30DC-Day 7

Today’s exercise is to put your music collection on shuffle or open up an internet radio station on Spotify or Pandora. Listen to the next song that plays without writing anything. Notice whatever feelings the song brings up in you. Notice any thoughts that pass through your mind.

When the song is over, grab your journal and do some free writing. Answer the following questions:

•How did the song make you feel? Melancholy, excited, irritated, angry?

•Did the song remind you of anyone or anything? Who? What?

•What do you think the song is about? What do you think the song means?

When you have answered those questions, see if your free writing could lead you to a story. Write down any characters, situations, or images that come to mind. (Variation: Do this exercise with three different songs.)

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I’m going to try a different tac today. I’ve been doing exercises without focusing on the ideas that I already want to write. So today, I’m using the exercise from Sara W. Crawford to fit into one of my own pieces that I wanted to do on education and using comedy in the classroom.

NOTE: I already started writing this on my computer but I found it lacked the focus I wanted. So I’ll start over and try it again on my phone.)

When I went to my Pandora to do today’s exercise, I chose my favorite channel- Stars of Comedy Radio. I was listening to this while driving to pick up my daughter, and heard a favorite but by Shayne Smith called “Alligator Boys.” When I first heard this bit a few months ago, I thought it was perfect for a lesson in my English 12 class. I’ll make the argument for that here:

Whenever I ask my students to write “something funny,” I invariably get choruses of “I’m not funny.”

I recall Stephen King writing that he is necessarily more twisted or evil than anyone else, but that he tends to view situations through the horror lens that has treated him so well. I recall some comedian stating that comics are not necessarily naturally funny, but view life and it’s situations through the slightly off-kilter lens of comedy. And I recall writer Neil Gaiman once opining that his ilk have no more ideas than anyone else, but that the writer takes the time to write the ideas down and flesh them out. 

Using those three lenses, I tell my students that it’s not necessarily something that you’re born with, but rather a mindset to develop. 

And why not choose a comedic mindset? Why not choose looking at the humorous sides of life?

There are psychological arguments about humor being used as a defense mechanism, and that many famous comedians have mental health issues that they try to subsume with their jokes. But the ability to see everyday things as silly, or to be able to see the humor in the most difficult of situations, can be life saving. JK Rowling knows what I’m saying. In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, she had Prof Lupin teaches the Hogwarts third-years the Riddikulus charm. This charm allows its user to diminish their greatest fears into a safer, comic version. So Ron Weasly turned a giant stalking spider into a fumbling creature trying to maintain its footing with roller skates on each of its eight legs. In essence, he taught them to banish their fears by making them appear ridiculous. 

Ridiculous is something that is easy to aspire to. It’s almost natural in little kids, and they only start losing this gift when they start wanting to be grown up. We, as we educators and responsible adults, should seek to hold the line on turning students into adults - with emphasis on the middle part of the word, dul(l). As Robin Williams used to say, “You’re only given one little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.”

That brings me to Shayne Smith. 

Shayne had a Dry Bar standup comedy bit called “Alligator Boys.” The bit originated from a headline he spotted at a newsstand that read, “Local man robs Wendy’s with an alligator.” This is just one of the many strange stories that appear in news. But while most people might chuckle and forget it, Shayne develops a story of almost 10 minutes reconstructing different aspects of it:

• Who robs a Wendy’s?

• Who tries to rob a place by going through the drive-through?

• Did he use the gator as a weapon or an accomplice?

• Where do you just get a gator for something like this and what kind of place is a state that has readily available alligators?

• Did he buckle the gator into the backseat (because otherwise how could he drive without getting bitten)?

• What must the woman at the drive through window have thought?

• Imagine being the car in line behind this guy?

• How did he imagine he would get away with this when he wasn’t even wearing a mask?

I would be very curious to give me students the headline and the article and see what questions, comments and thoughts they come up with. (You can find the article on this story at https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/palm-beach/fl-loxahatchee-alligator-drive-thru-20160209-story.html. I’m sure I’d have to have them in the right mindset so they can see and project things into the Ridiculous Zone. 

