CREATIVE WRITING

at the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco

Welcome! CW develops the art and craft of creative writing through instruction, collaboration, and respect. This blog showcases STUDENT WRITING and how to APPLY to Creative Writing.

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  • On My Visit to 82 Donegore Drive, Parkhall, Antrim, N. Ireland by Liam Miyar­-Mullan

    On My Visit to 82 Donegore Drive, Parkhall, Antrim, N. Ireland by Liam Miyar­-Mullan

    In CW last week we learned about memoirs from our great artist in residence Margot Perin. We talked about the fictionalization of memoirs and how it is OK to play with them a little, but to go too far because you’ll wind up like James Frey, who wrote a memoir that was accepted into the Oprah Winfrey Book Club only to be rebuked because of the fact that he had lied about everything. We also discussed our own life stories and how to properly write about them.

    This is a piece I wrote for one of her prompts, “Write about something that has happened to you.”

    On our last day of our trip to Northern Ireland, we went to Belfast, an ugly, outdated, bland, shit of a city. There’s nothing much to do there other than go to the Queen Victoria Mall, a large, glass complex shaped somewhat like a dome. It sits in the city’s center, which is a cobblestoned square with an abstract metal fountain in the middle. The surrounding streets are packed in with hokey Irish-themed gift shops that sell plastic beer mugs, scally caps, and vapid retro posters that read, “Irish Handcuffs: holding a drink in each hand” or, “Whiskey: keeping the Irish from ruling the world since 1793” or, “I’m not Irish but I can sure drink like one” or countless other simple-humored memes for simple-minded people.

    That is perhaps why we left early. Only after spending about in hour in the city we drove back towards the water, back into the thick Irish countryside. And on our way back, my father had an interesting idea.

    “How about we visit the house I used to live in when I was your age,” he said.

    “Sure,” my sister and I responded, not too eager, not too uneager. And that was that. We continued on Motorway 16 and swerved around and around the familiar Irish roundabouts before puling into Parkhall—a small housing community. And as we puttered   up to the stone entrance, listening to the low, grumbling voice of Luke Kelly, I knew

    something was wrong. And by the way my father was staring at the gate, I knew he thought so too. The three rows of tiny houses were completely covered in Ulster Volunteer Force flags. (Ulster Volunteer Force (U.V.F.) is a protestant, loyalist, and anti-Catholic paramilitary organization.)

    The community was shaped like a long letter “S” and looked like what you might imagine a rural, patriotic, Northern Irish working-class housing community would look like. For a Catholic to even be in there would be like suicide, like a black guy walking into a KKK trailer camp in rural Missouri. And although we weren’t Catholic ourselves, we came from a very republican (the belief in an Irish Republic) and nationalist family. My father slugged the rental car around for a couple minutes, following the red, white, and blue painted curbs. The people there were the seeds of this earth. Bleak sons-of-bitches walking around slowly, carrying watering cans to and fro. And as we sat in front of 82 Donegore Drive, we stared hard at the little door, the brown front yard, the stucco-walls, and the Union Jacks that hung wildly out the windows.

    I asked my father if he’d like to get out and show us around, but he replied with a sturdy “no” and a harsh pull of the handbrake, wheeling us back into traffic. On our way

    out our eyes were glued to the murals that were painted on the sides of the community Protestant church, which depicted the U.V.F. in full paramilitary garb: black ski masks, camouflage jump suits, and large, black guns. I don’t know what it is like to see your old house so violently colored with anti-Catholic propaganda. I can’t imagine returning to such a personal landmark only to see it’s been totally made over in an effort to scare away people like yourself.

    * * * * * * *

    A couple months later I asked him if he thought that he and his family could have settled down there in the state that it was in today. I didn’t really think much of this            question, and wasn’t really expecting an important or even truthful answer. My dad is reserved and very quiet about his life. In fact the only reason I know his sister was adopted is because of my mom. The only reason I know that he used to go in to Protestant bars and sing republican tunes with his buddies and get the living shit beaten out of him until his boots were red with blood is because my mom told me. So I didn’t think he was going to tell me anything I would remember. I expected him to say, “Yeah it would have been fine,” or “I don’t know.” But in fact he said, “No, probably not.”

