Weekly Writing Workshop #7: Friday May 15, 2020 An update from our seventh weekly writing workshop A summary of this week’s project, plus some of the output published below The Stone Soup Weekly Writing Workshop, held on Fridays at 1:00 p.m. PST, is open to all Stone Soup contributors and subscribers during the COVID-19-related school closures and shelter-in-place arrangements. We meet 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 May 15, the group was focused on Point of View. This week’s presentation and discussion looked at the various perspectives writers can use to tell their stories and present their characters. The story will unfold differently, and the “facts” may even be very different, depending on who is telling the tale. Are we seeing the world and hearing about events through the eyes of an observer or a particular character? Are we in the hands of an all-knowing external narrator telling us about what happened to “him,” “her,” and “them”, or are we being told the tale by “I”, the one to whom it is happening? Are we able to see several points of view, directly from one or two different characters, or can we infer how others might feel by understanding the main character’s point of view? The Writing Challenge: Write from the first person (“I”) point of view. The “I” can be an object, a human, an animal, as long as it is a first-person perspective. The Participants: Ever, Emily, Analise, Liam, Kanav, Peri, Suman, Djin, Ma’ayan, Anya, Lucy, Georgia, Tristan, Gracie, Lauren, Sophia, Allegra, Arianna, Aviya, Michela, Maddie, Silas, Justin, Vishnu, Lewis, Kendyll, Chloe, Gina, Abhi, Laila, Ethan, Shai and more! Below you can read just a few examples of the great work that came out of this workshop. Lena Aloise, 11Harvard, MA Dearest Laila Lena Aloise, 11 Dearest Laila, Humans are creatures of great complexity. We are, by nature, social beings, but many love solitude, the quiet, empty feeling of being alone. We are builders, innovators, risk takers, engineers. We have an ever increasing span of knowledge, technology that advances by the hour. But some nights, when the local alarm lets out shrill screams, when gunshots pierce the still night air, I wonder how far our species really has come. Will there ever come a day, Laila, when mankind will learn to accept each-other, when all can sleep in peace and live united? These questions whirl angrily around my mind, causing a dull throbbing in my right temple. Physical pain is something I can cope with, but this mental anguish, this feeling of uncertainty is not. When we were young, we used to play in the meadows behind our house, Laila. We would splash in the stream that cut through the lush greenery, braid crowns of wildflowers and pretend we were the queens of everything. What we meant by ‘everything’, I am still unsure. I would not want to rule everything right now, not want to look upon the ruins that are in my possession, not want to see all the innocent subjects who have suffered on soil that I call my own. You were too young to remember what fun we used to have. I wonder if you remember what happiness, what bliss is. It is scarce these days. In my opinion, contentment is not having to worry about foreign invaders, about where your next meal will come from. Laila, you deserve a better world, but all the riches I do not have could not buy that for you. This letter will never reach you. Post is just too expensive nowadays. But Laila, my serene night, my peaceful star, know that I do love you, more than your young mind can conceptualize. And I will still love you, even if I never do see you again, even if the sky falls down on us both. Until we meet again, dear sister, whenever that may be. Your loving sibling, Annalise Analise Braddock, 9 Katonah, NY The Wind Analise Braddock, 9 The wind took me Dipping sorrows around me scaring my deepest fears Never before could anyone realize it The plastered death sure to come out of the wind When the wind was stronger huge, all around eating up my eyes before I could blink Swirling around taking her from me Holding up the strings moving me The wind was ready Turning present to past leads to certain consequences The fear that was told not to fear by one turning to all But my mind resisted The wind still took me Anya Geist, 13Worcester, MA A Day in the Life of a Small Town: told from four perspectives Anya Geist, 13 Today the day dawned bright and fair. The sun was rose-gold, rising from the embers of the night. I stood at the top of the Golden Hill. I stared out into the west. All around me, the grass seemed to be lit aflame with color. I wandered a bit, then sat down, letting the warmth of day wash over my body. Today would be a good day, I decided, for exploring the Great Wood just beyond the edge of town. I’m awake. I don’t want to be awake. But I can’t ignore the noise anymore. Children laughing and playing on the streets outside. Can’t they just stay at home until a decent hour? The sun has only just risen. I deserve some rest, especially since I run the general store. I shout at them through my open window. They scatter like birds that are being pelted with stones. [[The morning is very pretty and it is going to be a sunny day. Mama makes eggs for breakfast and then I go out and I want to play with my friends but a lot of them are still inside and so I knock on their doors and say wake up and then they come outside and then we play
William Rubel
Weekly Writing Workshop #6, Friday May 8, 2020: Sense of Place