Then they could compare their answers with what Shayne Smith created. (Find the full bit at https://youtu.be/c2zsmXHAqg8.)

I bet the students would have a number of the same observations as Shayne, and probably some new ones as well. 

Little spark saved for another day. 

30-Day Writing Challenge: Day 6

 Today’s exercise is to write a found poem. It should be no more than a page and it shouldn’t use text from another source such as a magazine article, a book, a webpage, a blog post, etc.

The key, Sara Crawford writes, is to be creative in rearranging words and phrases. “Don’t worry so much about the art of poetry right now. Just focus on taking words and phrases out of context and arranging them into something new.

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WRITING

Sophia, stop. 

Not too far now. 

This is my place. 

I find that hard to believe, Mikey. 

This is so sad. 

Yes, that’s exactly the sort of thing 

we’re talking about. 

You’re free to go, man. 

My house is the same as everyone else’s. 

In this world we find ourselves in,

Thinkers are in high demand. 

Chaos. 

You guys ignore your conscience. 

Enjoy your time here if you want. 

This is going to be a long trip. 

What is it?

What’s the problem?

We’re all just waiting for you. 

You know better than this!

Thank you. 

Okay okay. 

I’ve been alone for a long time. 

Me too. 

Chaos. 

I think it’s okay for me to be happy now. 

This is so great. 

We’re all equals here. 

How close are we to this bakery?

This is my place. 

Too late. 

You didn’t cause this. 

None of this is your fault. 

Who are you?

I don’t know 

I might miss this place. 

Might. 

I ended up taking lines from the most recent book I read, in this case The Walking Dead graphic novel Vol 31, the penultimate volume in the collected comic book series. I just thumbed my way through it at random, seeing where my eye would land when I opened each new page. 

I find it interesting that it can be made to make some sort of sense. Part of that was being a little less random in choosing my phrases, but rather finding the best thing that “fit” from each page that I opened at random. 

30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 5

Today’s exercise from Sara E. Crawford’s book is to visit a random image generator online (her link was no longer valid, but I found a good one at https://randomwordgenerator.com/picture.php) and generate a random image. Look at it for at least five minutes without writing anything. What does the image make you think of? What does the image make you feel? What is the story behind the image? What’s going on behind the camera or behind the scenes? What can you not see?

After you reflect, write a three to five page piece based on your reflections.

I set my randomizer for 5 images so I could have some choice. This is the one that stood out for me.   

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WRITING

I see a church with a twisty steeple. Everything else seems normal. 

I imagine that the steeple looks this way due to some filter or Photoshop technique. Otherwise, I have no idea what could cause that. I see that one of the problems with a random image generator is that you don’t get the actual story behind the image. Good for creativity, bad for curiosity. 

 I had to do a story at my first newspaper about a steeple that was toppled by straight-line winds and landed on a car, killing the driver. It gives me a little different perspective on steeples after that. No longer are they just objects of beauty, but potential objects of destruction. There’s probably an interesting allegory in that. But not for now. I would rather look at this as:

--new invention - spires that twist in the wind but don’t break, or

—a church that comes to life and it’s too is stretching before a morning service, or

—a spire ready to launch to the heavens, or

—a steeple made out of the world’s largest ice cream twist, or

—a steeple made by builders who suffered from vertigo, or

—a black hole sucking the church into the void, or

—a steeple made out of new material with the consistency of Laffy Taffy, or

—it’s a church run by Pastor Stretch Armstrong. 

I realize that’s not 3 to 5 pages. But it was about 20 minutes. And again, these are exercises that you control. Did you write enough for you? Did you write enough to stretch your thinking beyond your first thoughts? Did you discover anything new? And also, will you look at this again? Is there any thread that you can tug at to create a story?

30-Day Writing Challenge: Day 4

For Day 4, Sara E  Crawford recommends this exercise:

1. Take three hats, bowls, or containers. One of them will be for characters, one of them will be for locations, and one of them will be for possible conflicts.