    * * * * * * *

    And that sums up how I felt about Parkhall. No, it probably is not livable for a Catholic or a republican. And yes, it is crazy. But no, it isn’t uniquely more violent then the next loyalist housing community. And no, it isn’t a relatively big deal.

    Ulster

  • On Personal Narratives by Emma Bernstein

    For the past two weeks, the Creative Writing department has been working on personal narratives with Margo Perrin. I came into this unit knowing one thing, and that was that I was bad at personal narratives. In fact I hated personal narratives. When asked why, my answer has always been that I am just bad at telling the truth. This is partially accurate. I do find it difficult to write about true events without filling in blanks, altering facts for convenience, and upping the tension by exaggerating the story. In the past two weeks, however, I’ve learned that these are generally accepted methods of writing memoire and personal narratives since no one can remember every detail of their life perfectly and the goal of a writer is to make our work enjoyable and entertaining to read. 

    Despite this discovery, I am still uncomfortable with the process of writing personal narratives. When trying to think of why writing about myself and people I know makes me uncomfortable, I think of something Margo has said many times over the course of this unit: “Your stories deserve to be told.” 

    I think it’s just hard for me, and probably others, to think of their own life as a series of fascinating stories that people might want to read. It’s even harder to think of people that we know as characters when we understand that they have so many more dimensions than we could ever put on a page. From this sense of inadequacy comes guilt, a feeling that we are giving our own stories too much time and effort and that we are not properly representing the situation no matter how many times we try. The trick to writing personal narrative, one I’m still trying to master, is to tell yourself again and again, “your stories deserve to be told.” Maybe someday you’ll even believe it. 

    Emma Bernstein, class of 2017

  • Building Voice in Gnarly Ways by Josie Weidner

    Building Voice in Gnarly Ways by Josie Weidner

    Let me preface this blog post by saying that I wish I were one of those people who could effortlessly slip words like “gnarly” or “that’s so dope” into my every day vocabulary. I have always observed that the people who looked happiest in life were those who thought of everything in terms of being “gnarly” and “dope”; Sean Penn in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”, laid-back rock climbers, chill surfers who hang out in the tropical waters of Fiji. Yet, those types of words sound so ungenuine coming from my mouth. As much as I wish I were a surfer in Fiji, I’m just a high school senior who uses the word “awesome” too much.

    I didn’t start thinking about how important vocabulary is until this week, when I happened to flip through skating and surfing magazine Juice in a bookstore. They kept using words like “Outside” and “Barrel ride” and “Double axle curve, pineapple doing is best to remove all that sauce.” I had no idea what these words meant in the context of surfing, and they didn’t make sense in the context of my vocabulary. For some reason, I found these words to be so intriguing. This was true surfer speak.

    Building vocabulary is a fundamental part of writing. Before, I always thought it was enough to replace words like ‘rural’ with ‘pastoral’ or ‘big’ with ‘enormous’. Now, I think about building vocabulary in terms of voice too. What I had read in Juice was a prime example of what a surfer might say. I realized that being able to use authentic vocabulary and voice like that expands the range of characters I can write about. There are so many different types of voice that conjure up specific characters like business jargon or teen lingo or mom voice. How these characters speak already says so much about who they are, just like the types of people who say “Gnarly”.

    My ending point to all of this is that as writers, paying attention to how someone uses vocabulary in their voice creates more interesting, intense characters. Expanding what you read, listen to, and whom you talk with can build the voices from which you draw upon. Who knows, it may prove handy in life as well, when you’re surfing in the turquoise waters of Fiji and need to know that when someone shouts “Outside”, a new set of waves is approaching, and you better get paddling.

