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
Writing Workshop
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 #9, Friday May 29, 2020: Reading Aloud!
For the ninth workshop in our first ever season of Stone Soup Writing Workshops, we decided to devote the whole session to readings by our participants. Everyone chose their favourite pieces written during the workshops held over the past 2 months. We had a wonderful session, hearing the authors’ work in their own voices, and remembering the different themes and writing challenges we had faced together over the previous weeks. Thank you to all our great writers–and talented readers aloud! We have loved creating these workshops, meeting with you every Friday, and hearing and reading the incredible work you make, and can’t wait for the summer season to start so we can keep on doing it. From next week, the time of the Workshop will change, so that young people in Europe will be able to join it as well. It will start at 09:00 PST, and all the details will be included in the Daily Creativity emails. And remember, some of the work produced in the workshops is published on our website. You can read it for yourselves–and we highly recommend that you do–by reading the posts reporting on each Workshop. Just type “writing workshop” in the search box, of click on the tag at the bottom of this post, and all of them will come up.