2. Write down the following list of characters on small pieces of paper:

•a homeless heroin addict

•a young inventor

•an introverted actor

•a political activist

•a depressed meteorologist

•a personal injury attorney

•an anthropology professor

•a lonely grandparent

•an astrology-obsessed psychic

•a vegetarian farmer

3. Write down the following locations on small pieces of paper:

•an island

•the streets

•the middle of nowhere in Kansas

*a large European city

*a small apartment

*a mansion

*a kitchen 

•the North Pole

•Disney World

•a Broadway theatre

4. Write down the following potential conflicts on small pieces of paper:

•a hurricane is coming

•two people fight over the last piece of pizza

•an attempted theft that doesn’t go as planned

•two people are stuck together

•a ghost wants to prevent someone from moving in

•someone saves their enemy’s life

•someone is being chased by a bear

•technology is being hostile

•two people who hate each other have to cook a meal

5. Place all of your pieces of paper in the respective hats or bowls. Draw one character, one location, and one potential conflict. Write a three to four page piece that somehow incorporates all three.

This forces you to be creative. For example, if you get “a depressed meteorologist,” “Disney World,” and “an attempted theft that doesn’t go as planned,” that could go so many different ways! 

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My spin on this exercise is to choose any 3-digit number (birthday, phone numbers, lotto numbers, etc) and find your numbers in the three sections above. For example, my birthday 9-1-5 gives me:

 ”an astrology-obsessed psychic,” 

“an island,” and 

“a ghost wants to prevent someone from moving in.”

Now, let’s give it a whirl.

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“Dey been tellin’ me, Barb, don you be taking day cruise. Dat cruise bad juju. But I be tellin’ dem, don’t be tellin’ Barbara Dos, Astrological Psychic to de Stare,  bout no bad juju. I check dem stars and dey be tellin’ me dis is best time, de luckiest time of de whole century to take a risk and take me first sea voyage.”

Barbara looks out over the vast big blue before her. The sun twilighting on the horizon. The waves gently lapping on the shore. She looks around the sandy beach that clings impossibly to places sand should not be. The sounds of nature punctuate the true loneliness of her situation. 

“Maybe I shoulda been wearing my glasses when I read the stars. Well, that be neither here nor dere. And that where I seem to be too.”

“Alone on a deserted island. Last ting I remember, I be staring over de railing at de stern of de boat. I just wanted to be alone, away from all the manic people. I thought that Star Filled cruise would help me with de astrology, not filled with D-level movie and TV stars. I mean, who is dis Anson Williams anyway and what is a “Potsie”?”

“Well, Barb. You wanted to be alone. And here you are. All on your lonesome. Maybe I’m a psychic AND a wish-granting genie!”

“But dis genie be wantin’ to go back to her familiar bottle.”

She’d been sitting in the same spot for several hours, several yards away from where she washed up this morning. The first few hours she spent futilely trying to figure out where she was. The next few hours she spent looking fruitlessly for a rescue boat. Or anything that may be able to take her out of this predicament. The last few waning hours of the day she had spent pondering the forbidding dense forest that surrounded the house-sized half moon of beach where she had landed. Her hunger, and thoughts of what food nature might provide within the forest, or whatever may lay beyond it, proved stronger than her fear of the dark unknown. 

“Maybe dere be some berries or roots or something I can eat,” she said. She started pushing aside branches of the tropical brush, looking for any sign of edible vegetation. Or signs of civilized habitation. 

“Barb, why you be talkin’ out loud to yourself when you dere be no one dere to listen? Well, I always did make my own good company.” She chuckles to herself.

“Oh chere, what have we here?” Barb spies a bush of bright violet berries. They are as big as tangerines. “I don know what type of berry you may be but I will bury you in my stomach to extinguish my hunger.”

The berry smells like any berry. She licks the outside and feels a bitterness hit her taste buds. “Well, if I be any kind of genie then this must be good.” She bit into the berry. Violet juice seeped into her mouth and spilled down her chin as she withdrew the berry after the first bite. The tart taste of its inside surprised her pleasantly, and she took another bite. After five more bites, she had devoured the whole berry. She grabbed for another to eat. Then, her belly feeling better, she grabbed three more berries, wrapped them in the large leaves of the nearby trees, to take with her as she continued exploring. 