    Josie Weidner, class of 2016

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  • Class Report by Isi Vasquez

    Today in Creative Writing we shared our life stories. Well, first we wrote them. We weren’t allowed to use any periods, so we each ended up with a big run-on sentence. Then we were told that we would have to share all of the things that happened to us throughout our life, compiled  in only twenty minutes, with no punctuation.

    Needless to say, many of us were uncomfortable. A reasonably-sized group of angsty, teenage artists sharing the things that really stuck out in our lives? Well, there’s probably a reason that a  lot of the most famous writers were troubled people. Nevertheless, as a class we simply gave each other panicked looks and forged on.

    Turns out it was a wonderful, touching experience. Our teacher, Heather, cried. So did a lot of us. I feel that sharing our work is such a big part of writing, and making that emotional connection with people. Speaking as someone new to the department, I feel that this experience brought me closer to my friends and fellow students. Funnily enough it also made me feel safe, because we’d overcome the uncomfortable fact of sharing our lives with each other. I think it was a really wonderful experience for all of us.

    Isi Vasquez, Class of 2019

  • First Drafts by Harmony Wicker

    First Drafts by Harmony Wicker

    When I receive praise for my poetry, plays, and other works, it is easy to forget about the notebooks full of writing from my past years. When I do read my old writing, which I remember as the utmost incredible pieces of literature that I had ever written, I often wish that I hadn’t. There are even days when I want to burn them from physical existence in hopes that the incoherent sentences and serial killer handwriting will never be seen again. Unfortunately, I can’t always say that this has changed. Reading my former work is one of the most amusing and excruciating moments of being a writer.

    When I am reading the work of Shakespeare, J.California Cooper, Anton Chekhov and even Dr. Seuss, the possibility that there was any other version of their well-chosen words and rhythmic syntax is unimaginable to me. Nevertheless, it is true that the work I admire, at some point had a first draft. For example, when I read “Traveling Through the Dark” by William Stafford, I was unable to fathom how Stafford created such a profound, sorrowful, and exquisite poem. However, as I researched the poem, I happened upon its multiple drafts. While I examined draft after draft, I felt a connection to Stafford. He and I, in a sense, were the same. In an odd and unique way, all writers are the same. We all go through the process of discovering and changing our work until we believe it is presentable.

    To be able to grow as a writer, it requires hard work and willingness to revise your poems, nonfiction, plays, stories, or whatever else you’re working on. I must admit that sometimes it seems like it would be more satisfying to write the perfect draft in one go. Be that as it may, the late night frustrations, animosity, and eventual respect you develop for your writing is the most exciting part about the craft. So, don’t worry about where you are or where you are going. As long as you love writing and motivate yourself to grow, the final draft will no doubt be amazing.

    Harmony Wicker, Class of 2018

  • On Motivation by Amina Aineb

    On Motivation by Amina Aineb

    Sometime during our fiction unit last year, I was talking to Emma E. about how I was unhappy with the stories I’d written so far. She responded that she too hadn’t really produced much from the given prompts, but that the stories she’d written on her free time were alright.

    Ok, I don’t remember the exact nature of our conversation, but it was something close to that. What I do remember is being shocked that Emma E. had written stories outside of Creative Writing. And my surprise didn’t surface because I think Emma is lazy (she’s actually one of the most dedicated writers I know), but because I had never thought of writing for myself.

    This is bizarre because before I arrived at SOTA, this was all I’d ever do. When ninth grade came around, “writing” became synonymous with “homework”. This isn’t to say that I dislike writing. Of course I do! I just mean that if I was writing something, I would eventually be handing it to Heather for a grade.

    This summer I was a part of the California State School of the Arts’ Creative Writing program. It was a life changing experience for many reasons, but one of them was that I immediately felt like I gained liberation in my writing. For the first time in a long time, writing wasn’t connected to school. Nothing was graded, I was there on my own accord, and what I wrote and when I wrote was solely up to me. I quickly got in the habit of writing every day, and thankfully, I’ve kept that habit since returning to the Bay Area, and to school. Of course, I’m still completing and putting my all into my CW assignments, but in addition, I’m writing other stuff for pleasure, and I’ve never felt more motivated in my writing in all my life.

