Grand View (pencil) by Analise Braddock, 11; published in Stone Soup February 2023 A note from Emma Wood Hello, Tomorrow, my son Sawyer will turn one! In addition to being the “baby” of our family, he has felt like a baby much longer than his sister did—slow to crawl, slow to talk, and he’s still not walking or waving!—so it’s hard to believe that, by tomorrow, his age will no longer be measurable solely in months. The rational side of me knew that of course, he would grow up, but the irrational side didn’t really believe this—part of me believed he would always be a baby. Our baby! I’ve been thinking a lot in the past couple of weeks about how drastically different my experience of the first year of Sawyer’s life was from the first year of my daughter’s life, and the role that writing played in that. I loved Margot fiercely but my depression and anxiety prevented me from really enjoying her. During her first year, I wasn’t writing at all—and in fact, it wasn’t until I began writing again that the mental fog began to lift. But during this past year, Sawyer’s first year of life, I never stopped writing—even if the writing was sometimes only notes dashed on my phone while I nursed him or rocked him at 2 a.m. And that made all the difference. This in turn has hammered home just how important writing and art-making are to mental health—and consequently how valuable and vital Stone Soup is. Writing is not just a way to… beget more writing. It is not “just” a means to develop creativity or critical thinking or to get better grades. It is a way to improve mental health, to nourish the mind and soul. Research has long shown that expressive writing has a major impact on mental health in both adults and children—it reduces stress, helps process trauma, improves self-confidence, and helps instill a sense of agency. Encouraging kids to develop a regular writing practice is one way to help combat the mental health crisis we are currently facing. My dream is to bring Stone Soup to as many kids in the country as we can—to get them reading and writing creatively, to change the world one writer at a time. A little over a week ago, we launched a GoFundMe to help realize this vision. As many of you know, like all print publications, Stone Soup has been in transition as digital media continues to change the publishing landscape. Now under new leadership for the first time in its history (that would be me!), we are poised to re-launch for the next generation. But you need your help to do so. We hope you will consider joining our GoFundMe campaign and help us continue to build the future we all want for our children and grandchildren. And for those of you have already contributed—my deepest thank you. Sending you warm wishes from Connecticut where we are experiencing record-low temperatures! Youth Advisory Board If you are under the age of 18, have ideas about how Stone Soup can grow or improve, and are interested in learning more about how nonprofits operate, please fill out this interest form. Stone Soup is published by Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization registered in the United States of America, EIN: 23-7317498.
How Stories Work—Writing Workshop #53: Images
An update from our fifty-third Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, January 28, plus some of the output published below This week, we discussed images. Images are a fundamental building block of writing, but what are they? An image is tangible and visible, something physical that we can see. To begin the lesson, we looked at several paintings, including The Scream by Edvard Munch. We noticed how feelings could be evoked by the artist using only images; The Scream evokes a sense of horror through its depiction of a man screaming on a bridge. Next, we read a few poems composed solely of concrete images, including “In the Station of the Metro” by Ezra Pound and two poems by William Carlos Williams. We discussed the feelings and ideas that these poems managed to evoke in each of us through imagery alone. The lesson: write poetry without explanation, use only images, allow the reader to derive their own meaning. The Challenge: Write a poem or story using only images—no explanation, no exposition, minimal adjectives. The Participants: Samarina, Genevieve, Emma, Jacey, Eric, Lucy, Katelyn, Aarush, Stella, Amaya, Yueling, Catherine, Ava, Alice, Aislyn, Lindsay, Seva, Lina, Aurelia If Only it Wasn’t Me Amaya Chugani, 9 Watching that girl drop holding that breathless baby in her warm hands Sitting on the street my palms wishing to brush her shoulder The rain Dripping on her ragged clothes Her hair keeping the limp baby warm, hoping Her tears raining on the baby sitting in front of the big stone building if only I could invite her in Her holding the breathless baby in her scared hands
How Stories Work—Writing Workshop #52: Micro Fiction
An update from our fifty-second Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, January 21, plus some of the output published below In our first workshop of the new year, we were so happy to see many familiar faces, as well as many new ones. Conner began the workshop by reading three examples of micro fiction—“Sticks” by George Saunders, “Give It Up” by Franz Kafka, and “You Know, Quiet” by David Gaffney. Then, Conner asked students to outline characteristics of micro fiction based on these examples. Students concluded that some key features of microfiction are that the brevity of the pieces forces readers to “think about the title, and the “iceberg technique” is used, meaning much context is left unwritten. Conner advised students to move fast, start in the middle, introduce few characters, and choose words carefully, using few to no adjectives. As a mini-challenge, Conner then gave students one minute to write a prompt based on the examples of micro fiction they had read. The Challenge: Using one of the prompts from our mini-challenge, write a piece of micro fiction. The Participants: Lindsay, Anushka, Amaya, Genevieve, Seva, Lucy, Catherine, Yueling, Stella, Ava, Srujana, Lina, Emma, Arjun Where’s My Coffee? Arjun Nair, 11 I didn’t get my coffee this morning. They said they were out of milk, so I walked right in and checked for myself. This made me mad all day, and I even ripped some important documents up. Later today, I was fired. I tried to explain to my boss that there was no coffee, but he didn’t want to hear it. I took his coffee mug with me as I walked out the door.
