence of humanity, Just an idea thought up by someone else? And if we are just things on a puppet string, Who is the person holding the other side? Or do we cut our puppet strings? Pave our own paths of destiny? Could it be that we bend the bars, Of the prisons of our universe? Concealed By Analise Braddock, 9 The only trap she could stumble through took her He trapped her desire concealing it in her Feeding her the past the trapped moments turn into hours Gripping her freedom but still holding the time Inside where she’s trapped and concealed Eventually she breaks out her desire forever lost Not Here By Anya Geist, 13 I’m standing, watching I know that most people Would give anything to be where I am Would love to bounce, weightless on the Moon Would love to walk in space Would love to see the Earth from afar But none of them are here They say they would love to be here But they aren’t, they’re aren’t here And I know, in my heart They won’t ever be And so I stand And I stare at the Earth Watching the clouds drift over land I remember land, the touch of soft grass I see the oceans, so expansive I remember the feeling of waves and water But will I ever see them again? Weeks ago communications went out No one has come, no one has fixed them I am here, on the edge of the Moon The place everyone dreams of being But I am not here, not in the place where everyone is Untitled By Anya Geist, 13 There is water all around me, murky and dark. Growing darker, darker. Light hardly reaches down here, in the bowels of the lake. It’s like being in a forest, a forest where evil whistles in your ear with every blow of the wind, where every crack of a branch is an enemy out to get you. The vague reflections of my friends on the surface shimmer before my eyes, mirages. I am viewing them from another world, a world no one should venture into. Oh why, why did I take the dare? Hardly anyone has ever reached the bottom of the lake? But I am trying. My chest grows tighter and my ribs and lungs feel tied together. I hardly dare to waste my breath and it seems to shrink inside me, shriveling until I barely know it’s there. Whenever I do risk a slight exhale, whenever bubbles of air rise from my nose, free to return to the sunny surface, I feel a brief respite. But it is like smelling food when you are hungry. In the end, it only makes the pain
COVID-19: Experiences in Singapore by Thee Sim Ling, 13
COVID-19: Experiences in Singapore by Thee Sim Ling, 13 The first I had heard about it was that it came from a fish market. I didn’t make much of it then. I just thought it would be a great excuse to shut down schools. Not that e-learning (or Home-Based Learning, as we call it here) seemed like a fun prospect—I would have to spend an entire day staring at a computer screen with my ears crushed by bulky headphones. (Wait till you hear about my Physical Education classes.) Never did I guess that in two months’ time, the World Health Organization would label COVID-19 as a pandemic. When Singapore first received news about this, some people, including the government, became pretty worried. We’re a tiny, tiny city-state—5 million people packed into 721 square kilometers—so a coronavirus would find it a piece of cake to rampage through our country. We are pretty close to China, and a lot of Chinese tourists come here. Plus, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) had hurt our country pretty badly, and every grown-up shudders when they recall that horrific time. Although the majority of our population is ethnically Chinese, you may be surprised to find out there is some anti-China sentiment around here. Some of us started to avoid tourists from China, or anybody who was speaking in a Mainland China accent. We also started to avoid anybody from one of the big “clusters”: members of a church that had several cases of COVID-19 were ostracised at public spaces and their workplaces. We even started acting hostile to healthcare workers, the very people fighting this virus every day. It brought back bad memories about SARS, where such a thing also happened. (During that period, a nurse had written on social media about her neighbors closing their windows whenever she returned home for fear of “catching the virus”.) However, we’ve started to realize such behavior is wrong. Our family, our teachers, and the commentaries in the newspaper keep telling us this: the virus doesn’t discriminate. Anybody can get it. Anybody can spread it. Most of us have been spurred to be kinder in these tough times. Placing hand sanitizers in the elevator of your apartment block; giving out free durians (yes, durians) to healthcare workers; celebrities coming together to sing songs of support and asking people to stay at home. I’ve also written notes for healthcare workers at a local hospital and for the Singapore art community (after the Singapore International Festival of Arts 2020 was placed on hiatus). We also started becoming more panicky. Nowadays the newspapers aren’t filled with stories about the Hong Kong democracy protests (like last year); instead, COVID-19 is dominating the headlines. We don’t use our fingers to press lift buttons anymore; we use our fingernails, our pens, our keys, anything that is not covered by the biggest organ of our body: our skin. Then, on one particular Friday, a bombshell was dropped: schools and offices will close, and a one-month circuit breaker would begin. No more playdates, no more ball sports, no more library visits. Just one-month of social isolation (and being locked up in a house with your family). I have mixed feelings about this circuit breaker (and HBL). For one, I can’t chat with my friends face-to-face, only through ungrammatical texts on my phone. It also means I have to exercise along to songs like Dance Monkey while my parents stare and try to hold back their laughter. Plus, with the whole country on the Internet, technical problems abound. Just this morning, my computer froze, and it took fifteen minutes to get it back online in time for lessons. But I guess HBL has its advantages too. It forces us to carry out more self-learning and take initiative for our own learning. (Okay, maybe I stole that quote from one of my teachers…) However, with the stuck-at-home situation, we have more time to carry out our hobbies, like reading that book you’ve been dying to read, or (like me) carving out more time to write, because that luxury is not available on a hectic school day. We have more time to do a proper clean-up of our house, and spend time with our family, such as having a proper dinner together (with no mobile devices in sight). COVID-19. To think that the first I had heard about it was that it came from a fish market. Thee Sim Ling, 13 Singapore
Flash Contest #3: Write From an Animal’s Point of View: Our Winners and Their Work!
