An update from our sixty-fourth Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, May 7th, plus some of the output published below Long-time writing workshop student and Stone Soup contributor Peri Gordon presented the concept of imaginary characters. The history of imaginary creatures is a long one, beginning some 70,000 years ago with a gene mutation that allowed Homo sapiens to imagine things that were not there. That gene mutation is what enables us to write creatively! Students saw examples from the archaeological record, such as the Löwenmensch and the earliest known depiction of a ghost, and as a mini-writing challenge, described them in a way that made them come to life. Then, Peri presented examples from literature, such as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings, and showed how description of imaginary creatures is not merely limited to their often strange appearances, but can involve the way they move, eat, behave, speak, or even smell. The Challenge: Write a story, passage, or poem in which you introduce your own imaginary creature. You can use all kinds of description, such as how they look, how they move, how they speak, how they smell, and what feelings they evoke. The Participants: Aimee, Anya, Eva, Sally, Agatha, Eric, Pearl, Aditi, Amelia, Aryaman, Delight, Elbert, Iago, Liam, Madisen, Yueling To watch the readings from this workshop, click here. Pearl Coogan, 9 (Purcellville, VA) Saving Soar Pearl Coogan, 9 “When do we actually get to start flying the pegasi instead of just riding them like normal horses,” Chloe said boldly, putting her hand on her hips as I galloped around the arena on Clifftop, a short and stubborn mountain pegasus. Ms. Lilac, the teacher of the flying bootcamp, shot a dirty look at her, “You need to know how to gallop before actually flying. Actually, I didn’t want to ride normal pegasi. I wanted to ride Soar. Soar was a flying tiger with brilliant hazel eyes. Her ears seemed to pick up every sound and her nose seemed to smell every smell. Her teeth and claws were extremely sharp and could make a seasoned warrior with a shield and sword run for his life. Soar’s legs were long and she could run faster than a swift cheetah hunting a herd of speedy gazelles. Her striped fur was sleek and glossy, like a smooth river of lava with paths of obsidian crossing over it. Her tail trailed out behind her when she zoomed through the sky, even faster than how fast she ran on the ground. But Soar’s wings… Soar’s wings seemed like the most beautiful thing in the kingdom of Braylon. They seemed to spread out as wide as a river. The feathers on them were full and lush and it seemed as if none of them had ever fallen out. They blew backwards in the wind as Soar sped through the air, making the flying tiger fly even faster. They were even more beautiful than the wings of the— “Leia! Focus!” Ms. Lilac’s yelling voice cut into my thoughts like a sharp rock. I sighed. I would never get to ride Soar. She was kept in the Grand Stables in the Great Palace. She was fed the best food and never taken out to battle or even allowed to go off of the castle properties, even though Soar was built for battle. I had only seen her once when my family and I had visited the castle so that my father, who was a messenger, could drop off a message and we had been fortunate enough to see Soar. At least someday I’ll get to ride an actual field pegasus or river pegasus. Or a cloud pegasus, but they’re so rare that I’ll probably never get to ride one. Maybe I’ll even get to ride a unicorn someday, I thought as I jumped over a high hurdle. Mountain pegasi were known for not being able to fly nearly as fast as the three other kinds of pegasi, or unicorns, which were even faster than pegasi. Mountain pegasi were also known for being stubborn, and Clifftop was definitely stubborn. “Leia! Do a cloverleaf!” Ms. Lilac yelled. But when I tried to turn Clifftop to the left to do a cloverleaf, he yanked his head the other way. I tried to turn him a little more gently, but instead of galloping to the left he slowed down to a trot. When I clicked my tongue and moved the saddle back and forth to tell him to go faster, instead of galloping, Clifftop halted. “You can take a break,” Ms. Lilac said in a growly voice. Sighing with relief, I dismounted and led Clifftop to the side of the arena. I was in the Laurel Canopy School of Pegasus and Unicorn Riding, which was owned by a prince from the royal family. I was taking a four week overnight bootcamp, but even though I was on my third week, I was still just riding on the ground. But that night, I was planning to sneak out of my tiny dorm, find a pegasus, somehow teach myself how to get that pegasus to fly, and fly around the castle grounds. And maybe see Soar if I was lucky. It was a crazy idea, but I had been planning it for a week. I had told my two best friends, Kailee and Lydia, about my idea, and they had decided to join me. But little did I know about the thing that would happen that night. Carrying a heavy saddle and a bridle in my arms, I walked through the stable. I paused as a river pegasus stuck her brown, glossy, head out of a stall. She whined and pawed the ground. “This one looks good,” I walked towards the pegasus’s stall and read the name tag on the door, which read Wave. I fed Wave a carrot and opened her door. “Are you sure? She looks pretty big. And she’s a water pegasus,” Kailee
