It’s hard to believe today is already Thursday! With only one day of our workshop left, our young writers are making the most of each and every activity and are preparing to share their work tomorrow.
To get started thinking about fiction, today’s starting question was: “What fictional world would you want to live in?” The writers varying interests were illuminated through their answers, including the world of Animal Crossing, the Old Kingdom from the Abhorsen Trilogy, and the Spider-Man Spiderverse worlds.
The first activity for the day was bookmaking in the Sunderland Foundation Innovation Lab at Hale Library. Carolyn Jackson, Associate Professor and the Scholarly Communication and Open Educational Resources Librarian, taught the young writers about different parts of printed books and discussed how they were made. Based on how they were made, young writers could tell when the books were made and for what purposes. Then, the young writers had the opportunity to create their own books, which they got to keep. Young writers sewed the pages together complete with a cover!
Next, the young writers welcomed the visiting writer of the day, Grant Overstake. Grant is the author of the young adult novels Maggie Vaults Over the Moon and The Real Education of T.J. Crowley. Grant’s lesson was titled “What Time Is It?” and taught the young writers about the difference between chronos time and kairos time. Our conventional understanding of time is called chronos time, while our moments when time stands still and our experience is in the now called kairos time.
Grant taught the young writers that as writers, they cannot afford to miss kairos moments as it is when the best inspiration strikes. Through writing exercises such as Morning Pages, a three page stream of consciousness writing that takes place every morning, meditation through ambient music, and writing during sacred music, Grant led the writers to their own unique sacred space fully immersed in kairos time. All of the writers were fully in the moment as they found their own space where they could tap into their full reserves of creativity and create the best work possible.
Then, to prepare for their final reading tomorrow, the young writers turned their focus towards revision. Inspired by the technical challenges on The Great British Bake Off, the writers tried to break their writing down to the bare ingredients and steps needed for the work to still exist at its core. For example, a model based on Star Wars might include 3 cups of diverse planetary setting or a dash of an ancient green mentor, and a recipe step might be to use many different “flavors” of planets.
After the young writers simplified their works, they gave their “recipe” to another young writer who then had to rewrite the work based off the recipe. After this activity, the young writers took a moment to compare their original writing to the new one to see what they could learn about their own writing. Is their “recipe” tasty? Or did their partner add “cinnamon” that made it great? Or, in more writerly terms…did their partner have different interpretations that inspired them? Was there a new viewpoint or perspective the original writer hadn’t considered?
After the penultimate game of “High School Mafia: Platypi Posers” (we have finally decided an official name!), the young writers chose to spend their remaining time writing in preparation for tomorrow or doing a comics activity with Ian! Those who chose to do comics with Ian learned about the different elements in a comic and how those elements operate in a panel. They then worked to finish comics that were missing elements and worked to create their own. The young writers to chose to write were hard at work perfecting their pieces for tomorrow’s final reading at 1.
The final parting question we offered the young writers referred back to our starting question for the day, but with a twist: “Which fictional world would you never want to live in?” Our young writers’ answers included Panem from The Hunger Games, the farm from Animal Farm, and the universe from Tender is the Flesh.
It’s hard to believe the Young Writers’ Workshop is nearing its end, but our participants’ journeys as writers are only beginning. I hope to see you tomorrow at our final reading by our young writers tomorrow at 1:00 pm in the Mariana Kistler Beach Museum of Art!
–Jordan Dombrowski, Program Assistant
K-State Young Writers' Workshop 