An update from our sixth weekly writing workshop A summary of this week’s project, plus some of the output published below The Stone Soup Weekly Writing Workshop, held on Fridays at 1:00 p.m. PST, is open to all Stone Soup contributors and subscribers during the COVID-19-related school closures and shelter-in-place arrangements. We meet 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 May 8, the group was focused on creating a strong Sense of Place. The group discussed what sense of place means to them: a description of a specific environment that is topical to you; a description of the surroundings where and circumstances in which the story is taking place. A good sense of place would mean that the readers can visualise where the story is taking place. If it’s strong, you feel like you are there in the environment that is being described. William presented a number of short passages that give strong examples of sense of place: Andrew Lang, Charles Dickens, Jean Giono, Robert Musill, J. R. R. Tolkein; and some landscape photographs and paintings that conveyed strong atmosphere and mood (such as Ferdinand Hodler’s View of the Swiss Alps) which participants responded to and discussed. At the end of 30-35 minutes of writing 8 participants read their work and had it commented on. This was another workshop just humming with ideas and creativity. The Writing Challenge: Focus on Sense of Place. This exercise requires a pure focus on the setting. You may not get into a story or a whole poem. We are looking for writing that conveys a strong declaration of where we are. The Participants: Ever, Emily, Analise, Liam, Peri, Suman, Djin, Ma’ayan, Anya, Lucy, Georgia, Tristan, Gracie, Lauren, Sophia, Allegra, Arianna, Aviya, Michaela, Maddie, Silas, Justin, Vishnu, Lewis, Kendyll, Chloe, Gina, Abhi, Laila, Ethan, Shai. Below you can read just a few examples of the great work that came out of this workshop. Allegra Maio, 10Brooklyn, NY I walk Allegra the Adaptable, 10 I walk into the living room to find 4 walls filled with luxurious stuff. The walls a pretty purple with matching carpets to coat the floor. The emptiness I feel, soon becomes a feeling of pleasure. Tables and chairs, sanded down to the last bit. A dead bear on the floor; a deer’s antlers hanging on the wall; and a wall full of rabbits’ feet. The presence of being here makes me want to feel free to burst out of my shell. I smell the faint smell of weed and assume it’s my father. I run my fingers along the wall. I feel every bit of the purple. I chip away at some dry paint, only wanting to feel. I notice, I notice the world around me. I notice the green, blue and yellow of the floor, something I have never noticed. Even the walls, seem different. “It’s not what you look at that matters;” my mom used to say, “It’s what you see.” I used to never understand that meaning, and now, I finally do Michaela Frey, 12Herndon, VA Winter Awakening Michaela Frey, 12 A quiet morning during the mid-winter, a window between the old year and the new year, you tiptoe out of the small cabin. It is sometime early, as the old, wooden grandfather clock just hit the starry northern twelve, making a song fit for only those who dare awaken early, a beautiful sonnet just for you. The morning is as beautiful as no other, a minute after the past day, you cherish the seconds. The grassy ground is coated in layers of untouched snow, and you hesitate before stepping into it. The day is born, but the stars are still floating up in the sky, the moon shining brightly, all spread out between gaps that look small, but you know that really, the gaps are farther between every star than you could think of. The snowflakes smile up at you, each a different, unique star of its own. Trees are painted a winter white, all without leaves, but beautiful nonetheless. They smile at you as well. You tiptoe across the acres of white until you reach the frozen lake. The world seems to have stopped, frozen, just like the lake. It is silent, but not a eerie silence, not like the silence in your home during early mornings, as you know all the birds will begin chirping soon, the squirrels will start to scurry across the trees, the children will soon begin to step outside, cheerily tossing snowballs at each other. But right now it is just you and the snow, the lake, the trees. And those are the things that are there, in the light of the earliest minute of the morning. Anya Geist, 13Worcester, MA Untitled 1 Anya Geist, 13 A stiff wind pushed its way through the air, consumed by a hot dryness that seemed to leach color and life out of every living thing. The air was dusty, but empty, left alone to feed on countless shriveled gardens and to fade previously vibrant clapboards in town. Nobody dared to venture outside in this tepid weather, where the heat beat down even stronger than the blazing sun; instead they sheltered in their homes, afraid to open the windows, afraid to let the monster of heat in. A little ways out of the town, over a parched field, and up a stubby, short hill there was a house. It was perched all alone, surrounded by yellow, faded grasses, and covered with the canopy of the almost-yellow, cloudless sky. Its sides had once been a pristine white, the color of a wedding dress amidst emerald green fields, but now it seemed to have no color. It simply blended into the background, into the pure lifelessness of the sky. The windows were open in this house, the glass grimy and cracked, the sashes crooked, propped up by
Weekly Writing Workshop #5, Friday May 1, 2020: Where I’d Like To Be