The dense growth made the light thin now. She didn’t want to sleep near the food, in case there were wild animals that also feasted on these violet nectars. She continued further into the forest hoping for a clearing, or cave, or some type of shelter.

Just as she was about to give up hope, and nearly exhausted to the point of dropping, she mounded a small rise and found a dwelling in a little valley below. 

“O bless de stars for watching out for me!” she cried as she ran down the hill toward the house. 

The house was a mini version of an old Victorian mansion. It’s three stories seemed to hold about eight rooms in the front, judging by the windows she saw. And at least double that, she estimated, based on what width she could see of the two-story structure. No light shine from inside the house, but Barb was not surprised because the vines growing up the sides of the house, the tendrils seemingly reaching toward the roof and the sky, made it clear to her that no one lived here. Or had lived here in a very long time. 

“I better be more specific no with my genie powers. If I knew dey worked dis good, I woulda wished for a house with a nice rich family with a staff of servants and lots of food and drink… And a boat!”

But once again, her choosiness lost out to her neediness. She walked up to the door slowly, listening for any sound, but already knowing there would be none. 

She gently turned the knob and opened the door. The door creaked. Of course it would, she thought. But a large winged creature flew out the openjng, followed be several others, screeching as they gained their freedom. 

Barb screamed, then laughed at herself. “Big ol place like dis, why you not know dere would be bats? You must be gettin batty yourself. Keep this up and they start callin you Batty Barb!”

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WRITER’S NOTE: I’m stopping here because: A) I’m getting tired, and 2) because I know this could go along much further. I mean, I haven’t even gotten to the ghost yet. For some reason, I think his name is Tom, or Thomas. 

Should I continue this story? 

That might actually be a good hook to get ongoing readers for a more interactive blog anx let them have a say in which stories are most interesting. 

OR, as I might tell my students, a writer can always return to his/her journals for material. Maybe new things will occur to you when you see them with fresh eyes. 

30-Day Writing Challenge: Day 3

30-Day Writing Challenge: Day 3

Here’s the prompt for today. 

  Write a 1 – 2 page list of things you believe in and things about which you would love to write. Include what kind of messages (if any) you want to convey in your writing, what the purpose of your writing is, what you hope to accomplish with your work. You may want to include a list of influences or other writers you aspire to write like.

Excerpt from: "The 30-Day Writing Challenge: Begin or Enhance Your Daily Writing Habit" by Sara E. Crawford.

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I BELIEVE

In choice over destiny

In personal initiative 

In making anything possible

In the transformative power of creativity

In being the hero in your own story and writing your own adventure(s)

In the intoxicating power of creativity and personal engagement and fulfillment 

In infinite possibilities 

In teaching/sharing what you know 

In taking risks 

I’m never letting the fear of embarrassment stop you from doing anything

In the power of the arts and artistic expression

In my kids

THINGS I WOULD LOVE TO WRITE

Purgatory Road - a horror story 

The Ballonies - comic children’s story

The Audition - a 1-act play

Mr. Monday: an epistolary story

A time travel romance

Adaptations of classic tales/mythologies

Reed’s Oz-some Adventure

Alex’s Adventures in Wonderland

Mastering the Illusiom of Control

A one-man play

A play adaptation of Crime and Punishment

A comedy textbook for high school and possibly college

A world of child fantasy like AA Milne, L Frank Baum or Roald Dahl

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I know I could write more, but this is an exercise and as with any exercise, physical or mental, the individual gets to decide how much to push it. With my scholars, I find I need to specify a length that will make it easy enough for them to do but also rigorous enough to challenge them. That’s always a struggle. But as with many of my self-identified classroom writers, I have listed enough here to percolate for the future. And, more importantly, that I have written long enough so that I can push past the first few ideas and discover new ideas as well.

30-Day Writing Challenge: Day 2

30-Day Writing Challenge Day 2: Here’s today’s exercise from the book by Sara E. Crawford:

Write the worst thing you can think of. Write a terrible short story, poem or short play or screenplay around 2-4 pages. When you are finished, examine your piece and ask yourself the following questions:

- What “rules” did you break to make this so bad?

