{"id":137,"date":"2012-01-04T14:23:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T14:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/04\/writing-days-of-summer\/"},"modified":"2015-05-23T23:17:11","modified_gmt":"2015-05-23T23:17:11","slug":"writing-days-of-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/04\/writing-days-of-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Writing Days of Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

On August 22, 2011, Melissa wrote, ….I still want to know what you’re doing at your summer workshop. Or if you could tell me some of the homework you gave the kids. Hopefully I can find your answer this time.<\/i>
Thirty to thirty-five children sign up and usually about twenty or so are there each week. The age range is ten years to eighteen. Debby, a fifth grade teacher volunteer helps me. (I\u2019m also a volunteer. The local library hosts us.) I hold six sessions, each an hour-and-a-half long. We always start with a vocabulary word, often a word that\u2019s new to me that I got online from Wordsmith at http:\/\/wordsmith.org\/words\/today.html<\/a>. I\u2019m looking for interesting words, interesting meaning. My favorite word last summer was poetaster<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The kids know what to do as soon as I write the word on the eraser board. They make up a definition and guess what part of speech the word is and write both on a scrap of paper, which I collect. I pick four or five to read aloud and slip in the real definition, written in a kid vernacular. Then they vote for the one they think is the true meaning. My hope is that they won\u2019t pick mine so there\u2019s a surprise. When the real definition is revealed we applaud the person who came up with the most persuasive wrong definition. Kids return to the workshop year after year and get better and better at inventing the fakes. They also start thinking about roots of words and etymology. My goal is to help them fall in love with English. Most are at least halfway there already.<\/p>\n

Next, I read a poem I like and suspect will appeal to them. I\u2019m not always right.<\/p>\n

During the first class I ask the kids what they hope to get out of the summer. Last year several wanted to work on conflict. Great choice!<\/p>\n

So I looked online for help and found an article that listed four kinds of conflict (interpersonal, internal, situational, societal). For the second class of the season I introduced the four and we started on one, interpersonal conflict. I\u2019ve discovered over the years that some prep helps before the writing commences. Here are my notes to myself for leading the introductory discussion on conflict:<\/p>\n

Why does a story need suffering, humorous suffering or serious suffering?<\/p>\n

Why do readers seek out entertainment in which terrible things happen, villains behave monstrously, people die? I\u2019m not sure, but maybe because we\u2019re preparing for the worst that life can throw at us. When we make Sammy suffer we\u2019re helping our readers, which should stiffen us to do it. We may hurt him, but we\u2019re helping them.<\/p>\n

Conflict doesn\u2019t have to be huge, though. Worry about a report card and a parent\u2019s reaction, worry about something foolish a character said.<\/p>\n

How do you convey that a character feels bad?<\/p>\n

Thoughts.
Perception, like stomach clench.
Dialogue.
Action (like leaving, or being wounded literally).
Possibly even setting.<\/i>
After the discussion, when I think everyone is ready, I give out the writing exercise. You\u2019ll see that I offer two choices. The age range in the class is huge – we\u2019re like a one-room writing schoolhouse – and I want to appeal to them all. Here\u2019s the in-class choice of exercises. You can use either or both as a blog-post prompt:<\/p>\n

Carl or Carlie, who doesn\u2019t like to share, has something that\u2019s very precious to him or her, may have magical properties. His or her best friend Tom or Tomasina wants it. Write what happens. Make each one do or say something he or she doesn\u2019t mean. Make them both feel bad. <\/i>(I emphasized that we weren\u2019t going for a happy ending here; we were working on conflict, which means distress.)<\/p>\n

A new bicycle
Book by author they both love
Ten dollars<\/p>\n

Or Carl or Carlie says to Tom or Tomasina, \u201cI hate when you do that.\u201d Write their argument. Make each one do or say something he or she doesn\u2019t mean. Make them both feel bad.<\/i>
I can\u2019t find the handout I gave the kids or I would have shown it to you here, but I usually give them something to look at while they work.<\/p>\n

Then they write. I ask them to let me or Debby know if they need help. We also watch for kids who\u2019ve stopped working and seem stuck.<\/p>\n

After about twenty to twenty-five minutes I stop them and break them into groups for sharing and critique. Often I arrange the groups by age, and Debby and I join groups of the younger kids, because the older ones generally need no assistance. Part of the first class is devoted to a discussion of critiquing protocol.<\/p>\n

Then I give out the homework. Below is what I handed out for the internal conflict class. It\u2019s one of my favorites ever, and it can be another prompt for you. I don\u2019t think I used it on the blog, but often my blog prompts are the source of class exercises and vice versa. Here is is:<\/p>\n

A car is a great place for conflict. Who picks the radio station? Or CD player or iPod. Who prefers news or a recorded book? Open window? Closed window? How high to crank the heat or the air-conditioner? Who sits in front? Anybody gets carsick? Are the grownups arguing about driving style? Are the kids pushing, pinching, teasing? In doing this exercise you can draw on your own miserable car experiences. <\/p>\n

Perry is invited to vacation with his best friend Letty Pewer and her parents. They are traveling from Brewster to Florida for a winter week in the sun. Write a scene or a story about their trip. Below are some possibilities to fool around with. Pick as many as you like or make up your own or do a combo of mine and yours.<\/p>\n

