I'm looking for a creative writing program (or something like PLL/ILL for H.S.) to add in on Fridays.

[helena]

My 14yo is burning out on writing and could really use a creative outlet. Suddenly memories of Primary Language Lessons and Intermediate Language Lessons have become much more sweet and wonderful. :)

 

She's asking if there's a high school version of ILL. I think she misses the CM gentle, sweet, and lovely thing IYKWIM.

Does anyone have recommendations for creative writing work? I can give her one or two days a week to do it. I'm making her stick with Writing with Skill.

 

She opted out last minute from NaNoWriMo. I have Write This Book http://www.amazon.com/Write-This-Book-Do---Yourself/dp/0316207810/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1383336872&sr=1-1&keywords=write+this+book+pseudonymous+bosch, maybe I could have her do that? I'm just feeling discouraged that she dropped NaNo like that. It was her plan for all of November.

 

Anyone else btdt? Advice?

 

[Farmgirl70]

"Don't Forget to Write" by 826 National, edited by Jennifer Traig is full of interesting prompts.  I've been alternating more serious writing assignments (essays and such) with ideas from this book--maybe two serious assignments and then a more creative one.  Some poetry, story writing, etc.  She's young.  You have time for that.  Maybe even take a break and do more playful writing all of November?

[Farmgirl70]

The book you have looks like fun, as well!  I'm a big fan of using the things I got once upon a time because they looked interesting.

[Donna A.]

What about The One Year Adventure Novel?  I don't think it's necessarily *like* PLL/ILL, but from what you've described, it might be a good fit for the creative writer in your daughter.

 

 

[Mom22ns]

What about The One Year Adventure Novel?  I don't think it's necessarily *like* PLL/ILL, but from what you've described, it might be a good fit for the creative writer in your daughter.

If she didn't want to stick with NaNoWriMo, I wouldn't try OYAN right now. 

[Jilly]

My teens have been enjoying the writing prompts from this site. We sit together on Friday and pick one out and then we all free write for a half hour to an hour. After we write, we share our stories which is quite entertaining. It is a nice break from academic writing, and it is a nice way to spend some time together.  

[PeterPan]

"Don't Forget to Write" by 826 National, edited by Jennifer Traig is full of interesting prompts.  I've been alternating more serious writing assignments (essays and such) with ideas from this book--maybe two serious assignments and then a more creative one.  Some poetry, story writing, etc.  She's young.  You have time for that.  Maybe even take a break and do more playful writing all of November?

Ok, I got this a few years ago (on the recommend of a FABULOUS writer who posted here on the boards and doesn't anymore, sniff) and you're the first person I've seen mention it since!  Indeed it is super cool.  I remember my dd turned her nose up, and I can't recall why.  Sometimes she'll say things are young, when it's really that they're hard for her. (Her writing really only blossomed this past year.) She's been doing some of the Creative Writer books, and they're fine.  We got side-tracked because she got really busy with a project and couldn't handle the pace we were doing CW on top of the other project.  For sort of a sequential, skills-driven building approach to creative writing, it's interesting.  I'll have to drag my DFtW out though and see.  Definitely not enough time to do everything neat that is out there!  :)

 

Anyways, CW is meant to be paired with WWS, so it would be reasonable to look into.  Just skip book 1, maybe even book 2.  My dd can do one lesson, complete with the challenge exercise, in maybe 1 1/2 hours.  She's very slow with writing though.

[PeterPan]

My teens have been enjoying the writing prompts from this site. We sit together on Friday and pick one out and then we all free write for a half hour to an hour. After we write, we share our stories which is quite entertaining. It is a nice break from academic writing, and it is a nice way to spend some time together.  

Did you attempt their October 8th post?  I think we should do this.   :lol: 

 

 

Vonnegut’s Term Paper Assignment

A new Best American Nonrequired Reading is out today, and as I glanced through it, I noticed that they decided to include one of the most interesting assignments that I’ve ever seen, Kurt Vonnegut’s “Form of Fiction Term Paper Assignmentâ€: 

FORM OF FICTION TERM PAPER ASSIGNMENT

November 30, 1965

Beloved:

This course began as Form and Theory of Fiction, became Form of Fiction, then Form and Texture of Fiction, then Surface Criticism, or How to Talk out of the Corner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro. It will probably be Animal Husbandry 108 by the time Black February rolls around. As was said to me years ago by a dear, dear friend, “Keep your hat on. We may end up miles from here.â€

As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cynical and religious. I want you to adore the Universe, to be easily delighted, but to be prompt as well with impatience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Universe is or should be. “This above all …â€

I invite you to read the fifteen tales in Masters of the Modern Short Story (W. Havighurst, editor, 1955, Harcourt, Brace, $14.95 in paperback). Read them for pleasure and satisfaction, beginning each as though, only seven minutes before, you had swallowed two ounces of very good booze. “Except ye be as little children …â€

Then reproduce on a single sheet of clean, white paper the table of contents of the book, omitting the page numbers, and substituting for each number a grade from A to F. The grades should be childishly selfish and impudent measures of your own joy or lack of it. I don’t care what grades you give. I do insist that you like some stories better than others.

Proceed next to the hallucination that you are a minor but useful editor on a good literary magazine not connected with a university. Take three stories that please you most and three that please you least, six in all, and pretend that they have been offered for publication. Write a report on each to be submitted to a wise, respected, witty and world-weary superior.

Do not do so as an academic critic, nor as a person drunk on art, nor as a barbarian in the literary market place. Do so as a sensitive person who has a few practical hunches about how stories can succeed or fail. Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flatly, pragmatically, with cunning attention to annoying or gratifying details. Be yourself. Be unique. Be a good editor. The Universe needs more good editors, God knows.

Since there are eighty of you, and since I do not wish to go blind or kill somebody, about twenty pages from each of you should do neatly. Do not bubble. Do not spin your wheels. Use words I know.

 

[Mom22ns]

What about some flash fiction? This site is run by a homeschool mom who used to hang out here on TWTM. She has a contest every Friday. The prompts are just pictures and word counts vary weekly. There is a lot of feedback and they pull apart the winner's story each week to say what made it best and what could have improved in it.

 

 

[helena]

Thanks everyone for the ideas and links! And thank you FarmGirl for reminding me that she's still young. :) She simply isn't ready to keep up with or follow along with NaNoWriMo or probably any other intense writing challenge. She does love to write and does it for other subjects besides language arts, but right now I think adding creative writing Friday is the perfect addition. 

 

I had her start Write This Book last Friday and told her that even though it's easy work it'll be a good way to get in the groove of assigned creative writing. She does well with baby steps. When she's completed WTB maybe she'll be willing to use writing prompts. 

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

We're having a blast with PHP's own Creative Writer series... and it's planned to be a one day a week curriculum. Just what you're looking for.

http://peacehillpress.com/the-creative-writer-middle-grades/

 

The URL says middle grades, but on the page there, it's listed as going as high as grade 11. After all there are four levels of this series. I'm doing level 1 with grade 8 and 9 kids, and they're loving it.