COVID-19

An update from our fourth weekly writing workshop A summary of this week’s project, 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 one hour 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. At our session on Friday April 24, we introduced ourselves and got straight into a discussion of this week’s theme: Trapped! William Rubel, Stone Soup’s founder, presented some images and ideas about being trapped, entrapment, and prisons of various kinds: Traps for birds depicted by Breughel; pulp fiction “Trapped by Love” book covers; ideas about mental traps that people set for themselves; fear of entrapment in humans and animals. Before getting down to our own writing, groups members shared some brainstorming ideas for some more specific ways of thinking about the theme. Brainstorming ideas: – trapping yourself in a bad friendship – you might know this is not a good person, but you do it anyway. – a personal barrier acting as a trap: you want something, but you somehow feel prevented from reaching it, without there necessarily being an obvious reason outside of yourself. – an emotional barrier, such as fear, anger, disappointment, being scared for something, or of what might happen if you take an action. – being trapped by other people’s expectations of you. – being caught out by an enemy (which could be a person or a thing), e.g. being trapped in a elevator. The Writing Challenge: What are your ideas around the idea of being trapped? This concept is as broad as you want to make it, and can include: traps; those who entrap; those who are entrapped (who are either very conscious of it or, for one reason or another, feel themselves not to be trapped when they are); and even those who dream of escape or have escaped! The Participants:  Lena (10), Ever (10), Emily (10), Analise (9), Liam (12), Peri (10), Suman (10), Djin (10), Ma’ayan (13), Anya (13), Lucy (12), Georgia (11), Isabella (9), Emilia (6), Tristan (14), Gracie (12), Lauren (10), Maggie (11), Joanna, Sophia (10), Allegra (10), Arianna (9), Aviya & Kesed. There was a lot of free thought going on within the idea of being trapped–and as usual some great writing resulted from our half hour of concentration, which authors then read aloud to the group. There was some encouraging feedback for the writers in the chat section, besides lots of positive verbal responses to the individual readings. We are all overwhelmed by how talented all our workshop participants are, and how their ideas are just on fire for every workshop! Below you can read a few examples of this week’s great workshop output. Puppet Strings By Lena Aloise, 10 The Earth spins silently, In its unseen chains of gravity. The moon plays with the evening tide, On puppet strings. Our hearts flutter in our chests, Because our minds instruct them to. And clouds are pushed by the summer breeze. Are we all just things on our puppet strings, Being controlled by some greater force. Is the existence of humanity, Just an idea thought up by someone else? And if we are just things on a puppet string, Who is the person holding the other side? Or do we cut our puppet strings? Pave our own paths of destiny? Could it be that we bend the bars, Of the prisons of our universe? Concealed By Analise Braddock, 9 The only trap she could stumble through took her He trapped her desire concealing it in her Feeding her the past the trapped moments turn into hours Gripping her freedom but still holding the time Inside where she’s trapped and concealed Eventually she breaks out her desire forever lost Not Here By Anya Geist, 13 I’m standing, watching I know that most people Would give anything to be where I am Would love to bounce, weightless on the Moon Would love to walk in space Would love to see the Earth from afar But none of them are here They say they would love to be here But they aren’t, they’re aren’t here And I know, in my heart They won’t ever be And so I stand And I stare at the Earth Watching the clouds drift over land I remember land, the touch of soft grass I see the oceans, so expansive I remember the feeling of waves and water But will I ever see them again? Weeks ago communications went out No one has come, no one has fixed them I am here, on the edge of the Moon The place everyone dreams of being But I am not here, not in the place where everyone is Untitled By Anya Geist, 13 There is water all around me, murky and dark. Growing darker, darker. Light hardly reaches down here, in the bowels of the lake. It’s like being in a forest, a forest where evil whistles in your ear with every blow of the wind, where every crack of a branch is an enemy out to get you. The vague reflections of my friends on the surface shimmer before my eyes, mirages. I am viewing them from another world, a world no one should venture into. Oh why, why did I take the dare? Hardly anyone has ever reached the bottom of the lake? But I am trying. My chest grows tighter and my ribs and lungs feel tied together. I hardly dare to waste my breath and it seems to shrink inside me, shriveling until I barely know it’s there. Whenever I do risk a slight exhale, whenever bubbles of air rise from my nose, free to return to the sunny surface, I feel a brief respite. But it is like smelling food when you are hungry. In the end, it only makes the pain