Writing Workshop
How Stories Work—Writing Workshop #35: Lightness (Revisited)
An update from the thirty-fifth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday April 30th, plus some of the output published below Lightness is a “lightening of language whereby meaning is conveyed through a verbal texture that seems weightless, until the meaning itself takes on the same rarefied consistency.” “My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language” “If I had to choose an auspicious sign for the new millennium, I would choose this: the sudden tumble leap of the poet who lifts herself against the weight of the world…” — Italo Calvino, “Six Memos for the Next Millennium” For this week’s workshop, and to set up more to follow, we talked about on Italo Calvino’s “Six Memos for the New Millennium,” which are lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, multiplicity, and consistency. This week, we revisited “lightness,” which was one of Conner’s first workshops with Stone Soup. First, we discussed lightness and characters, defining “light” characters as agile, quick, cunning, witty, lighthearted, whimsical, emotionally open, and characterized by action. Italo Calvino characterized Perseus of Greek myth as the figure most emblematic of lightness, noting that Perseus “moves according to the pattern of the wind. Peter Pan and Robin Hood were also discussed as iterations of Perseus. Next, using Milton’s funny and charismatic figure of Satan in Paradise Lost, we discussed how a quote on quote “evil” character could embody lightness, too. Following our discussion of lightness in characters, we moved into a discussion of lightness in painting, music and literature, beginning with three paintings: Magritte’s The Castle of Pyrenees, Malevich’s White on White, and Turner’s Norham Castle, Sunrise. Finally, we discussed the lightness evident in the haikus of Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa, William Carlos Williams’ poem “This is Just to Say,” Gertrude Stein’s poem, “A Dog,” and Franz Wright’s “Auto Lullaby.” To set the tone for our writing period, we also listened to five minutes of Mozart’s “Piano Concerto No. 21.” The Challenge: Write a poem or story that uses the characteristics of lightness (speed, humor, lightheartedness, emotional openness, and action). Like Calvino, try and “remove weight” from your writing. The Participants: Emma, Zar, Alice, Ellie, Samantha, Anna, Shiva, Nova, Chelsea, Fatehbir To watch the readings from this workshop, click here. Emma Hoff, 10(Bronx, NY) About Your Cliff Emma Hoff, 10 You check your map. This is where you are supposed to be, following directions from unreadable words. Instead you run along the cliffside, careful not to fall in but imagining it, imagining yourself tumbling down onto the sharp rocks. You do not have to be happy to die, you do not have to be colorful or gray, you can just be. To imagine without being sad, you do not have to be happy either, you can imagine the worst things but tune them out at the same time. If you die, you will float upwards, you will become white and blue, your limbs will be immovable but at the same time will move on their own, you will have no soul or will and be better off without one, you will travel the same rocks and pick up shells and crush the living beings inside of them. You walk along the cliffside with insect legs, with crab legs, sometimes a fish tail, sometimes a clam shell, you break off limbs from the starfish and the anemones, and you steal the sea slug’s slime. It’s a good life, walking in another thing’s body, which is far superior to your own. You drift in places that are funny and you smile, your eyes crinkling sadly. You swipe your hand. You can be anyone, you can have anything. So you fall down onto the rocks, eyes closed, unfeeling. If you do not feel, you can be without any problems. And so you do not feel, above everyone else, shushed by the colors of the sky and the sunrise, the shadows on the water, the light on your face. You would not be crowned an angel if people knew what you did, so don’t tell anyone. Be the quiet, perfect person, and when it is night take other people, full of wrong-doing and become them, be everything, feel everything, everything is a blur of beauty as you tumble down the cliffside, but you do not believe in beauty. Maybe you are beautiful. But no one is beautiful afterwards, so why should anything be beautiful before? The people who enjoy things will not enjoy ever again, so they should not have jumped for a chance that would never be granted. Things are frantic, people shout, shallow minds reach for you. You do not want to be reached for. You wait for afterwards, when things are quiet. You do not have to be happy to be light. You do not have to be trodding on green grass. You are stuck on the sharpest rock and you are flying. You are a bird, but you do not appreciate birds. They appreciate you, and you become them and everything else. Your bones rattle in your melting skin, soon, you will be all over the place, waving to some, smiling at others. Empty sockets staring peacefully into another’s lively face. Finally, you will be free. Things will be easy. Things will be beautiful with the beauty of no beauty, the beauty of fog, of ground, of treasure, of space, of a safe haven, of a place to hide, of nothing, nowhere.
