Take a photo that tells a story. Example: the second photograph, ‘Slipping on a Banana Peel’ here.
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
How Stories Work—Writing Workshop #16: Nonsense
An update from our sixteenth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday October 9, plus some of the output published below The purpose of art is not to make sense, but to excite the senses. In an attempt to “liberate ourselves from the demands of semantic coherence,” this week we focused on “nonsense,” allowing ourselves to engage with a more automatic, silly, and playful type of thinking. We began with a poem written by a first grader Conner once taught that went “a poem is/ made by/ a snowman.” Incredible, strange, scintillating. We then took a look at a few of Marcel Duchamp’s strange sculptural artworks—the urinal, the bike wheel on a stool—as examples of nonsense. Another example of visual art, and one of our most common points of reference, were a series of paintings by Magritte, all of which made us feel as though we didn’t need to understand them, we merely needed to experience them. Next, we moved into literary examples, beginning with “Your Car is Thar” (ungrammatical) by Charles Bernstein and two poems by Edward Lear—”There was an Old Man on the Border” & “There was an Old Man with a Beard,” both of which were grammatically correct, but literally nonsensical. Then, we looked at two examples of nonsense by Russian poets: one untitled poem by Vladimir Khlebnikov, whose playful nonsense was similar to Bernstein’s “Your Car is Thar,” and “An Encounter” by Daniil Kharms, whose dry, matter of fact nonsense made us all laugh. To finish the workshop, we listened to Benedict Cumberbatch’s reading of “The Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll, perhaps the most famous example of nonsense in literature. The Challenge: Two Prompts: Prompt one: In five minutes, write the worst possible poem you can think of. Prompt two: Simply, write a nonsense poem or story. If you get stuck, just start rhyming nonsense like in Lewis Carrol’s “The Jabberwocky”. The Participants: Audrey, Clara, Simran, Josh, Emma, Lina, Nova, Penny, Ethan, Shilla, Ellie, Olivia, Svitra, Sinan Svitra Rajkumar, 13(Fremont, CA) Terracotta Svitra Rajkumar, 13 Terra flipped through the pages of her English textbook, reading bits and pieces, but her mind was elsewhere. She was busy thinking about the meeting she would have to host later in the evening. Her little sister’s friend was having a birthday party tomorrow and she had agreed to do face painting for the kids, but now she wishes she didn’t. She leaned back on the couch and yawned. Her other friends were going to the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory in San Francisco tomorrow, and she couldn’t come because of some stupid party for seven year olds. Maybe there was a way she could sneak into their car and go without her parents knowing. Her Mom had recently been diving deeper into her old hobby, pottery, so she would be busy. When she was pregnant with Terra, she was obsessed with pottery and sculpting, which is why she named her daughter Terracotta. Ugh I can’t believe I was named after a type of clay Terra shut her English book and decided to get something to eat away her pain. Maybe she was being a tiny bit dramatic. She opened up the fridge and grabbed some instant noodles that she decided would be her dinner. As usual her Mom was still at the nearby art studio working on a new plate set so she would be home late. This gave Terra a large amount of time to plan for tomorrow. She began to heat up some water and had an idea.
