An update from our eleventh Weekly Writing Workshop! A summary of the workshop, plus some of the output published below The Stone Soup Weekly Writing Workshop is open to all Stone Soup contributors and subscribers. Every Friday, we meet for an hour-and-a-half 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. Our session on Friday June 12 posed the most challenging challenge yet: to try to write something where multiple voices are talking at once, in the same place, on the same subject, but not necessarily communicating with one another. We were joined by Prof. Dan Selden, a comparative literature professor at UCSC, and polyglot, to discuss the ways in which this kind of simultaneous story-telling unfolds in opera, and watched a selection of video clips of quartets and quintets from operas by Verdi, Rossini and Mozart. After a short discussion, the group spent time working on their pieces and then read aloud–in one case, with the participation of the whole group to simulate the overlapping voices in the writing (see Anya Geist’s work below). This was definitely the hardest thing we have tried to do in the workshop yet, but as always, everyone rose to the challenge and produced some amazing work, some of which you can read below. This week, we welcomed a record number of students, including a group from France, into the group. We’re glad you can all join us! The Writing Challenge: Write a piece one one subject, in one location, at the same time, using more than one voice. The Participants: Georgia, Ever, Benjamin, Seraj, Lucy, Liam H, Tilly, Katie, Eugenie, Maddie, Ma’ayan, Enni, Rhian, Flynn, Will, Seung Taek, Gregoire, Enya, Jules, James, Sophia, Aditi, Maddi, Clara, Agathe, Amy, Charlotte, Annais, Jasmine, Addison, Saige, Candice, Carolina, Teresa, Lily, Zacharie, Zaryama, Adam, Anastasia, Liam, Keraj, Vishnu, Eve… and more! Anya Geist, 14Worcester, MA A Day at the Pond Anya Geist, 14 Peri Gordon, 10Sherman Oaks, CA Four Person Conflict Peri Gordon, 10 Xander and Dylan have been secretly robbing the town, not even telling their respective wives, Elise and Sandra. Those wives found out, though, and told the town’s mayor. The aftermath is a mix of guilt and anger. Sandra didn’t regret what she did. Elise regretted it. Dylan felt everything was all his fault. Xander felt pure anger with Elise and Sandra. They deserve punishment, going around and robbing every last person in town without anyone knowing! Not even their own wives! They have their secrets, why oh why did we have to spoil their fun? How terrible we are! Oh, I shouldn’t have gone along with this plan; I could have assured Xander that it was unnecessary! I don’t blame the girls for telling the mayor; I’m sure I would in their shoes! Oh, how I hate this mess I’ve gotten myself into! Those two little liars! I thought I could trust them, but there they went, snooping for our secrets! That maniacal Sandra! And her little sidekick, Elise, also known as my wife! Oh, how I hate those two now! Oh, how traitorous we are, Xander shall never forgive me! I’m sure he hates me, all the way to the core! My darling! Now my nemesis! Oh, how my Sandra will be ashamed of me! She has a complete right to be flaming mad at us! I shouldn’t have gone along with Xander’s plan, oh, how I shouldn’t have! I can’t believe they didn’t tell us! We’re their wives! Wives of robbers without knowing it! Wives of criminals! Those traitors! Those double-crossing traitors! I’ll never speak to them again, not if I can help it! Those traitors! Those traitorous fools! Liam Hancock, 12Danville, CA It Takes Us All: A Narrative Poem Liam Hancock, 12 Grasping, pulling. A timeless face lulling. He gropes. And he yanks Forever not holding. He drops the grain sand Poured from chapped hand And the sun and the thirst A constant demand As night, as day. The voices still holler It rings, it rings! But where is his caller? The mountains, the rocks And pink flowers bloom Yet he still remembers The sun takes him, too. Come, dear friend Come, please do find The ticking ticks on I seem not rewind This desert is death A dozen days wait Not falter your breath The thought I do hate Your face may still ashen Into dark sands The false, hopeful warmth Slipped from your hands Yet mine remain still Grasping for land The waves whisk me yet A constant demand He cries He shakes He feels the earth quake Someone awaits him A pressure can’t take The sun finds his way A knoll beyond day He lays down once more As he cries, casts away And a dream sleep still holds From a long broken mind He is so, and so cold A rock to sleep behind Steady a falls Grasping, he pulls Waiting Someone’s waiting Out in the cold How to tell? She must never know Because what if she’s wrong And the renegade still holds? A cowboy of death Harrumphing with step And hollering Shouting Spoken miracles with breath? Oh, the pink flowers bloom And she presses, grows old But the boy is still waiting Waiting out in the cold Now the sand grasps it Breath stolen from its sides Because what would time be Without its own time? Alive, Alive, Was he ever alive? Or was the sky just a false The times atop times? An evil trick slain It will never be told But the desert, the sky? As night, and as day. Enni Harlan, 13Los Angeles, CA A Moment from Two Perspectives Enni Harlan, 13 Four little boys are playing outside my window. Each seems about six or seven, and they are wrestling with one another. Their screams and laughter fly through my closed window pane, and I glance outside. Their idea of “fun” astounds me, as I watch them
