An update from our fourteenth 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 conversation on Friday July 3 was attended by young writers from the US, the UK, and France. Our discussion started with us looking at artist’s sketches, so that we could get a feel for their roughness, how the artist only draws the significant parts of their character, so that we could translate this into our writing. We also read a few excerpts from texts where a character was described, so that we could get an idea of the different ways to describe a character. We examined a few sketches and paintings to identify what the most important parts of the characters were, and then we wrote for ten minutes, creating a simple sketch for a character of our own design. Then, after we shared a few of our pieces, we went back to writing, this time, to create a new character and to place them in a story. This showed the contrast between the simple sketch that we wrote first, and the more complex one that we wrote second. Read on below to get a feeling for some of the powerful writing we were given a glimpse of in this session! The Writing Challenge: Write a character sketch (or two) that gives the reader a vivid image of your character. The Participants: Ever, Maddie, Sneha, Alice, Lena, Peri, Tilly, Hera, Lucy, Anya, James, Abi, Sophia, Enni, Kanav, Shaili, Janani, Gracie, Aditi, Kathy, Sara, Madeline, Rachel, Charlotte, Seraj, and more . . . Araliya, 11Sandy Hook, CT The Giant Man Araliya, 11 A giant of a man stood in the doorway. His face was almost completely hidden by a long shaggy mane of hair and a wild, tangled beard, but you could make out his eyes, glinting like black beetles under all the hair. His voice was a very loud grunt. Every time he stepped, the ground shook. He just stood there waiting for an invitation to come in. Five minutes later, he walked into the house and said, “where is Sabre Williams?” Sneha Arun, 10San Jose, CA Mourning Sneha Arun, 10 A long black veil covered her pretty face. She clutched a photograph of him smiling. She was mourning. The features of her face could be seen only when you approached her closely. Her wavy blonde hair curled softly at her shoulders. Her rosy red lips betrayed a sense of foreboding as they morphed into a sad smile. Her blue eyes seemed vacant. She seemed to look beyond the masses of people that tried to comfort her. Out of each eye, came a stream of tears, leaving her eyes red and puffy. She walked into the house, feeling her sadness drown her, while her delicate lace dress formed pools of water. She felt alone in this big world, her one solace was that her husband would always be in her heart. Heather Sierra, 10Mountain View, CA Shoes Heather Sierra, 10 The mother pulled her black hair into a ponytail. She sat on a rough, torn, gray airport seat with a tiny girl in her lap, crowded in by hundreds of others. The girl seemed much happier than the mother. She had a sweet smile on her face, and her big brown eyes were bright with curiosity. She looked around, her long, brown braid that hung down her back swiveling alongside her head. “Mama?” she whispered in a voice so low and quiet, yet so sharp and loud to her mother’s listening ears. “Yes, darling?” her mother replied, tucking her long, silky ponytail into the blackish-colored hood of her jacket. The little girl, who looked about five or six didn’t reply. She either had forgotten her question or no longer cared. The girl’s eyes were glued to an advertisement, something with bold letters and cheery images that her mother couldn’t quite see from the distance between them. The little girl was mesmerized by the illustration on the billboard. The little girl slowly slid off of her mother’s lap, leaving her solemn mother behind. Tucking her too-tight and fading purple shirt into her rainbow, flowing skirt, she began to walk toward the billboard, her tight, clicking, black shoes, tapping against the tile floor. “Come back!” her mother cried, although not nearly loud enough to be heard through the airport chaos. The girl toddled along, taking each step carefully, her black sneakers tap-tapping against the cold metal floor of the airport. Approaching the advertisement, she stopped. There was a brilliant drawing of a black-and-blue pair of shoes, blue on the heels, black laces, and an extraordinary paragraph of unreadable words. “Shoes.” the girl pronounced the word with ease and gentleness, an important word to her. She looked down at her own pair, battered and old yet still comfortable and soft. The laces were well-worn and appeared tired of being knotted so many times. The girl loved the billboard with all of her heart. How much she would give to have a pair of shoes like those. “Come back!” her mother called, finally speaking up again. The little girl looked up at her mother, toward the sign, and back to her mother, as if trying to decide which was more important. Pulling her braid tight in her little girl grip, she wandered back to her mother’s seat. Without a word, she smiled up at her mother, the big, happy smile that she’d started with, and said one word, just one word: “Shoes.” Anya Geist, 14Worcester, MA Two Characters Anya G., 14 1. Like the rest of his body, his face was small. Not smushed in any way, just petite. His features were slightly sharp, like a dulled
Teaching Writing
Weekly Writing Workshop #13, Friday June 26, 2020: Writing About Someone Reading