An update from our fifth weekly writing workshop A summary of this week’s project, plus some of the output published below The Stone Soup Weekly Writing Workshop, held on Fridays at 1:00 p.m. PST, is open to all Stone Soup contributors and subscribers during the COVID-19-related school closures and shelter-in-place arrangements. We meet 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 May 1, we had a record-breaking 35 participants (not counting the Stone Soup team!). We’d all agreed in advance that we would extend the session an extra 20 minutes from the original hour, so the new participants introduced themselves, and we got straight into a discussion of this week’s theme: Places we’d like to be – gardens and special private spaces, utopia, paradise… William Rubel, Stone Soup’s founder, first presented some images of beautiful gardens, forests, water and other special places in nature. Then, with Ma’ayan and Lena’s help he introduced the idea of Utopia, a new word (or neologism) coined by Thomas More in 1516, which can be translated from the ancient Greek as either “nowhere” or “good place”. Ever since then, the world’s writers and thinkers have used the word Utopia to describe any imagined or visionary world of peace, beauty, perfection and social harmony. We ended on an image of the Garden of Eden, the original Paradise of the Jewish and Christian Old Testament, where the lions and the lambs (and the mice and elephants) live in peace and harmony. There was some discussion in the chat about other religions’ different images and descriptions of Paradise, as well as some sharing of side stories about whether the snake in the Garden of Eden ever had legs, and if so, how it lost them! Before getting down to our own writing, groups members shared some brainstorming ideas for ways of thinking about the theme, that ranged from ideas about imaginary utopias or paradise, to special places personal to the group members, such as summer camp (on our minds because it may not happen this year), or the freedom and pleasure of being on a beach. The Writing Challenge: Places we’d like to be – gardens and special private spaces, utopia, paradise: real, imagined and anywhere in between! The Participants: Lena, Ever, Emily, Analise, Liam, Peri, Suman, Djin, Ma’ayan, Anya, Lucy, Georgia, Isabella, Emilia, Tristan, Gracie, Lauren, Maggie, Joanna, Sophia, Allegra, Arianna, Aviya, Kesed, Rhian, Michaela, Maddie, Nadia, Silas, Raeha, Justin, Madeleine, Kanav, Pallavi. Below you can read just a few examples of the great work that came out of this exciting, visionary workshop. Maze Analise Braddock, 9 CARA: I hate mazes. EVELYN: Don’t be silly, you’re just scared. CARA: I am not! EVELYN: Then come in the maze. CARA: Fine. NARRATOR: As they walked inside the maze’s walls it was the most beautiful vision in the land. Varieties of flowers picnicked along the evergreen walls. CARA: Race you. EVELYN: Don’t count on winning. NARRATOR: The girls ran and ran until you could hear panting from miles away. CARA: Wait where is mom and dad? EVELYN: (Shrug) CARA: Look, an opening. EVELYN: I want to spend more time in the maze, you go. NARRATOR: CARA ran to the opening astonished. It was filled with all her favorite animals in a garden that the trees were bending to guard. CARA: I always wanted a zoo. EVELYN: A garden zoo? CARA: Let’s see what else is here. EVELYN: What about my favorite things?? NARRATOR: They searched until a new opening became in sight. CARA: Look, a room that reminds me of a palace. EVELYN: You have always wanted a palace. CARA: It is all I have ever wanted. EVELYN: Hopefully there is another opening and it is something I want. NARRATOR: Once again they ran to a final entrance. CARA: Wow. NARRATOR: It was a beautiful room with silver butterflies and lined with what felt like happiness and gold. EVELYN: It is magical, let’s stay forever. CARA: No. EVELYN: Why not? CARA: Well… then I am too spoiled. I will have all of this and some have nothing. Let’s go home NARRATOR: And so they did. Where You’ll Land Silas Costa, 10 The cars whizz by like hummingbirds buzzing towards a flower. I jump back, dodging the water sprayed up from the road. I sigh and take the small paper out of my pocket. I look at the directions one more time. The taxi refused to take me any farther than Jupiter Way. Minerva Street, the tiny street I am trying to get to branches off of the Jupiter somewhere up here. I walk past Hermes Street, Mars Avenue, and Venus Street, stomping over cigarette butts and empty chip bags. Finally, I reach Minerva Street and take a left onto it. Its thinner than the rest of the streets in Olympitya, and seems forgotten. It is crowded with tight row houses standing shoulder to shoulder. There aren’t many people on the street, and only a few lights on in the houses. I look carefully for the address. Alpha, Eta, Rho. I recite the address in my head over and over, my eyes scanning the houses like a hawk searching for prey. I finally find it. It’s an older house, made of brick with a white wooden door. There aren’t any lights on, and all of the blinds are closed, so I figure there’s nobody here. I pull out the yellowed paper and check the address again. It says to go to the alley on the left side. I look up and see a gate where I am supposed to enter. I open the gate and step into the narrow alley. I checked, it’s miles to the next street, so this must be a long one. But I look ahead and see that there is another door close to me, maybe six feet away. I go forward and open the door. What I
