An update from our sixty-seventh Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, June 4th, plus some of the output published below In this workshop, students focused on the rhythm and sound of their writing and looked to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Klingon poetry, and J. R. R. Tolkien’s Elvish languages for inspiration. William introduced the concept of anaphora, the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses, as a way to add rhythm to writing. Similarly, he showed how assonance, consonance, and alliteration can be used for the same purpose. As a tongue-loosening mini-challenge, William prompted students to let go of meaning and grammar and just focus on sounds, whether they be flowing, not flowing, rhythmic, or chaotic. The Challenge: Let the words flow with rhythm and pattern. Keep your mind open, read aloud to yourself. Be exuberant! The Participants: Benedetta, Delight, Lena, Pearl, John, Madisen, Peri, Anya, Agatha, Jolene, Aimee, Eric, Amelia, Nysa, Aditi, Advika, Yueling, Elbert, Sally, Liam Three Poems Peri Gordon, 12 Don’t Be Afraid Don’t be afraid and come with me. Don’t be afraid and do as I do. Don’t be afraid, and know that you are in good hands. Relax and breathe. Relax and smile. Smile and don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid and face down your fears. Don’t be afraid and face down your foes. Don’t be afraid, and don’t forget my words. One and the same are your fears and your foes. One and the same are my values and yours. Smile and don’t be afraid. Battle Cry Be the cocoocha Of our shetoocha No need for globeil or flitchak or thuba Hoblosochey, the war cry of the day Resounds from the hills and the poikamarey Hee, shee, don’t be a clee! Awake and hoolachoo, we will rise from the glub And take back the gley that they left in the shub! Layers of Say-ers Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your shoe Let down your bracelet Your necklace too But never you dare Let down your hair For care I do not About you Cried the boy to the girl As she told him to help On a hot summer day In a hot, stuffy room With a hot-headed boy And a hot-headed girl And a hot hair curler And a hot stove And wet, salty sweat pouring down their backs And wet, salty tears coating their faces And wet, salty water crashing against the house Flooding their space and flooding their minds And then all was cold And the cold, wet room With the cold-hearted girl And the cold-hearted boy And a cold glass of water And a lifetime of cold smiles Was no more Said the man to the kids As he taught them to care Not hot-headed Not cold-hearted Warm, cool, and just right And just right was the mood And just right was the temperature And just right was the time for the kids to grow up Then stress crashed down upon them Like weights on their backs Weights on their arms Weights on their legs Pinning, and trapping, never to escape Never to see the sunny day For death and despair had darkened their vision With a cumulonimbus perspective And years went by in weeks for a while And then they were no more Said the fox to the ant As he taught how to block All the stress and dark thoughts and the fear and whatnot “Just be free,” said the fox “Just give in to the bliss and think sesa and fosa and shandy and clist” And the ant and the fox went along hand in hand Wrote the author As the arc of her story did land Penelope’s Pickles Liam Hancock, 14 “Pish-posh,” Penelope pressed playfully, picking and pickling powerfully pickled pickles per pound. “This simply won’t do,” proclaimed Penelope. “These pickles are turning blue and practically stew! A picking of pickles is long overdue!” And so Penelope penned a personal paper to the Pickling People’s Prefect, professional pickler Peter Piper, who previously perfectly picked a peck of plenty pickled peppers in the Pre-Pickle-Picking Period. Peter Piper penned a paper back to Penelope, but she was too preoccupied with her percolating pickles to pick up his paper and pen a paper back to Peter Piper. “Oh, dear,” Penelope said sadly, sunken in despair when she turned around after tending to her pickles and saw the letter waiting there. “It’s much too late to write back now!” She wiped the sweat from off her brow, and she turned to go and sit back down, but her pickles were practically pungent and Penelope figured that the Pickling People’s Prosecutor had done it. And so, feeling as if she was perpetually penning one paper or another, Penelope penned one last paper to the Pickling People’s Prosecutor, Percy Presto, and he promptly penned a paper in response, proclaiming that all pickles in the providence had been put to rest, and that all pickle-picking was to be promptly replaced by pepperoni packing plants. Penelope was appalled, and so she packed her pickles and paraded to the Pepperoni Providence and planted her pickles beside the pepperoni plants. Soon enough, a garden of gherkins had grown just beside the pepperoni plant, and every morning the pepperoni personnel purchased a peck of pickles and pickled peppers. The procession of pepperoni personnel purchasing Penelope’s peppers became so prolonged that very few were able to get to work before the day was done, and the pepperoni plants of the Percy Presto’s providence began to perform poorly, penny-pinching just to produce enough pepperoni to stay afloat. “Pish-posh,” Percy pressed, perceiving a powerful privation of pepperoni personnel. “This simply won’t do! Perhaps due to that proud Penelope, our pepperonis are turning blue and practically stew! A planting of pepperonis is long overdue!”
