A Dark and Stormy Night
Okay, so I'm also writing from Puerto Rico. I often ask myself how I ended up in Puerto Rico. Well, it was most likely a typical cloudy and rainy day in Sitka, Alaska. And my husband, freshly back from a stint with the Coast Guard in Kuwait, asked what I thought of going to Puerto Rico with the Coast Guard for two years. "Sure," I said. So, here I am. Now What?
Well, my husband and I started an adult writers group on base (Air Station Borinquen) which has been going strong since December 09. We have five regular members. If that wasn't fun enough, I recently decided to start a youth writers group for ages 12-15. I have three teens, possibly four; one male and two females. We meet once a week for an hour. We had our first meeting last week and, my god, those teens have energy. They were so excited about writing. It was contagious. And of course, I have to do the writing prompts along with them. This week we are making a collage about ourselves. We also have a writing prompt: Pretend you've been given the opportunity to go to a famous writer's house to learn from her/him. You don't really know that person at all, and after you arrive it starts to storm (or something else happens) and you and several other students are trapped at the writers house. The road has washed away; the electricity is out, whatever. Now what happens?
You see, as the young writers were arriving at my house it started to downpour. I had candles and a small battery light on the table just in case. For our first lessons, I'm trying to teach them where to look for stories. What is a story? How do we find them? I talked about the rain, the storm and said, "This could be a story." It all began on a dark and stormy night. Cliché, maybe, but it certainly lit up their eyes and, after all, it was their suggestion. They wanted to get started writing right away.
So, as I write a response to the prompt I wonder what is churning in the teenagers' heads. What house will the writer live in? What kind of a storm? What characters will be present? Will there be danger? Humor? Hmmmmm...
Well, my husband and I started an adult writers group on base (Air Station Borinquen) which has been going strong since December 09. We have five regular members. If that wasn't fun enough, I recently decided to start a youth writers group for ages 12-15. I have three teens, possibly four; one male and two females. We meet once a week for an hour. We had our first meeting last week and, my god, those teens have energy. They were so excited about writing. It was contagious. And of course, I have to do the writing prompts along with them. This week we are making a collage about ourselves. We also have a writing prompt: Pretend you've been given the opportunity to go to a famous writer's house to learn from her/him. You don't really know that person at all, and after you arrive it starts to storm (or something else happens) and you and several other students are trapped at the writers house. The road has washed away; the electricity is out, whatever. Now what happens?
You see, as the young writers were arriving at my house it started to downpour. I had candles and a small battery light on the table just in case. For our first lessons, I'm trying to teach them where to look for stories. What is a story? How do we find them? I talked about the rain, the storm and said, "This could be a story." It all began on a dark and stormy night. Cliché, maybe, but it certainly lit up their eyes and, after all, it was their suggestion. They wanted to get started writing right away.
So, as I write a response to the prompt I wonder what is churning in the teenagers' heads. What house will the writer live in? What kind of a storm? What characters will be present? Will there be danger? Humor? Hmmmmm...
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