Saturday Newsletter: October 16, 2021
“A Tangled World” By Elodie Weinzierl, 11 (Waban, MA), published in Stone Soup October 2021 A note from William I hope all is well with our extended Stone Soup family. I took my first post-COVID vacation last week. I drove up from Santa Cruz, California to the Mendocino coast, north of San Francisco, to visit a friend I had not seen since October 2019 when we had traveled in Japan together researching the culinary use of that fabulously colorful mushroom, Amanita muscaria. That is the mushroom many of you will know from the mushroom emoji 🍄. I cooked meals on the fireplace, found about thirty pounds of the porcini mushroom in one fabulously lucky hunt, and came home refreshed! It is my great pleasure today to announce that Stone Soup is collaborating with our summer school partner, Naomi Kinsman, and her staff at Society of Young Inklings to test the waters for selling Stone Soup site licenses to schools. I have not talked much about Stone Soup sales here in the newsletter, but for the last several years they have been dismal. Times changed, and print subscriptions to private homes have largely gone out of fashion. So, with the help of Naomi and her Young Inklings colleagues, we are doing a proper market study of how the online Stone Soup magazine, blog posts, workshop texts, and creativity prompts can be used to teach creative writing in schools. Thank you, Naomi, for your help with this. There is other good news since I last wrote the newsletter. We have received a sizable COVID-19 relief grant from the state of California—$15,000!—and a truly substantive pledge towards our upcoming Annual Drive by one of our Stone Soup donors, a true angel (though more on that when we launch our 2021 Annual Drive). Taken together, we are now in the best financial position we have been in years, which is fabulous because it means we can start growing Stone Soup again. Several of us on the Stone Soup staff joined in the virtual awards ceremony at the Green Earth Book Award (GEBA) ceremony on Thursday, October 7, for Abhi Sukhdial’s Three Days till EOC, the novel that won our Long Form fiction contest in 2019. The awards ceremony was the kickoff to a three-day-long EnviroKids Literacy Festival. Our Stone Soup store is down this week as we are reorganizing it, so for now please order Three Days till EOC at Amazon. Abhi’s book was the only winning title by a child. Elodie Weinzier shows us “A Tangled World” in the complex patterns formed by twisted and arching branches. I really like her photograph. It is actually a kind of photograph that I have taken many times myself as I have personal interest in plants and the shapes they make. Like Elodie, I often see stories in plant shapes. To me, her photograph speaks of energy, of time, of an unfolding life, one that shifts in response to events becoming more interesting, varied, and complex over time. For today’s project, I’d like you to use your phone’s camera to find a pattern in nature that speaks to you. Once you find the pattern that interests you, begin experimenting with framing that image with your camera by moving it around and changing distance and angles as necessary to capture your vision. Take at least ten photographs of each pattern that interests you, and then choose which image of each pattern you like best. Complete the task by deleting the rest. This last step can be difficult, but in the end, as the artist, you need to choose the photograph that most speaks to you. Until next week, Congratulations to our most recent Flash Contest winners! Our October Flash Contest was based on Creativity Prompt #172 (provided by Molly Torinus, Stone Soup contributor), which asked participants to perform the meta task of writing about somebody writing a story. The result was a wave of submissions unlike we have ever seen, making the selection process this month even more difficult. We read stories that anthropomorphized bananas, that projected protagonists’ lives far into the future, that literally wrote out entire stories within stories, and much, much more. In the end, we wound up with five winners and five honorable mentions whose fantastic and distinct work gives shape to a bright and promising future! As always, thank you to all who submitted, and please submit again next month! Congratulations to our Winners and Honorable Mentions, listed below. You can read the winning entries for this contest (and previous ones) at the Stone Soup website. Winners “With Great Power…” by Jack Liu, 13 (Livingston, NJ) “Words” by Lui Lung, 12 (Danville, CA) “Myrtle and Sage” by Pranjoli Sadhukha, 11 (Newark, OH) “Rejection Miracle” by Alexandra Steyn, 12 (Greenwich, CT) “Coffee Mates” by Emily Tang, 12 (Winterville, NC) Honorable Mentions “Crumpled Papers” by Anushka Dhar, 12 (Hillsborough, NJ) “Charlotte’s Unusual Story” by Hannah Francis, 11 (Stanford, CA) “Writer’s Block” by Nova Macknik-Conde, 10 (Brooklyn, NY) “It Should Bother You” by Violet Solana Perez, 13 (Scarsborough, ON, Canada) “Behind the Counter” by Eliya Wee, 11 (Menlo Park, CA) Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers on our blog! Vivaan, 12, wrote a riveting review of Lois Lowry’s classic, Newbery Award-winning novel The Giver. Sita, 12, wrote a comprehensive review of the renowned TV series Community, which ran from 2009 to 2015. Ismini, 12, reviewed Ginger Johnson’s brand new novel The Other Side of Luck. From Stone Soup October 2021 Oak By Graham Terbeek, 10 (Towson, MD) My name is Oak. And if you didn’t already guess, I am a tree. I’ve heard rumors of trees that grow delicious fruit, Of trees that bloom exotic flowers, Or even trees that are so tall that it seems they can see the whole world. It must be nice having a purpose. I don’t have anything special about me. Just your typical, everyday tree. I live in the backyard of a small house. People rarely go in and out. I keep to myself. I don’t mind, really. I’m used to being alone. Years ago, I wasn’t
