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.
writing workshop
Writing Workshop #57: Writing Ideas from Music
An update from our fifty-seventh Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, February 5th, plus some of the output published below Summary & mini-challenges: This week’s Writing Workshop was a little different from usual. After the regularly scheduled writing journal reading, William launched into a new structure for writing workshop. Starting us off, William played a Beethoven composition that he challenged the group to think of as a dialogue between two characters. After discussing what the group thought about the music, William challenged the group to write a short piece inspired by the music they had just heard. Next, William played part of Mahler’s first symphony and challenged the writers to think of nature and the shimmery, ethereal aspect of the piece. We heard from several of the writers, who were inspired to write about subjects as disparate as space ships, morning mist, and birds beckoning someone to get out of their bed. The next piece of music William played was Liszt’s 1st piano concerto, beautifully played by Yuja Wang. William then pulled the sheet music for what Yuja was playing, and invited the writers to take a look at the patterns on the screen, whether or not they could read music. Particularly, William invited the writers to think about what was happening on the left and right hands, and how they could incorporate something similar into their writing. What followed after the piece of music was an interesting discussion of what sort of stories the music made the workshop participants think of. Then the writers were given another time period in which to explore these ideas on the page. The participants: Agatha, Lena, Yueling, Alexandra, Peri, Lauren, Kelby, Anya, Ananya, Elbert, Iago, Kate, Saanvi Peri Gordon, 11Sherman Oaks, CA Flash Fiction Pieces Peri Gordon, 12 Beethoven: An army, approaching slowly and with menace. A single person, with a quiet soul and a desire for a tranquil life. The army’s boots thud over miles and miles of empty wasteland. They are a black spot in the distance, yet their shadow looms large over she who is persecuted. Cold and careless, they trudge on, prepared to do their job accurately. Their victim’s pure, golden heart is weighed down with dread, sadness, and solitude. She does not want a fight. But she must fight back, for herself and her home. She loses. Mahler: The tree’s smooth, shiny bark is cool to the touch. It climbs into the sky. At the base of a tree is a young man who has nothing but himself. A pine cone rolls to his feet. A squirrel darts past. The man is at peace with nature. Perhaps he is even content with it. But then, in his mind, he hears the call of a life in the kingdom. The royal trumpets, the golden gates. Instead of trees, spires and turrets. Instead of wet earth, smooth roads. Home. Welcoming. Society. In his mind, he makes amends. He is beckoned forward and embraced. He runs home, loved and cared for. But it is just a dream. That life is over, long gone. The man opens his eyes. He is in a brand new wonderland. Green leaves climb into the sky. Clouds drift by. All of nature is in harmony. He can live with that. It is grand; it is wonderful; he is alone, but not alone. Liszt: Ariel leapt from challenge to challenge, contest to contest, place to place, stretching out the grasping hand that was her soul and reaching for the stars. Never content, never ready to settle down, she floated from North America to Africa to Australia, chasing her dreams, which were always growing and changing. Her brother, Clarence, knew what he wanted: a calm life with a happy family and a steady income. “Be happy, be content, and stay in place,” he told Ariel, so afraid she would leave him behind. Perhaps she already had. As his life went on in a linear fashion, she leapt and danced and proved her worth, grasping, reaching, and climbing, with a singing, shining self.
How Stories Work—Writing Workshop #26: Defamiliarization
An update from the twenty-sixth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday February 5, plus some of the output published below “It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.” -Anais Nin “The purpose of literature is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar.'” -Viktor Shklovsky This week, Conner was unable to attend due to the birth of his second child, Sawyer Cruz Bassett-Wood (congratulations, Conner!), so his assistant, Caleb Berg, led Conner’s lecture on defamiliarization. To begin, Caleb familiarized—ha ha—the class with the concept of defamiliarization as it pertains to art: the artistic technique of presenting to audiences common things in an unfamiliar or strange way so they could gain new perspectives and see the world differently. We focused on the art of Leonora Carrington and Pablo Picasso in painting, noting their unique ability to portray the ordinary in spectacular, often dream-like ways. Finally, we looked at the poetry of Paul Celan and Velimir Khlebnikov, paying particular attention to Celan’s “An Eye, Open” and Khlebnikov’s “When Horse’s Die.” The Challenge: Write a story or poem in which one or more objects/scenes are defamiliarized. That is, transform one or more objects/scenes so that they represent the feeling they produce. Create, as Anais Nin says, “new meaning.” The Participants: Lina, Emma, Josh, Amelia, Penelope, Zar, Samantha, Alice, Ellie, Nova, Quinn To watch more of the readings from this workshop, like Emma’s below, click here. Emma Hoff, 9(Bronx, NY) The Lamp Emma Hoff, 9 The light shines innocently, but it blinds me, and my eyes become red. Did it glare at you? It glared at me. I shied from it and still it followed me with its intent gaze, boring into me as I walk around the room. I can feel the hot bulb, feel the lamp melting and morphing under its own heat, its own light. The business is done, I think, but my dreams that night are of hot light burning me, and the next day, I find the lamp, standing again. The lamp glared at me once again, and whispered in my ear, burning it red-hot, telling me that the sun’s light will not be enough for me. I ask it, what does it know, but the sun dies and the lamp is still glowing and I am grateful for it. I make my way through the darknes with this lamp, until it parts with me, saying it must go, saying that its lightbulb can not take the strain anymore and that it will lie peacefully, saying that the darkness isn’t as bad as people think. We both give in to the shadows, my lamp is happy, unmoving, unthinking, not glowing, but I am dragged away by figures cloaked in black, and I am crying.
