William Rubel

An update from our sixtieth Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, March 5th, plus some of the output published below For today’s workshop, William built upon his previous workshop on stream-of-consciousness but taken in a different direction: nonsense words. William challenged the writers to focus on sounds, made-up words, saying the “unsayable.” We heard a poem of made-up words, the Klingon war song, and a poem in Elvish. Then the writers tried a 5 minute writing exercise in which they were encouraged to make up words. After, the writers watched some scat singing and double-talk comedy videos. The Challenge: Use pseudo words within a story or a poem to say something beyond words. The Participants: Agatha, Kelby, Peri, Lauren, Yueling, Rachael, Elbert, Liam, Iago, Anya, Kate, Stella Pelpesu Pelsoo (Five-Minute Writing Piece) Peri Gordon, 12Sherman Oaks, CA by Peri Gordon, 12 Pelpesu palei lepasu pepoo Perstali hofana hopsalli soo Pelmasu selfasu falelu falee Pesafa safa fipsifee Melsti melfopo pelmif sifa Pelpesu pelsoo Elefaso elwasu Pelpesu pelsoo Pelsa feeliofip Pelpesu pelsoo Lololefipfip celso Cesse Pelpesu leamell Deeper than English (Main Writing Piece) by Peri Gordon, 12 Lily tucked her laptop under her arm and headed outside into the Sunday morning fog. Her feet knew the way; they were so used to carrying her where she was going that it was barely a voluntary movement. Her legs walked calmly, allowing her mind to drift. Her English assignment was to observe nature, something she had already been doing every day for the past four years. But today was different. Today, she had to write about nature, and she wasn’t at all sure whether she was up to the task. Sure, she knew every nook and cranny of the forest. Sure, she could describe every detail by heart, but that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted the reader to feel the forest, the way she did. Her piece needed depth, depth that the English language could not give her. She sat down on her usual tree stump, which was two feet high and the color of chocolate. She closed her eyes and let her instincts guide her. Her fingers began to type. She wrote: I see the tree stump: preet, sliff, cerlous. I feel it, grudie yet solseena. I listen to the air. It says, “Shee shee selsa shee sho seeeeeee.” It rustles the treetops with a shtet and a tibbletoo. Beneath my feet, the curusutu, bloi grass frimfoops, and a squirrel shutalets away with a yeep. The sky is cleepy and selfessen, and the sun is an oorious togopot. There is so much to explore, so much to willawave and croprast and yuptop and yerm. Yoo repsendin kee toom fwee! Monday did not go well. Lily held her breath, and her teacher read her report aloud—actually, it seemed more like she scukbeaded it. The other kids sleed at her from the other side of the plaso maso room. Lily’s teacher skudded and yued at her. So did her classmates. Finally, the teacher said, “What is this nonsense?” Lily sighed with impatience. “Mrs. Campbell,” she finally said, “would you please stop spleefing at me?”