weekly
Saturday Newsletter: June 11, 2022
Nest Building (Panasonic Lumix DC-ZS200) By Sage Millen, 13 (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), published in Stone Soup June 2022 A note from Emma I want to start off this week’s newsletter with some good news and congratulations: Anya Geist’s novel, Born on the First of Two, was selected as a finalist in the 2022 Next Generation Indie Book Awards in the Young Author (Under 25) category. We are so proud of Anya and thrilled this wonderful novel is getting some recognition. Take this as a reminder to add Anya’s book to your summer reading list, and to be on the lookout for new copies with the finalist sticker on the cover! This also reminded me that I have been meaning to share a bit of book news with you all for some time now. In addition to my work as editor of Stone Soup and as a writer, I also work with high school students on their college application essays. And last spring, I published The Complete College Essay Handbook, a practical guide to writing college essays that I co-wrote with my colleague. Writing a practical guide was fun, and also more challenging than I expected. The most rewarding part (aside from being done, hah!) was that putting my process and advice down on paper not only reinforced what I already knew but actually pushed me to refine and improve our process. Writing remains the most powerful I know for thinking through ideas and improving upon them–whether they are the loftiest or the most trivial. Anyway, I am proud of the book and ask you to please consider recommending it to any teenage friends or relatives about to embark on this process, or to any high school English teachers or counselors you may know. Finally, since the subject of this newsletter has been books, I want to take the opportunity to remind you all that our 2022 Book Contest is still open for submissions. It closes on the 22nd of August. I know many of you began your books weeks ago, but if you are still interested–it’s not too late to start working on one to submit this year. We always focus on the fact that good writing takes time and multiple drafts. And sometimes it does. But sometimes it comes very quickly, and that doesn’t make it less or worse than something that takes more time! “First thought, best thought,” as Allen Ginsberg used to say. More than once, I have written something quickly then revised it and revised it, only to realize after a few months that the first draft was the better version. (I am not against revision by any means; many times, I have had the reverse experience–of completely rewriting in revision.) So, for those of you who are curious and excited at the possibility of writing a book–it’s not too late! Happy writing! Anthropology of the Everyday: The Art of Creative Nonfiction, June 13-16 with Laura Moran Do you like writing about your life experiences? Would you like to learn some techniques for making your nonfiction writing more compelling and creative? In this class you will learn a method of personal writing, sometimes used by anthropologists, that combines storytelling with writing about the details of your own everyday life. Students will practice a variety of Ethnographic Writing techniques, from self-reflection, to gathered observation, interviews, and investigation. Students will also participate in an artist-led activity to create a piece of illustrated artwork of everyday life, designed to accompany their ethnographic writing. Refugee Project Half Baked Art Collaboration, June 20 & 22 This workshop will allow participants to work on a piece of artwork in collaboration with a student living in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya. The dates for this set of two workshops are 6/20/22 (9-11am PT) and 6/22/22 (9-10am PT). From Stone Soup June 2022 The Hummingbird Whisperer By Michael Chao, 13 (Rancho Palos Verdes, CA) It was a lazy day in the month of May when I got that so-memorable phone call from my sometimes-bothersome twin sister, May. “Michael, hurry, hurry, come over!” screamed my sister, who was practicing tennis with Mom at a nearby tennis court. “Why? I’m busy!” I shouted back. “There’s two baby birds on the court. I think they’re still alive.” My ears perked up, and instantaneously my irritating sister became my wonderful sibling. “I’m coming right now!” I dragged Dad off the couch and made him drive me to the tennis courts. When we arrived, I saw Mom and May standing over two orphaned rufous hummingbirds, barely a week old. I couldn’t believe my eyes. This was my first time seeing hummingbird nestlings. They were only about the size of a stick of gum, pink-colored, and naked, with eyes closed. They shivered and ruffled what little down they had, trying to shelter from the ocean breeze. Delicately, I cupped them into the palm of my hand while using my other hand to block the wind. It was so nerve-racking to hold something so small and delicate. After gently placing the nestlings into a small insect cage padded with tissue paper, I began looking for their nest, hoping to find their mother, who was probably frantically seeking her young ones out. Along the boundary of the tennis court was a ten-foot-tall chain-link fence with ivy covering it from top to bottom. The ivy had grown thick, and probably hadn’t been cut back in years, which would make finding their home, a nest about the size of silver dollar, an almost impossible task. But the “needle in a haystack” chance of finding their nest didn’t deter me. I desperately wanted these little nestlings to live. I searched everywhere—every branch, nook, and cranny of ivy along the borders of the tennis court. After a couple of nerve-racking hours, I finally found the nest. It was located high up near the tree canopy, where neither my father, who is six-foot, three inches tall, nor I could reach. But mother bird was nowhere to be found. I
How Stories Work—Writing Workshop #40: Ekphrasis (Revisited)
An update from our fortieth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, June 4 This week, Emma Hoff, 10, led workshop with her own interpretation of ekphrasis, a favorite topic of the Stone Soup workshops. For the workshop portion, Emma presented us with the following three paintings and their accompanying ekphrastic interpretations. The Old Guitarist by Pablo Picasso — “The Man with the Blue Guitar” by Wallace Stevens. These two are different in that Stevens’ poem speaks of a blue guitar yet the only thing that isn’t blue in Picasso’s painting is the guitar. This is because Stevens speaks of a symbolic blue. Both works express modes/moods of sadness, or blueness. Hunters in the Snow by Pieter Bruegel the Elder — “Hunters in the Snow” by William Carlos Williams. WCW literally describes the painting, even references the painter. How does his reference of the painter affect the poem? Well, like the painting, which is crammed with details, William Carlos Williams crams his poem with details. House by the Railroad by Edward Hopper — “Edward Hopper and the House by Railroad” by Edward Hirsch. He, like WCW, is incorporating the painter. Hirsch really gets enamored with the painter. He’s kind of antagonistic towards Edward Hopper. After she’d shown us these three paintings and we together came up with interpretations, she asked us to choose between three more paintings in order to write an ekphrastic story/poem. The Challenge: Write an ekphrasis story/poem about either People at the Zoo, The Dream, or The Peasant Wedding The Participants: Emma (presenter), Lina, Anna, Jolene, Josh, Elbert, Fatehbir, Ellie, Samantha, Chelsea, Alice, Advika, Shiva