\u2022    Letty\u2019s father is peculiar. You decide how.<\/p>\n

\u2022    Letty\u2019s mom is a dangerous driver. You decide how.<\/p>\n

\u2022    Letty\u2019s younger brother and older sister are coming along. They don\u2019t get along with Letty and dislike Perry.<\/p>\n

\u2022    The car is older than Perry. The radio doesn\u2019t work. There is no iPod, no CD player.<\/p>\n

\u2022    The Pewers are economizing and haven\u2019t bought a GPS. Good old maps are good enough for them. They plan to camp out and save on motel costs as soon as they reach warm enough weather.<\/p>\n

\u2022    The car is bewitched – not in a good way.<\/p>\n

\u2022    This is the snowiest winter in the history of New York and surrounding states.<\/p>\n

\u2022    The scenic route will take the family and Perry through an old mining town in Pennsylvania. Unbeknownst to the authorities, one of the abandoned mines is now occupied by squatters who may be dangerous.<\/i>
The children aren\u2019t required to do the homework; this is summer and the workshop isn\u2019t a school, but usually they do. I don\u2019t grade their work but I do comment and return it. The emphasis in my comments is on story not on spelling and grammar.<\/p>\n

For those of you who are teachers, I think you\u2019ll understand this: I always show up with a longer lesson plan than I think I\u2019ll need. Sometimes what I think is going to take half an hour gets done in five minutes. There is nothing (well, hardly anything) worse than running out of material.<\/p>\n

Then we go home. <\/p>\n

Two sessions are devoted to writing poetry. Since I\u2019m still a newbie poet I just do my best and hope I don\u2019t make too many mistakes. (I still shudder at the crazy advice I gave the kids about how to write a sestina.) I\u2019ve found that structured poetry works best. Last summer we did poems that use anaphora and we did rhymed poetry. For the poetry sessions we follow the same structure as for fiction writing: discussion, in-class exercise, homework.<\/p>\n

For the session on rhyme, the vocabulary word was apocope<\/i>, a word I hadn\u2019t known before, which I found in my preparation and which connected to the class topic. These are my notes for what I wanted to say about rhyme before giving out the exercise:<\/p>\n

Rhyme:<\/p>\n

the good – satisfying, pleasing, when clever surprising<\/p>\n

the bad – too often not surprising, forced with word inversion, using not the best word<\/p>\n

we\u2019re waiting for the rhyme, may miss the meaning, like limericks <\/p>\n

read from Poet\u2019s Companion, define kinds of rhyme, make sure they know what accented vs. unaccented syllables are.<\/p>\n

internal rhyme<\/p>\n

rhyme scheme, aa bb, abab, <\/p>\n

hand out Molly\u2019s poems, go over rhymes<\/p>\n

bouts-rimes – give example of rhymes in Handbook of Poetic Forms<\/u>, put examples of these in your words, but not my examples<\/i><\/p>\n

The exercise was a bouts-rimes, which is a kind of poem challenge. I think I had them do it in pairs. Each pair wrote a list of rhyming words then passed them off to the pair to their left. The next step was to write a poem using the rhymes. Fun. So another prompt would be to try this with a friend or a few friends.<\/p>\n

Near the end of class I handed out Edward Lear\u2019s poem, \u201cAlphabet\u201d and gave this homework assignment:<\/p>\n

Write your own alphabet poem. In the example I gave you, some of the rhymes are forced. Avoid forced rhymes in your own poem. You can start with these first two lines or make up your own, but make the subject something lost:<\/p>\n

A lost her Amulet, though she ransacked the Attic for it.
B said: Might it have been taken by a Bandit?<\/p>\n

You can use any kind of rhyme:<\/p>\n

\u2219    Masculine perfect rhyme, as in book with look<\/p>\n

\u2219    Feminine perfect rhyme, as in riding with gliding<\/p>\n

\u2219    Slant rhyme, as in blade with head<\/p>\n

\u2219    Apocopated rhyme, as in beak with speaker<\/p>\n

\u2219    Assonance or vowel rhyme, as in why with pride<\/p>\n

\u2219    Identical rhyme, as in book with book (you can\u2019t do this constantly)<\/p>\n

\u2219    Eye rhyme, as in though with cough<\/p>\n

For extra credit, after Z, end the poem with two or three lines (serious or not) about lost things.<\/i>
Some of the poems I got back were amazing. You can look up the Lear poem and try it yourself.<\/p>\n

The other thing I do each summer, although with decreasing enthusiasm, is a group novel. I keep offering it as a possibility because the kids like the idea, but then I think it disappoints them. I suggest a theme, and the first child writes a first chapter during the week and brings two copies of it in the next week. Debby keeps a master copy and passes the other on to someone to write the next chapter. By the end there\u2019s a story in five chapters and everyone in the workshop gets a copy. Since there are more than five participants, there are several novels in the works, the number depending on the level of interest. Those who don’t participate in the novel can submit a piece they worked on during the summer for distribution.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the summer workshop in a very long post. For prompts, try the exercise I gave the kids. Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On August 22, 2011, Melissa wrote, ….I still want to know what you’re doing at your summer workshop. Or if you could tell me some of the homework you gave the kids. Hopefully I can find your answer this time.Thirty to thirty-five children sign up and usually about twenty or so are there each week. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[147],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":415,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions\/415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}