Teaching Children
Weekly Writing Workshop #10, Friday June 5, 2020: Fairytales With a Twist
An update from our tenth Weekly Writing Workshop! A summary of the workshop, 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 an hour and a half 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. Lena Aloise, 11Harvard, MA Our session on Friday June 5 was the first at our new time (09:00 PST), the first that we had a participant in Europe joining us, and–most exciting of all–the first run by one of its participants, Lena Aloise! Lena gave a wonderful, detailed presentation on the history and standard tropes of fairytales, and proposed ways of using those typical characteristics of traditional fairytales to subvert the form–and write a fairytale with a twist! After a lively Q&A discussion, the group got down to some serious writing, and came up with some marvellous variations on a lot of popular fairytales. Participants turned villains into heroes (and vice versa), played with setting and time period, recast the tale as a news story to look at things from a whole new perspective, and even combined multiple fairytales to make something new. What a great session. Thank you, Lena! The Writing Challenge: Write a fairytale–with a twist. The Participants: Lena, Ever, Peri, Katie, Tilly, Lucy, Georgia, Analise, Djin, Lalia, Emily, Anya, Gracie, Aditi, Ethan, Vishnu, and more! Anya Geist, 13Worcester, MA The Stowaway Anya Geist, 13 In the middle of the night, when the sky was clouded and dark, when fog cocooned all land, a plane took flight. But it was no ordinary plane, no. It was special, in a way. For this plane intended to travel to space. The planet Earth was growing crowded, stuffed with people like water in a glass, only this glass was spilling over, was dripping onto the ground, little droplets running away, falling off the edge of the world. And so evacuations had begun, begun with the magical citizens of Earth. And the two magical people in the world, whose powers could erupt like lava from a volcano or could be still, like a forest at night, were twins. Moon and Sun they were called, though no one knew their actual names. At any rate, they were the ones on the plane that night, being sent far into space, to some unknown planet, where their magic could help life begin anew. However, unbeknownst to them, there was a stowaway on board. You see, Sun and Moon lived in a grand palace, not in the north, south, east, or west, but in all places at once. And the children of Earth’s royalty, the ones who wouldn’t grow up to inherit polluted cities and razed farmlands, were often sent to the Palace of the Sun and Moon as pages, as servants. The stowaway in question was one of these servants, a messenger whose job was to bring notes from the people of Earth to the Sun and Moon. There was something about this stowaway, however, that was different than all of the other servants in the Palace. First, the stowaway–whose name was Mason–had chocolate-colored hair and caramel-colored eyes, and the sweetest temperament of any eleven-year-old to date. The other servants whispered about him, though, for his parents, the Lord and Lady Alberts of the North were dead. Their entire land, all of their cities and fields, their palace and their forests, had burnt. And Mason, their only son was left without an inheritance. There was another thing about Mason, though. Both of his parents had golden-blond hair, the color of honey, and their eyes were as green as the grass on the prettiest field. Rumors spread around the world that Mason was not actually the son of the Lord and Lady Alberts, that his parentage lay elsewhere. At any rate, Mason had stowed away on the plane because he had learned something very valuable in his job as a messenger. A secret about the world that could save it, and that could destroy Sun and Moon. One day, Mason had a job to deliver a message to a man underground, a man who lived deep inside the Earth. So Mason traveled to the location on the letter, somewhere in Antarctica, and while he crossed the beautiful snowy plains of the continent, something strange happened. The sun shone down on him, and for a moment, he was ablaze with light, as if wreathed in flames. He dropped the letter, and its seal broke upon the ground. It fell open, and Mason saw no option but to read it. This letter, as it happens, was intended to be of the utmost confidentiality, and had been sealed with an unbreakable seal. When Mason saw its contents, he was aghast. But he came to a resolution. The Sun and Moon were evil. Mason recounted these events as he hid in the back of the plane with the Sun and Moon. They were breaking through the cloud cover, and soon, Mason knew, they would emerge into space. It was then that he would have to confront them. The time came and Mason stood up. He coughed, and the Sun and Moon turned to look at him, with anger in their metallic, gleaming eyes. Mason winced as they began to advance. “What are you doing here?” they asked in perfect unison, their voices tempting and soft. “I know what you did,” Mason replied shakily, forcing himself to stand tall. “I know everything. And–and I’m here to stop you.” “Well, well,” they said, each seeming incapable of speaking on their own. “He knows.” They smiled and their teeth were horribly pointed, like jagged mountains erupting from the Earth. “Welcome, brother.” Mason paused, frozen. “You knew?” Then he shook his head. “Of course you knew. And you hid it from me. You let me be
