(March 31st)In 1817, the ship Medusa sank leaving 149 passengers on a raft. The men drifted for days with no food or water. They became desperate and resorted to cannibalism and mutilation. Finally, a man spots a tiny boat on the horizon.
(April 6, 1999): Write a poem about a couple people sitting in a café through the tableís perspective.
(April 7, 1999): Write a story about sleeping Beautyís dreams during her famous comma.
(April 14, 1999): Write a story of the creation you and your sister built and raced in the Annual Arcadia Land Water Race.
(April 20, 1999) Try creating a poem about a woman who had to pee while on a 22ft. Sailboat that had a Clorox bottle for a head.
(April 28, 1999) Here is a character: Sophomore in college drops acid with his friend for the first time and concludes he is on the wrong path in life. So, he drops out of MIT and buys a motorcycle the following day. He is packed and on his bike within a week headed for the West Coast . . .
(May 4, 1999) The situation is this: A fifty-two year old man married of twenty-four years starts to have an affair with a thirty-eight year old woman. After two years, he decides to tell his wife. After a four-hour talk, the wife accepts her husbandís decision and they continue to have an intimate marriage. Write the dialog of the four-hour discussion.
(May 11, 1999)An American trait is contradiction use this character trait as a theme for a feminist speech given to a male audience.
(may 18, 1999) Write a story about the board meeting that concluded with the Geoduck as a Mascot for The Evergreen State College.
(May 25, 1999) Ladybugs are drawn to light. Unfortunately, many lights are the cause of their death. Write a small poem from the ladybugís point of view as it is attracted to a burning candle.
(June 1, 1999) Artists are notorious for talking to themselves as they create. Write a story about Jackson Pollockís conversation or mental process when he created Number IA, 1948.
( March 30, 1999) At the Oregon shores the driftwood pile is called the bone yard. Write about an interesting creation made from that wood or an object found.
(April 13, 1999) Look up in the dictionary an unfamiliar word. Write several creative definitions for the word then read the true definition.
(April 21, 1999) Enter a tentative concluding line for a poem so that it appears at the top of the screen. Now compose a line that will precede the line already written, entering it above the line written first so that line is pushed down. Add lines in this fashion until the first line you wrote has reached the bottom of the screen.
(April 27, 1999) Describe as fully possible the worlds that characters live in: material, social, spiritual.
(May 5, 1999) (idea comes from a photocopy of Helen Vandellerís section on Describing Poetry.) Analyze your poem to find the emotional curve. (It helps to draw a shape-a crescendo, perhaps, or an hourglass shape, or a sharp ascent followed by a steep decline-so youíll know how the poem looks to you as a whole. Then rewrite the poem dramatically changing the emotional curve.
(May 12, 1999)A lot of writing is subconscious so to rewrite a poem try to discover the roads not taken: Imagine the it written in different person, or a different tense, or with parts rearranged, or with an additional stanza or a stanza left out, conjecturing by such means why the poet might have wanted these pieces in this order? (Idea comes from a photocopy of Helen Vandellerís section on Describing Poetry.)
(May 19, 1999) Write your own poem in which you use one or two enjambed stanzas that force the reader to move over the white space in a way the underscores meaning.
(May 26, 1999)Concoct the worst poem you can possibly write and, in a brief accompanying essay, recount the difficulties you met and overcame in writing it. Quote, for example, any lines you wrote but had to discard for not being bad enough.
(June 2, 1999)Revise one of your own poems. How can the last stanza be pruned? What is essential to conclude the poem? Can the message of the conclusion be derived from a minor revision of the main part of the poem, eliminating the need for the last stanza?