An update from our fifty-ninth Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, February 19th, plus some of the output published below In this workshop, William emphasized the importance of rhythm in pieces of writing. The participants looked at pieces that utilize iambic pantameter and other well-known rhythmic standards. William also touched upon the comparison to music, and how reading a piece and stopping for breath is not dissimilar to playing an instrument and having to stop to breathe. The writers then went into a small writing exercise where they were challenged to write something in the vein of the famous opening line from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. The Challenge: Write a piece that focuses on phrasing with arcs, the rise and fall of speech, repetition, and heart-beat rhythm. The Participants: Liam, Agatha, Yueling, Kelby, Lauren, Peri, Elbert, Kate, Lena, Rachael, Anya, Iago   Peri Gordon, 11Sherman Oaks, CA Heart Leaps, Heart Sinks Peri Gordon, 12 Alarm. Ding! Heart leaps, leaps, leaps as I bound out of bed in a hurry, ready for a brand new day. School. Remember? Heart sinks, sinks, sinks as I slide down the stairs. Scent. Pancakes! Heart leaps, tongue licks lips. Sound. Bus! Heart sinks, feet spring into action. Scurry scurry after bus—it sails away. Heart sinks lower, feel its absence in my chest. Feel my heart in my throat, feel it in my stomach, feel it in my legs. Legs run faster, time slows down. Streets seems longer, I seem shorter. Need to relax. Breathe, breathe. Breathe in, breathe out. Deep breath in, deep breath out. I inhale, I exhale. Slowly, calmly, I evaluate the situation. Cars zip by on the street next to me, so much faster than I. Sounds of horns blarethrough my ears, and sounds of wind soothe them. Tons of noise melts into white noise all at once. My heart leaps as the familiar sight of my home fills my vision, and sinks as I realize my parents have already left for work. The sun smirks at me. I have dreams, dreams of becoming an astronaut, dreams of soaring through space and viewing the sun up close, but how can I reach the blinding ball of fire in the sky when I cannot even reach school? The white noise hardens, jeering at me, and I cover my ears. Stop. Just stop worrying? I don’t know. You can’t get to school, you won’t. You won’t, you won’t, you won’t. You can’t. Heart sinks, sinks, sinks. Feel its absence in even my legs.    

An update from our fifty-eighth Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, February 12th, plus some of the output published below William started off the workshop by having a journal reading from Ananya. Then, he invited participants to read passages from books they were reading that captured a sense of place. Peri and Agatha both read passages from books they were currently reading. William continued with a review of another topic he’s covered in Writing Workshop: Ekphrasis. He emphasized that using sensory details and thinking about how different characters might react to an environment. We looked at examples from Jack London’s Call of the Wild and Willa Cather’s My Antonia. Then the writers did a short exercise where they wrote for 5 minutes where they could either write a neutral description of a place or an emotionally charged perspective through the eyes of a character. The Challenge: Describe a place through the eyes of a character, with all the bias and emotion that they might have. The Participants: Agatha, Sophie, Peri, Kate, Liam, Anya, Ananya, Lauren, Lena, Rachael, Alexandra, Yueling, Iago, Elbert   Yueling Qian, 9Chicago, IL The Barn Yueling Qian, 10 I look at the old barn. It is dark red as if it was painted like that to make me feel worse. The wet mud sticked to the bottom of my shoe. I could hear the ugly squelching sound of it. The cows mooed furiously. I look at the tall yellow crops. It looked like they all hate each other, and they wanted to outgrow each other. The horses kicked their hind legs staining the perfectly white fence. All the delicious yellow corn has fell on to the gross wet mud. The ugly rotten corn remained standing. The sunflowers drooped like the sun meant nothing anymore. In fact, the sun didn’t mean a thing anymore. Peri Gordon, 11Sherman Oaks, CA The Hill Peri Gordon, 12 Twenty-two hills. We had scouted twenty-two hills, and not one was right for the film. Too tall, too short, too large, too small…why bother with a twenty-third? We would never find the perfect one. The overgrown shrubs of Hill Twenty-Three crowded around us, blocking our way. The dull green of their leaves resembled a watery, disgusting stew, which, suddenly, I could practically taste. The clouds above obscured the sky in long, pale streaks, as if a child had smeared the atmosphere with white paint. In the feeble light, it could be seen that the hill was pockmarked with stones covered in moss—or was it mold?—and the grass stuck up like thousands of blades waiting for someone with bare feet to come along. A rancid smell wound its way down from a looming, moldy chunk of rock to the threatening grass, worked its way around a few trees that shielded the hill, and wafted into my nostrils, at which point images of sewers flashed through my mind. I was sure I could feel the moist, mushy ground beneath my feet beginning to cave in under the weight of my body, and I jumped back in alarm, smashing my legs into a bush woven with thorns. As I tried to recover, the clouds suddenly parted, making way for devilish heat that practically set my back on fire. I ran down the side of the hill, attempting to get away from parts of nature I could never escape, my shoes slipping off and allowing the sharp grass to torment my feet, doomed to run to yet another hill, all for a movie that would never be made.