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!”
writing workshop
How Stories Work—Writing Workshop #39: Long Sentences
An update from our thirty-ninth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, May 28, plus some of the output published below. This week, Conner lectured on something he never had before: long sentences, which have become in today’s day and age somewhat of a dying art form. To begin, we looked at two paintings: Hieronymus Bosch’s Christ in Limbo, which we found to be dark and disturbing, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Battle Between Carnival and Lent, which we found to be more comedic and prosaic. We then spent five minutes trying to transcribe each of these two hectic paintings, analogous to long sentences, into words. After this short writing exercise, we looked at four examples of long sentences. The first came from Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. We found this sentence to display the speed potential of long sentences by eliminating punctuation and repeating the word “and.” The sentence itself was literally a run-on, enacting the running of the horses. The second sentence came from Don Quixote and was somewhat of an anthesis to McCarthy’s. It was filled with punctuation and interrupted itself, which produced a sense of self-consciousness. The third sentence came from Italian Hours by Henry James, which we were able to synthesize into one sentence: to dwell in a modern city is to live a double life. The sentence was somewhat of a hybrid between the one from All the Pretty Horses and the one from Don Quixote. The fourth and final sentence was from Blood Meridian, also by Cormac McCarthy. We found this sentence to be somehow short and long at the same time, another hybrid. Ultimately this sentence best represented the long sentence’s ability to build upon itself. The Challenge: Write a poem or story in one long sentence. Don’t worry about whether or not your story or poem makes sense. Only concern yourself with how much you can fit into the writing. Make your sentence as long as possible. See what happens. The Participants: Emma, Josh, Ellie, Fatehbir, Shiva, Chelsea, Alice, Zar, Lina, Samantha To watch all of the readings from this workshop, click here. Emma Hoff, 10(Bronx, NY) In the Room of Pharaohs, We Meet Emma Hoff, 10 There were many different countries in the world, and she, he, you, and I knew that, but we would investigate and learn about the world, the universe, the planet, and we would eventually meet in a strange place, the museum, where outside that ominous building the grasses grew tall and had also been sheared short into the gray cement and where there was a fountain, with little gray steps that dared you to climb them, because that was where the little children ran and played in their bathing suits and bare feet; the opening of doors in the night on the other side of the world and the closing of them in the morning stayed in rhythm with the constant laughter emitted by the children, and a couple of businesspeople walked along the streets which matched their prim and perfect suits, but we were not those people, we were from different places and we would all meet in a strange place, the museum, where some briefcases flinched from water droplets and some people bathed in them, where carts selling food wafted their aromas into the faces of innocent passerby and portraits and paintings and photographs created their own museum outside, and smiling faces waited in lines with a few scowling and tired children, or with the happy ones, which scampered around, excited for their turn to climb up the dull-colored steps that led to exotic rooms and echoing chambers and big displays, but we did not have children, we were from different places and we would all meet in a strange place, the museum, and bikes were scary to animals and dogs were scary to daring mountain climbers, and cars skidded along the edges of sidewalks and fences cut you and glared at you, but beyond the fences were trails and flowers and a place to run and dew-soaked hedges and bushes and the crisp air that is humid, warm, and cold, the type you want to walk in forever when you get out of a car, but we did not own any cars, we walked into different places and we would all meet in a strange place, the museum, while looking at Egyptian statues of cats.
Writing Workshop #66: Nature Writing
An update from our sixty-sixth Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, May 21st In this workshop, students practiced writing descriptively about the natural world with examples from J. R. R. Tolkien. William showed pictures of various landscapes, including a few he had taken himself, and as a mini-challenge, had students describe what they saw. William demonstrated that naming certain plants or animals could evoke a more specific sense of place. William also emphasized that you don’t even need to leave your house; you can observe nature on YouTube, a great resource for observing gestures and movements. Lastly, William showed students that science-based nature writing does not need to by dry, but can (and should) be written beautifully, with elements of creative writing such as alliteration. The Challenge: Describe a beautiful place or write a piece that involves one or more animals using any style of writing you wish. This can be a story, poem, nonfiction prose, or any prose style you have in mind, like stream of consciousness or science-based nature writing. The Participants: Pearl, Lena, Eva, Delight, Madisen, Anya, Rachael, Amelia, Aimee, Aditi, Liam, Yueling, Agatha, Sally, Eric, Elbert
