Where readers, writers, and stories meet.
There’s a stall in the basement restroom of my office building that I swear is haunted. It always sounds like there is someone in that last stall, rattling the toilet paper dispenser or shifting around on the toilet seat, even when you know for a fact that you are in the restroom alone.
Write a story about the haunted restroom stall and share your story in the comments below (or on your blog with a link to the post below.)
Continue reading “Writing prompt: The haunted restroom stall”
This week’s Annotated Bibliography entry comes from Rachel Spear, who argues that students may act as witnesses to trauma as enacted in trauma stories. You may view the full text here.
Spear, Rachel N. “Let Me Tell You A Story.” Pedagogy 14.1 (2014): 53-79. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 Mar. 2015.
In this article, Rachel Spear argues that teaching trauma narratives should not focus only on the trauma and the students’ response to the trauma. Instead, she argues that teaching trauma narratives can have a transformational effect on students as well as the teacher and the writer of the trauma narrative. Spear uses what she refers to as a “wounded healer pedagogy” which incorporates the healing of all participants. She also outlines a Writing as Healing course that she created to address these issues in the classroom. Continue reading “Annotated Bib: “Let Me Tell You a Story””
For today’s Wednesday writing prompt, write a story from the following:
Continue reading “Wednesday writing prompt: What are you hungry for?”
Have you heard about the “vertical city” that is the new Shanghai Tower? According to a documentary I watched recently on PBS, the tower will contain everything that a person needs so residents will never have to leave the building. Can you imagine what it would be like to live like this? What if we all someday must move into these towers to escape the smog? And what will happen to the people who aren’t able to afford to move into these towers in such a future? Watch this video, and then write a story that takes place within this or a similar self-contained city.
As always, please feel free to share your work in the comments below, or post to your own blog and share a link to the post. Continue reading “Wednesday Writing Prompt: Shanghai Tower, vertical cities”
I have this idea stuck in my head, and I can’t get rid of it. I envision it as a screenplay, even though I don’t have the slightest idea how to write one. It could be a movie or a television drama. But I am committed to finishing one of my current projects before starting another, so I just can’t allow myself to start writing on this one, no matter how badly I want to! Do you want to take a crack at it?
Setting: A retirement community for elderly writers.
Plot: The residents of this retirement community suffer all of the same ailments and need the same level of assistance as the residents of any retirement home. The only difference is, these residents are all writers! Some have written professionally for most of their lives, while others have always wanted to be writers and decided to join the community in an effort to spend their golden years doing what they always wanted to do. They have experienced varying levels of success, but not one of them has ever been a household name. Until today. Today, a bestselling author is about to join this writing community and turn the place upside-down.
Continue reading “Wednesday writing prompt: A home for elderly writers”
Hello again. In case you missed it, last week I posted part one of a writing prompt inspired by Joanne Karpinski’s essay, “Discerning Diversity in America” from Teaching Life Writing Texts (286-291). Today’s writing assignment consists of revising your original essay from last week. If you are just now joining us, please feel free to complete last week’s writing assignment prior to reading the rest of this post.
“Revise [your] initial essay by establishing a social context for [your] personal narrative about food. How do the preparation, presentation, and consumption of food reflect larger value systems? How do attitudes toward certain foods connect to overall values—are they consistent or contradictory? How can food be used as metaphor in [your] expanded piece of life writing?” (289-290). Continue reading “Wednesday Writing Prompt: Food, part 2”
Write on the World 