- How would you do the opposite of what you did here to craft a well-written piece?

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1. 

Im gonna writ a die ree entree as gramtixly incorct as posibl. May bee it’s bests that Im doin this on mye iphon but I hav to etch out for corectv text. ButT may bee some of the foe paws wil be helps by my porr thumbing and the phon’e cortectins. 

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So I’m big on spelling and grammar as far as clarity goes. Let’s try another way of imperfect writing. 

2.

Someone

Somewhere

One time

Did something

It wasn’t a special thing

Or extraordinary

Or even routine

Or ordinary

But it was something

Someone else came along

Somewhere

One time

And did another thing

It wasn’t a special thing

Or extraordinary

Or even routine 

Or ordinary

But it was another thing

Then the one someone 

Met the other someone

Somewhere

One time

And they did their things

They still weren’t special things

Or extraordinary things

Or even routine

Or ordinary

But they were other things

Different from each other

But together

At this time

At this place

Okay, so I tried a poem for the second one. The “rule” I was trying to break was the rule of specificity. But I was surprised that the use of repetition made it better than I thought it would be. 

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As I was asking my daughter about this, she said I should look for misuse of archetypes and more higher level imperfections. So let me try that. 

3.

Unfortunate Similes:

He Her eyes glistened like dew drops on a toilet after a little boy has visited

His stomach grumbled like an old man whose seen too many damned kids in his yard 

The chair was hard like the sudden feel of water after a jump off a 50-foot bridge. 

The water was wet like water 

4.

Unfortunate story ideas::

A pirate story in a desert

Ancient Greeks in space

A horror story set in a senior citizen home (or daycare center)

A hermit arriving in the big city

5.

Unfortunate Titles:

A Day in the Life of a Blade of Grass 

Sudoku: A Love Story

Squirrels Aren’t Nuts

Dead Men Walking: Live in Concert

Travel Guide to Antarctica

Groundhog Day 2-Around the World in 80 Days That Are All The Same

Well, this was a fun exercise. I could keep going but it is more difficult to write “imperfectly” than one would think. However, the idea of giving my students license to write imperfectly may be beneficial. A starting point at least from which to grow. And to make more advanced writers take a step back and break down what they do and don’t do. And the whole group class discussions could be great.

30-Day Writing Challenge: Day 1

 

Exercise 1: Write in stream of consciousness for 10 minutes without stopping.

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My first task for the 30-day writing challenge, I’m using the book by Sara E. Crawford, is to write in stream of consciousness for 10 minutes. I am attempting this on my phone. It is outside of my comfort zone, but that is the right mindset for this. Or should I say, the write mindset? 

My first thought was applying this exercise to my classes. Write without stopping for 10 minutes. Easy, right? Well, it’s easy if you are or identify yourself as a writer. (And the mere fact that you even contemplate doing this yourself tells me that you enjoy writing.) 

But then I think about one of my earliest students, Miguel, who came into my 10th grade class on the first day and said flatly, “I don’t read,” and on Day 2 followed that with, “I don’t write either.” For students like Miguel, asking them to write nonstop for 10 minutes is like asking them to hold their breath for 10 minutes. 

(I thought that task impossible, but the Guinness Book of World Records says the limit is 24 minutes, 37 seconds.)

So it IS possible. I’d have to look up HOW you learn to hold your breath for nearly a half hour - voluntarily, but I’m guessing that it comes from training in technique and practice. So if it’s possible to resist breathing, one of the strongest and most primal instincts, then it should also be possible to resist the fear and hesitancy of writing, which is definitely not an physical necessity like breathing. (Here, writers may disagree.) 

I’m also guessing that the main thing the world’s best “non-breather” did was have a desire for or mindset to develop that “talent.” So the key may be to break down the walls that prevent a student from writing and get them writing every day. That’s what I try to do with my students every year.

And as for Miguel? By the end of his sophomore year, he handed me something to read. It was a short story he had written on his own.

Okay, that was actually more than 11 minutes, but I am a writer AND I was allowing for the extra time needed to type with my thumbs instead of my fingers.