An update from our forty-eighth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, November 5, plus some of the output published below For this week’s workshop, we focused on prose poetry, which we defined as a prose composition that demonstrates the logic and characteristics common to poetry. The first thing we did was a favorite exercise of Conner’s: he asked that we try and write a “bad” poem. After the exercise, we read “On the Train” by Lydia Davis, “The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter” by Mark Strand, “I Am the Last” by Charles Simic, “Man with Red Hair” by Daniil Kharms, and “Information” by David Ignatow. All of these prose poems we characterized as feeling like excerpts from larger stories, or the beginning of a short story—they felt like they should keep going. The Challenge: Write a prose poem. If you feel stuck, write a story that feels like its an excerpt from a larger story but isn’t. Or you could write the beginning of a short story but cut it off before it really starts going. Or, take the “bad” poem from the beginning of workshop and turn it into a longer prose poem. The Participants: Allie, Emma, Anushka, Benedetta, Arjun, Tate, Robert, Aditi, Russell, Ella, Samantha, Alice, Josh, Anna, Savi Open House & Untitled Emma Hoff, 10 Open House An old photo, containing a memory. Aww, they say, beholding it. One day, it’s gone. They move on to another photo. Aww, they say again. It goes on like this, and, eventually, only the abstract painting is left. They study it. There’s silence. They hesitate. And then they say, aww. You dump salt on their heads as they walk into the kitchen and pet the frying pan. Everything is gone. The house is just a hollow box that you sit in. There are no walls, but you are enclosed by something. More and more of them come in. Aww, they say, patting your head. Untitled I’m watching the man in the corner, sipping tea that I made for him. He doesn’t remember. He’s too busy watching it, and I don’t want to tell him who he really is – I’m also afraid. Every noise startles me, and I feel like I want to go back inside. It’s cold. The door is locked. I know he won’t hear me knock. I sit down on the steps, and suddenly, in front of me, there’s a pineapple. On one side of my head is a star, and on the other side is a bird. The Thing is gone. It didn’t really mean anything anyway. It was just a plot twist.
Workshops
How Stories Work—Writing Workshop #47: Excess (Revisited)
An update from our forty-seventh Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, October 29th Excess: more than necessary—exaggeration, extravagance, exuberance, abundance, unnecessary, overload, overkill, surplus, luxuriance, improvisation, unrestraint, ridiculous To kick off this week’s workshop, we began with four artworks—Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Dulle Griet, Peter Paul Rubens’ The Garden of Love, Jackson Pollock’s Convergence, and the Sistene Chapel—all of which illustrated, in one way or another, the theme of excess. While we technically defined “excess” as “more than necessary,” the purpose of this workshop was to show how sometimes excess is necessary in order to create the feeling of being overwhelmed or overpowered or repulsed, an idea perhaps best encapsulated in the work of Peter Paul Rubens: he emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. We explored two more of Rubens’s paintings: Daniel in the Lion’s Den and The Tiger Hunt. Once we finished looking at these paintings, we looked at the art of contemporary Australian sculptor Ron Mueck. We looked at a few of his hyperrealistic, larger than life works in order to demonstrate how something almost “too real” becomes grotesque. Following our discussion of Mueck, we looked at examples of Baroque architecture, a style associated with ornamental excess as is the case with St Peter’s Basilica and La Sagrada Familia. We also discussed a piece of Postmodern architecture, the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, a “non-functional” building more characteristic of a dream or a work of science fiction than reality. The last section of the Writing Workshop was devoted to examples of excess in writing as we looked at an excerpt from Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox (exaggeration, hyperbole), Lewis Carroll’s The Jabberwocky (pleasure in its own silly sound making), and, finally, an excerpt from Cormac McCarthy (functional resistance to grammar, repetition of the word “and”). The Challenge: Write as much as you can, as fast you can, without worrying about making sense; write excessively. The Participants: Benedetta, Savi, Anushka, Ella, Tate, Robert, Samantha, Alice, Russell, Josh
Book Club Report: Front Desk by Kelly Yang
An update from book club! Today we discussed Kelly Yang’s award-winning novel Front Desk, which follows Mia Tang, a ten-year-old girl who immigrates to the U.S. from China with her parents, and now helps them run a motel in California. Kelly Yang wrote the novel based on her real childhood experiences. Mia and her family struggle with poverty and their mean boss, Mr. Yao. They also secretly hide other Chinese immigrants who are struggling, letting them stay the night in their motel. Mia has to deal with school, where the kids tease her for being poor and Chinese. Mia loves writing and English, although her mom wants her to focus on math, thinking that, as an immigrant, Mia won’t ever become good at English. Things get a bit better when Mia befriends a girl named Lupe, who understands what she’s going through. Mia also befriends the weeklies, the people who live permanently in the motel, including Hank, a Black man whom Mia helps exonerate from a wrongful accusation of car theft. The story comes to a climax when Mr. Yao wants to sell the motel, and Mia organizes all her new friends to band together to buy it from him. We had a lively discussion of Front Desk. Some students loved the book, and one student didn’t enjoy it because it was sad to read about all the hard things Mia and the other immigrants go through. One person loved the happy ending, while others found it unrealistic that Mia and her friends would be able to get together enough money to purchase the motel. We brainstormed different ways we would end the novel if we were writing it! We also talked about our favorite parts of the book, our favorite characters, and what we thought about Jason, Mr. Yao’s son, who has a real character arc throughout the novel, going from a bully, just like his father, to standing up for what’s right. We discussed Mia’s relationship with her mother and father; Mia’s friendship with Hank; and how lying functions in the story. Mia’s friendship with Lupe improves when they stop lying to each other about their lives; however, Mia uses lying for good when she writes a pretend reference letter for Hank, and a pretend letter from a lawyer for one of the immigrants whose passport was being withheld. People chimed in with their opinions about when it is right and wrong to lie in our own lives. Finally, we finished off with a creative writing activity. We had two prompts to choose from: writing a story about a kid put in charge of their family business for the day; or writing a list of customs and phrases for an imaginary place (like the list Mia writes about the U.S.). It was fun to see what people came up with! We’ll be back next month on November 26th at 9:00am PT to discuss Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo—looking forward to seeing you there! Our Next Book (to be discussed on November 26th): Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo
