Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists

He licked my fingers and I felt that the model dog didn’t matter to me anymore Illustrator Garrett Landon, 11, for Little Pal by Nikki Morse, 12, in Stone Soup Magazine July/August 2000. A note from William Rubel Jet lag! Traveling is great, but there are side effects! I got back from warm Israel via freezing London (literally) to a rainy week in Northern California. Next week, I’m going to Taiwan for my daughter’s Spring break. So the next Newsletter will be produced from Taipei. Being honest, as I am often working at the last minute, Taipei is actually a great place to be writing the Newsletter as we post it Saturday morning California time which is Sunday in Taiwan. All of you writers will understand that means more time to procrastinate!   Science Fiction Contest reminder Speaking of procrastinating, the deadline for submitting a story to our science fiction contest is 11:59 pm on April 1, Pacific Coast Time. Winners receive Amazon gift certificates of $80 (first place), $40 (second place), $20 (third place), and $10 (fourth place). The prize-winners will be published either in the magazine or on the website. The authors of highly commended stories that do not win prizes will also be acknowledged. Upload your submission the usual way — click on the submission link, below.   Celebrating our Young Bloggers, and a joint adult/kid nature-writing challenge I am very pleased with how our Young Bloggers project is going. Some really interesting writing has been posted.  If you are Stone Soup writing age, which is age 13 and under, and if the Young Blogger posts inspire you, then go to the submissions button and upload an example of what you’d like to blog about. If our editor, Emma Wood likes it, then she will make you a Stone Soup blogger. All subjects welcome. The recent post I am featuring today is “Rain” by Lukas Cooke. I think this is an utterly brilliant piece of writing. It is very difficult describing what you see and experience. Storms are particularly difficult to evoke with words. Lukas does an incredible job describing a rain storm, first from observing it inside his house, and then from outside where he is standing in the rain. I’d like to share this passage with you: “The wind seemed to be whistling a tune, accompanied by the soft percussion of rain hitting the ground and splashing in puddles. Dancing to that tune were the trees, swaying back and forth, rejoicing in the water that so eagerly rushed down to quench their thirst. The frogs too, could be heard from inside the house, their chorus befitting the scene. And the frogs too, were rejoicing in the long–needed downpour.” I am a writer and all I can say is, wow! The wind whistles, the trees dance, the frogs rejoice. This passage demonstrates Lukas’ power as a writer as he takes common ideas–the whistling wind, the dancing trees, and the chorus of frogs–and fleshes them out in a dynamic prose that has emotional depth, grace, and rhythm. Notice how he injects emotions and feelings through the core words and ideas he uses to describe the scene. He speaks of the trees “rejoicing in the water that so eagerly rushed down to quench their thirst.” Lukas’ tree is intensely alive, as is the water that rushes down to it. I find this idea of a dancing tree rejoicing in the rain to be powerfully evocative. One of the most memorable storm scenes in English literature is in a short story, Typhoon, by the great Polish-British writer, Joseph Conrad (1857-1924). While Conrad tackled describing a hurricane from the vantage point of a boat in peril on the high seas, Lukas has tackled something that I think may be even more difficult. He describes a storm that is within our experience. Everyone reading his story, whether conscious of doing so or not, will be comparing Lukas’ description of the rain with their own experiences. We know exactly what a storm such as the one Lukas describes is like. A false step would stick out. What I want you to do this weekend, and I am speaking here to all of you reading the Newsletter this week, whether you are still a student or whether you are a parent or grandparent, is to join Lukas in describing  the weather that is right outside your door. I want you to do it this weekend. The challenge is to make something of whatever the day is like when you start writing. If you are together (kids and grownups) then do this together.  When you read Lukas’ complete text you will see that he is clearly thinking deeply about how to say what he wants to say. You can see he worked hard to express the full depth and complexity of his experience. If you feel you are struggling to say what you want to say, then that is good. On your first couple of drafts please let yourself go. Don’t censor what you are writing. Don’t edit yourself. The first words that you write to describe the day may not turn out to be the best words to use. That doesn’t matter. Get the ideas down, make a word sketch, and then later, perfect it. If you end up really liking what you have written, and if you think that you make your readers feel and see the moment of the day you are describing (and you are 13 or under), then please submit it to Stone Soup. You may also send what you have written to me just by replying to the Newsletter. And if you are a kid and actually managed to get an adult to write along with you, then email your joint pieces to me as well. One of our advisors once suggested that we publish work by parents and grandparents, so lets see what comes of this idea. Once I have a few paired works by kids and adults, I’ll have a better idea of what to do with them. And, if you are an adult Newsletter reader but without kids to work with–well, take up the challenge, anyway. What do you see out the window? Until next week,