An update from our fifty-ninth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, March 11, plus some of the output published below This week, we learned about automatic writing, a fun exercise and an effective strategy to overcome writer’s block. Automatic writing was born out of the surrealist movement of the early 20th century. Surrealists believed that artists and writers should avoid conscious thought and instead attempt to hypnotize themselves in the process, Conner explained. We looked at several surrealist paintings, and then at several examples of automatic writing from Benjamin Peret and André Breton. Students noted that some common features of automatic writing include repetition and a sense of dreaminess. Then, we discussed Action painting and looked at a few works from the most famous face of the movement, Jackson Pollock. Action painting can be seen as a visual representation of automatic writing whereby paint is spontaneously dribbled rather than carefully applied onto the canvas, just as words can be spontaneously typed or written rather than deliberated over. The Challenge: Write automatically for 20 minutes. Don’t think; don’t edit; allow yourself to write badly; relinquish control to let the writing take over! Then, you can rearrange your writing for ten minutes if you’d like, or continue to write automatically. The Participants: Sarah, Anushka, Catherine, Yueling, Lindsay, Samarina, Ava, Lucy, Stella Untitled Ava Luangkesorn, 8 The frost slaughtered the moon. The sun started to rise up to form the moon who formed daylight. Poppies danced in light’s presence. The koi fish danced in the moonlight and sang in the pond. The robin ate the sun and tried to spit it out, but managed to at the end of the second night. Many of the birds were panicking. The elephant threw his tusk at the sun, which officially caused eternal darkness. Poppies lit up, and the stars wilted and reincarnated into the world as the poppies’ light, then flew back up and hung like puppets from the moon and clouds. It really wasn’t much, it really wasn’t. It was just a cat standing up and flying to the stars, flying till reaching up to space! Lavenders die, and grow with rain, teardrops of salt. My eyes water, I cry out pollen. I can’t stand standing in the meadow with the sun rising and the moon dying in minutes. Ferns grow down the treehouse, the ferns grow wood along with it. It’s pinned to the wall. More life, more earth, more time for the sun to crawl to the other side, less time for the moon to arise. Below the house, below the stars, below the moon, below the clouds, below earth lies the grass, the dirt, the ground, the seedlings, the verse, the earth. I am the sky, I am the moon, I am myself, I am the sun, I am the star, I am the sheep’s skin, I am the horse’s mane, I am the flowers petals, I am the only kind to be thankful for the space, thankful for the slaughter, thankful for all god’s given me. More, more times pass. I pass my own self, I pass the fleet I pass, the earth I go to its core I fly, fly till my wings wilt away. I simply fly, fly and fly along beside the wind. I am the wind. I am the darkness. I am the space. I have myself in my mouth. I have a crystal in the cave, which is in my hands, which is in my eyes. Pleading to cut myself, pleading to just be here. Pleading, for no reason. The rainbow shines on the sun. I am the rainbow.
automatic writing
How Stories Work—Writing Workshop #28: Automatic Writing
An update from the twenty-eighth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday February 19th, plus some of the output published below “We are still living under the reign of logic… but dreaming is not inferior to reality as real human experience.” -André Breton For this week’s workshop, Conner had us “let go of our logical brains” and imitate surrealists of the 20th century by writing “automatically.” According to the rules of automatic writing, one should write for a period of time without a plan, purpose, or end point in mind, one should write as rapidly as possible without intervening consciously to guide the writing, and one should avoid conscious thought. In order to get in the proper frame of mind to write in this manner, we looked at various paintings by surrealist artists like Salvador Dalí and action artists like Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Willem de Kooning, and read the automatic writing of pioneers like André Breton, Benjamin Peret, and Phillipe Soupault, including some excerpts of Breton and Soupault’s Les Champs magnétiques. Before we began our prompt, we were also supplied with the following word bank, for optional use: Island Frog Milk Mountain Leftovers Grandfather Sweater Feather Rooster Crystal Holy Fork The Challenge: Write automatically for 20 minutes, then spend ten minutes arranging your piece. The Participants: Emma, Sophia, Nova, Amelia, Ananya, Alice, Josh, Zar, Samantha, Ellie, Chelsea, Quinn, Penelope To watch the rest of the readings from this workshop, like Emma’s below, click here. Emma Hoff, 9(Bronx, NY) I Tell Bad Jokes Emma Hoff, 9 Watermelon, cantaloupe, manatee, old shawl, disappearing objects, gone now. Jokes on the water at school, screen on fire, full fire, keep going and run or ride yourself forward make it bad but good and everything looks like the letter F. Everything’s crooked but perfect just kidding it’s all sad and makes people collapse but who cares anyway? Fruit in a bowl, toss the cookies out of the “cookie jar.” I don’t use a cookie jar, fruit in a jar. Everybody, come and join the feast! The table is wide and spread for you, but you do not come. I will eat your favorite watermelon by myself I guess, and the meat will rot, because all the company I have are ghosts that plucked their feathers out on Ebay. I guess I had too many stressed birds for pets. Daisies unfold but was I talking about tulips? Why looks like a letter, feels like something else new, can it be new? Nose, head, I can’t draw. Is this all good, am I bad, am I ranting? I take piano lessons and everything eventually breaks and I will eventually grow up and be scared and responsible and do things, and then I will eventually die, so what’s the point of learning? This moment? Okay, I’ll keep this moment but I know they won’t inscribe it on my grave because it’s too long to explain and too much beauty is too beautiful for eyes to see, my own eyes are on fire. My finger is in a pencil sharpener because I couldn’t find a pencil and I didn’t want to write with a marker. Maybe I should write with a crayon or mow lawns with a glue stick? I should plan a vacation so I can become tiny, because then the light switch will be easier to use and I’ll be able to climb everything and actually be a mountaineer and I’ll get squished and know what it feels like to be an accordion, but I can’t play an accordion, so my hypothesis is that it won’t be like in the cartoons and I won’t make music. Hypothesis is a long word and an accordion is also long but I like the word hypothesis and I like accordions, sort of, though I don’t play them. If you jump on an accordion I bet you would spring right back up because that’s what an accordion is like, and if you don’t clean out the basement right now, I will get super mad and possibly kill you, but the correct thing to say would be angry, because mad would mean you’re crazy, but I’m mad with anger at grammar, but I like grammar anyway, but I also like the word mad. Mad, mad, mad, say it louder! Turtles crawl slowly but the one my cousin made out of a paper plate is completely still. I think my cousin made it. Maybe I crafted it in my sleep? Ha ha, good one, good joke, why is no one else laughing? I don’t think I should go onstage and be a comedian because all my jokes suck and I’ll be the only one dying of laughter and everyone will storm out because they think I’m annoying. Pinwheels and flowers are similar, except one is plastic and one is paper, because I see a flower right now, and it’s paper. Why are you smiling? Why aren’t you smiling? Why is your mouth so tight and grim? It’s all wrong and so is the writing, so why do I keep painting? I draw people wearing crowns, but then I put Xs through the crowns and I laugh and I give them red hair because I like red hair. I like carrots, too, but the bunnies will eat all my carrots before I can and I don’t really like carrots. Are you sure you don’t want to eat with me? It’s nighttime, I should go to bed. I don’t want to sleep and I need to get this olive out of the jar and unstick my cat from the cannon and get the stain from the juice of the orange off the couch, the table, my clothes, and my chin. Okay, but really, there’s nothing to see, except orange and red! I see pink, blue, and so many different shades of green, too, but don’t tell. It all makes me roll my eyes and I see