Writing Workshop #63: Character Sketches (Revisited)
An update from our sixty-third Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday April 23, plus some of the output published below In this workshop, William practiced the concept of fast sketching characters. Sometimes, less is more when it comes to detail, and a sparse description of a character is really all you need for your character to come to life for the reader. The writers saw examples from literature, including some from Beatrix Potter, Suzanne Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle. As a mini-writing challenge, William showed two portraits (one a photograph of a man in New Orleans, and the other a self portrait by Rembrandt) and had students write descriptions of them in five minutes. The Challenge: Write a character sketch that introduces your character’s physical appearance. The Participants: Pearl, Peri, Eric, Sana, Madisen, Anya, Sally, Amelia, Lena, Lina, Elbert, Yueling, Liam, Aditi, Delight To watch all of the readings from this workshop, click here. Pearl Coogan, 9 (Purcellville, VA) Why Do I Have to Be Perfect? Pearl Coogan, 9 My hair was long and flowing and looked like a field of wheat on a sunny day. My eyes were as blue as the middle of the ocean and as soft as a the fur of a Pomeranian dog. My nose was symmetrical and fairly small. My lips looked as perfect as a supermodel’s lips. My skin was gorgeously tanned from countless days spent sunbathing at the pool and the beach and as smooth as a river rock. My neck was long and elegant, like a giraffe’s neck. My legs were also long and graceful. My body was thin and tall. The bikini I was wearing was the most expensive and fancy one available at the store. The top and bottom were both mostly orange, but the orange was surrounded by little black jewels that made the swimsuit look like a pool of lava surrounded by rocks. The coverup I had on over the bikini was all black and made of silk. Even my towel was leopard print and had gleaming gems on it. At least that’s what everyone thought of how I looked and what I wore. I liked to consider myself a normal person who looked normal and was not the daughter of two super-rich celebrities. At least at the pool paparazzis didn’t follow me around like a dog sniffing out a bone. At least at the pool, the only thing people said about me was about my fancy swimsuit and how tall and thin I was. No one could recognize me with my hair under a cap and goggles covering my eyes and all of my makeup washed off. That’s why I went to the pool every summer day. Taking off my coverup, I ran to the edge of the pool, ready to jump in. “No running!” The lifeguard yelled. I slowed down but still jumped in with a huge splash. The water was cold, but I didn’t care. Flipping onto my back, I swam across the pool on my back. When I got to edge, I flipped to my stomach and started swimming in a butterfly stroke, slipping under the rope that separated the 8-foot deep end from the 5-foot area. I took a deep, thankful breath as I got to one side of the deep end. I crawled out of the pool, and, just as I was walking towards the waterslide, a voice called out my name. The voice of my mother, Lili Joes, who was a famous singer. “Teri! Have you seriously forgotten about my concert today?!” A million gazes turned on me as everyone realized that the daughter of a world-famous celebrity was at the neighborhood pool. I buried my face in my hands, whispering, “Why do I have to be perfect?” Peri Gordon, 12(Sherman Oaks, CA) A Wasted Opportunity Peri Gordon, 12 For someone who claimed not to care what others thought of him—someone who spent most of his time working underground—he was extremely handsome. He had the eyes of an African elephant—reddish-brown, shimmering, and thoughtful—and his hair was as thick and shiny as otter fur. But his hair hadn’t been combed, and he wasn’t offering some captivating smile to complete his dazzling look—he wasn’t aware of the unique, natural sort of beauty he possessed. And his clothes were plain black and three sizes too big, like he was a snake in the process of shedding his skin. His involuntary charm was all there, but he himself wasn’t doing anything to add to it, because—again—he didn’t care what others thought of him. His brow was wrinkled—with concentration or concern, no one could tell—and his full lips could have been used in a math class to demonstrate parallel lines, making it even harder to pick up on his thoughts. Whatever they were, he was probably thinking with great intellect. He was a wasted opportunity—a boy who could’ve been beautiful, could’ve been a genius, if only he had given himself a chance. Eric Muller, 11 (San Diego, CA) Untitled Eric Muller, 11 Into the room walked a man of elegance and manner, his gait highlighting each step as a small show of dignity and each soft landing of the foot a show of delicacy. He dressed in a long black suit of an older time, and had on his head neatly combed and fashionably styled orange hair, which stopped at the edge of his ears in perfect symmetry. His face was distinctly elegant like the man himself, with shallow creases only beginning to intrude on his otherwise soft face, and his eyes were a calm pool of blue and gray, the colors intermixing in some spots as the two colors had blended together into a duller, more melancholy blueish gray. His lips were shallow and relatively colorless compared to some of the other party-goers, though they held in their own right a sense of grace. His cheeks were soft, peachy hills, and they rose only slightly from the rest of