Weekly Writing Workshop #8, Friday May 22, 2020: Stream of Consciousness
An update from our eighth Weekly Writing Workshop! A summary of the workshop, 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 an hour and a half 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 May 22, William Rubel, Stone Soup’s founder, talked to the group about Stream of Consciousness, sharing pieces of writing from writers well-known for practicing stream of consciousness (such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf), some abstract art, and a short clip from a surrealist stream of consciousness film (with a lot of eyeballs!). The group talked about the challenge of really letting go when writing, and then agreed to give it a try… The Writing Challenge: Write a stream of consciousness. The Participants: Ever, Emily, Analise, Liam, Kanav, Peri, Suman, Djin, Ma’ayan, Anya, Lucy, Georgia, Tristan, Gracie, Lauren, Sophia, Allegra, Arianna, Aviya, Michela, Maddie, Silas, Justin, Vishnu, Lewis, Kendyll, Chloe, Gina, Abhi, Laila, Ethan, Shai and more! As usual, our participants took to the challenge with gusto, and wrote some extraordinary, accomplished pieces, some of which you can read below. Anya Geist, 13Worcester, MA Across the Field Anya Geist, 13 There’s a field in front of me. They tell me I have to cross it to get to the other side but I can see bees in between the grasses. I’ve been bitten by a bee before and yesterday a hornet was banging into the wall of our little house. Murder hornets. Do they really kill you? The sun is really bright today. By the time I go anywhere my back is going to be drenched in sweat. I don’t mind sweat so much, especially in the summer when it’s mingled with sunscreen and it seems so seasonal just like Christmas trees and snow in the winter. It’s been a long time since I saw snow I think. Maybe a few years ago when we were back in the North Country. Oh, Gus. There was a time my friends and I sledded down a hill there and nearly crashed into a river like in those Calvin and Hobbes comics. I wonder if there will be Calvin and Hobbes on the other side of the field. I have five books of Calvin and Hobbes. On page 16 of The Indispensable is the one where his dad makes him take a portrait photo. I know so many pages of those books. I think page 220 has something, or maybe 221. And then in the There’s Treasure Everywhere -or maybe The Authoritative (no that’s the one with the antelope)- is the strip of Calvin walking down the staircase. That strip used to hang in the kitchen in the North Country. Oh, Gus. Hardly anyone is like that in the South Country. What will people be like on the other side of the field? They told me I had to cross it if I wanted to see them again. Do I want to see them again? There was a time that they nearly broke our radio because they threw it against the refrigerator. And then the time at the lake with the radio. It’s still fine, though, or it was. Probably in some junkyard in North Country -oh, Gus- now. And then the fridge. That was always a little broken after the incident. Before, I could get ice out of it, but after, it just leaked. A real pain on hot days like this. The grass would always shrivel up and die. The grass here isn’t dead, though, it’s green. Flashing with dew, like pieces of ice. Oh, the ice rink… I wonder if there’s ice on the other side of the field. No, it’d probably get all melted if the sun is like this all the time. Will there be beaches, then? Because I still don’t know if I want to cross the field. Beaches could make it worth it, though. I remember when I was little and we went to beaches in the summer. I would ride my bike -ugh, the gears always cut me- and then try to ride on the sand, but my bike would get stuck. I hate when sand gets stuck in your sandwich, and then you feel all disgusting and grainy. And in the water, when you accidently swallow. I hate the salt. And, it means that sharks can live in the water. I’ve never seen a shark -except at the aquarium (oh, remember when Johnny fell into the penguins habitat)- but I’ve read books and watched movies -not Jaws, but that was mentioned in one of my favorite books. I love fantasy, honestly. And everything to do with mythology. But what were they thinking to send Percy, who’s 12, across the country by himself? Harry Potter makes more sense that way. Still, both series are good. If only magic was real… Will it be real across the field? Only one way to find out, I guess. But wait. I’m not going to rush into this without thinking. Binoculars. I used binoculars at baseball games and once at a play. They’re weird, binoculars. Like a camera but not. Over the field, I can see some mountains in the distance. They’re all faded like, and really tall. Mount Olympus? At any rate, I’m not going to climb a mountain just to see them again. Not like the people in The Sound of Music. Oh, that movie is so good. I probably know every word, to the dialogue and the songs. Fredrick looks really weird with his hair slicked back, though. And the Baroness. Ugh. I know all the words to The Princess Bride, too. That one sounds like music, as musical as The Sound of Music. It’s like a lullaby. The Cliffs of Insanity!