An update from our thirteenth 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 conversation on Friday June 26 was attended by young writers from the US, the UK, and France. We started with a discussion of how to write about characters who are reading, and analyzed several different paintings to see how the artist portrayed the subject reading. We shared out our different ideas; is the character focused on the book? Does the character look annoyed at being interrupted? What type of person does the character look like? In addition to viewing these paintings, we read poems and excerpts of essays that reflected the painting’s message or another writer’s thoughts on reading and the role of the reader in the writing process. We then set to writing about a character who is reading, often inspired by the paintings we talked about. Read on below to get a feeling for some of the powerful writing we were given a glimpse of in this session! The Writing Challenge: Write about a character who is reading, inspired by a painting. The Participants: Ever, Tilly, Peri, Julia, Maddie, Georgia, Lorelei, Kanav, Rhian, Grégoire, Neve, Lena, Enni, Benjamin, James, Liam, and many more… Lena Aloise, 11Harvard, MA Familiar Words Lena Aloise, 11 Blowing specks of dust from a cover, bound in cherry leather that was engraved with letters of sparkling gold, brilliance fading along with the passing years of her life. Tentatively, she held the thing, awkward in her small hands, to her face, flipping through the pages, of which there were many, almost an overwhelming amount. Placing it on her lap and settling into a pile of cushions, she began. And the waters leaped, frothing, colliding with a nipping cool saltwater breeze, as the massive thing pushed them aside. They protest against their displacement, as do the wriggling fishes that dart away in a flash of silver, terrified. Oh how their anchor moaned in protest as it was lowered down, below ripping currents, metal links scraping against the rocks, lying on the sand dunes. Its inhabitants jumped from the deck and landed with a thudding that shook the strip of narrow dock upon which their boot-clad feet now rested. Their bodies were agile, possessing great strength from long days of lifting heavy things and navigating tempestuous seas. Seas that tested both physical and mental capabilities. She paused there, took a breath, uselessly straightened her wrinkled blouse and continued reading. Oh, and their captain made all the men look like mere children, with his snarling lips and looming presence. If his crew’s muscular capabilities had been great, his own were simply unhuman, and he was as tough as the ship he had built with his own weathered hands. When he crossed the cobblestone roads, women and men alike quickly looked away, fearful that this ravenous beast might be hungry. The girl remembered a time, late at night, when she had written those words in ink, thought they were beautiful, kissed the pages, then reconsidered and hurled them into the garbage can. A week later, she had changed her mind yet again and the crumpled papers had been retrieved. Now, relooking at it, her cheeks flushed a cherry pink and she regretted not letting them turn to ash in the incinerator. As an author, she supposed that they made her seem weak, fearful of this person who might not be as looming as she made him out to be. Did ship captains read this and think of the silly little girl who found them so frightening? Oh, how she regretted her foolish words now. But she continued, and soon reached the ending, a back page that listed words of praise for this book, the book that was hers and not hers at the same time. ‘Captivating’ one fellow writer had said. ‘American literature at its finest, destined to become a classic’ a magazine had complimented. ‘Earl has fully mastered the art of storytelling and this book should go down in classroom textbooks’ another had cheerily told reporters. All she could think, as she read these aimless thoughts, was ‘People actually read this?’ She shuddered as she imagined all those fellow humans, enjoying her book, feasting on a piece of her soul. Anya Geist, 14Worcester, MA At the Dinner Table Anya Geist, 14 The girl’s leg bounced up and down, jittery and uncalm. Right now, she was sitting straight up, rigid in her chair, but she figured in a few minutes she would be fidgeting around, squirming in her seat. She loved reading, honestly, she did. And she loved this book. But there was so much going on around her. Everyone was loud at the dinner table, laughing heartily as they traded stories, or clicking their tongues as they bemoaned whichever stock was going down. At any moment, they could call on her. They could say, “How was your day?” They could take her book away, and not give it back until much, much later. That risk was too great, and so she was on edge, half-listening to the conversation, half-absorbed in the story. It was like a game of tug of war in her head. The book was pulling on her, trying to sweep her away. And she wanted it to sweep her away. Yet she was forced to listen as Father addressed one of his brothers, just in case he directed his next question at her. The bouncing in her leg was uncontrollable now. She needed to calm it, to make it go away. It was distracting, so distracting. She flipped a page in her book. This was it. She was close to the end. And here she read, her
Weekly Writing Workshop #11, Friday June 12, 2020: Interweaving Voices & Narratives
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