Weekly Flash Contest #3: Write from the Point of View of an Animal Write about a day in the life of your pet or a friend’s pet, as if you were that pet. Remember to think about what it might be like to be an animal. How do they see the world? What do they think about humans and their fellow animals? What are their hopes, their dreams, their fears? This is a great exercise in point of view. The week commencing April 13th was a very special week for our Daily Creativity series. We had a takeover, by one of our readers, Molly Torinus, age 11, from Middleton, WI! Molly is a volunteer in our COVID-19 Focus Group, and she wrote a whole series of terrific writing prompts for us. When we planned her takeover, we all agreed that this prompt, challenging everyone to write from the point of view of an animal (Daily Creativity prompt #16), would be a great one to set as the contest. You all seemed to think so too, as we had a record number of entries! We were thrilled that Molly also joined the Stone Soup team to be one of this week’s judges. Once the contest closed at the end of last week we all read the entries independently, and gave them our own scores. Then, we put the 3 judges’ scores together to come up with a shortlist, and had a Zoom meeting to discuss it and agree the final results. It’s the first time we have had a reader judge in one of our contests, so it was very exciting for us to work with Molly on the contest: we can tell you that she was a very thoughtful and fair judge, and we really enjoyed working with her on this contest. We will try to get readers involved again in future, so look out for another takeover soon! We all very much enjoyed reading these entries, and we were impressed by the different ways people approached the challenge of thinking like their pets. We especially loved the entries that really sounded like the thoughts and behaviours of animals we have met. It was easy to agree on our top contestants; and we also wanted to honor some of the other entries, as there were so many good ones. So, this week, we are announcing our 5 Winners, whose work is published below, plus 4 Honorable Mentions. Congratulations to all of them, and thank you Molly for a great writing challenge, and a fantastic job as a judge! Winners (work published on this page) Yutia Li, 10, Houston, TX Anna Rosini, 12, Arlington, VA Audrey Tzeng, 11, Rocklin, CA Ella Yamamura, 12, Cary, NC Sophie Yu, 12, Houston, TX Honorable Mentions “Chickens and Playtime” by Nora Heiskell, 12, Philadelphia, PA “Piano Bunny” by Maya Mourshed, 8, Silver Spring, MD “The Great Indoors” by Enni Harlan, 13, Los Angeles, CA “A Good Summer Day: A Day in the Life of Moti” by Anushka Trivedi, 9, Silver Spring, MD We also received a drawing last week which seemed to fit really nicely with this contest, so we are using it as an illustration for this page. Allie Dollar, 11, of Monticello, FL, thought that the dogs–as well as their owners–should be wearing masks while out for their walks during the pandemic, so she drew some for them. Thank you, Allie! Remember, we are running the Flash Contest every week during the COVID-19-related school closures and shelter-in-place arrangements. It is always based on the first Daily Creativity prompt of the week. The prompt is posted on Monday, entries are due by Friday, and the winners are chosen and announced the following week. “Pixie,” by Yutia Li, 10 Ding-dong! Oh no. The doorbell is never a good sign. I hear a click and a creak, and an unfamiliar, pungent odor reaches my nostrils. I wrinkle my nose. This scent is new to me. It smells slightly like Olivia but with more of a sharp, aromatic tang. This person must’ve used some of that perfume thing that humans use. I hear energetic voices at the door. It’s Olivia and one of her friends, by the sound of it. Pretty pretty please don’t say that that person’s coming inside. No! The door slams shut, and footsteps round the corner. I make a dash for it, but it’s too late. The perfumey person is right on my heels. She scoops me up and cuddles me. Ew! That stupid odor. I think I’m allergic to it. “Pixie!” she coos. She has short brown hair and like, a trillion freckles. Kinda similar to Olivia, but her height is much shorter. Oh, and the stinky perfume, of course. “I’ve heard so much about you! You’re the best kitty ever, aren’t you? Yes you are. Such a cutie pie!” She scratches behind my ears, and I wince. No smelly hands are allowed on my beautiful fur! I try to scramble out of her arms, but her grip is too tight. After like, ten minutes of cuddling and rubbing, she finally releases me. I automatically scramble up the stairs and to my favorite hiding spot, a cubby right under Olivia’s bed. Her fragrance of fresh aloe and lavender never fails to soothe me. I’m just getting ready to doze off when the doorbell rings. Again?! More people? Ugh! This must be one of those playdates or whatever you call them. But I’m safe here. Olivia would never let any harm come to me. Yet as I lie there, the doorbell rings a third time. And a fourth. And a fifth. What the heck? Is this the largest playdate ever or something? I sure hope they don’t stay long. I don’t need any more perfumey people cuddling me today. OMG! My kibble! It’s almost my dinnertime! I can’t go and get my food with all these people down there, though! My mind is lost in a whirlwind of thoughts. But the scent of