    I made the decision this summer that I want to be a writer when I grow up. While I love being in our department every day, I realize that life after high school is looming in front of me. Being a writer usually means being your own boss, and I just hope that my motivation continues to grow and thrive, along with my writing itself.

    Amina Aineb, Class of 2017

    The photo is of graffiti at the bus stop near my house.

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  • Revision by Colin Yap

    Revision by Colin Yap

     

    I’ve been writing, in the serious sense of the word, for the past four years of my life, and to this day I don’t think I’ve fully embraced the editing process. Writing is instinctual and the end product is always raw, but as long as a piece of work feels substantial to me, even in its infancy, I am satisfied. Editing is not nearly as easy. Editing is supposed to be a radical reshaping of structure, a thorough examination of the content of a story or poem, with a number of inputs, from advisors, peers, and from myself, about what shifts in the words must take place for the writing to hit as hard as possible. The theme of editing for my work is usually, “trim the fat, embrace the substance.” Basically, understand where the story is, and don’t mess around with anything else.

    My fellow seniors and I are in the first trimester of the writing of our theses. The summer was a gestating period: we gained a sense of what we wanted to write, and how we wanted to write it, and we had the vacation months to try to formulate the first 20 pages. It was a necessary first step, with a tangible deadline, and I don’t think it was especially challenging for any of us to get to 20. The fact that I am slowly getting used to, however, is that very few of those pages are really going to make it into my thesis.

    In the thesis writing process, I have been transitioning from an identification as a fiction writer to that of a nonfiction writer. In any story, though, editing is tricky. It has always been a bit of an awkward process for me. After a serious assessment of my work, and with lots of feedback from others, I sit down and try to slim down the piece. But there is always some difficulty, and it comes from a fundamental discomfort with what I fear is a destruction of what is original and unique.

    The original writing, the rough first draft, is destroyed in the process of revising. This idea, even if its not true, is present in the way the editing feels; it does not feel necessarily right to destroy the order of words and sentences as they originally came. I know that this is a selfish instinct, but it exists in my mind in some form every time I contemplate the red ink. I still have to edit; it’s a writer’s business to edit towards some idea of completion. So I fix spelling errors and shoddy sentences. I haphazardly delete sections I know are lacking. And then after about a half-an-hour, I usually call it quits.

    I only write this because I am going through the process of revising a few pieces I want to go in my thesis and it’s hard. I know I have to keep writing. I have to keep thinking about what each piece is going to say, and what the thesis will say as a whole, is going to say. But I know that, as the process of producing a book-length body of work that is presentable and interesting, I am going to have to embrace the editing process.

    Editing feels like destruction, and as much as I am sold on the ideal of enhancement, it’s just how it feels. It also feels necessary: first drafts are messy and incomplete. What I think I must do, as hard as it may be, is see the destruction in a positive light. To write draft after draft, to experiment—overlay different versions over one another. The visual metaphor I’ve though of is this: it’s like looking at maps of San Francisco throughout history, seeing where buildings were before tumbling, where the land was filled in, where dry surface that became neighborhoods. Hopefully, in the final draft, the piece will be able to pick and choose which surfaces and textures it wants from all the maps before it.

    Or at least that is what I tell myself. Even in writing this, I avoid the procedure of returning to the work. I have a sense, though, that I have ideas I can work with and ideals I want to reach in the interplay of destruction and preservation. Hopefully, I will have an update in a few weeks.

    Colin Yap, Class of 2016

     

  • Advice from a graduating senior, by Lizzie

    I am graduating from high school in less than a week so I think I’ve accumulated a bit of wisdom about how to go about dealing with school from the approximate ages of 14 to 18. Now it may not be much, however, it’s all still fresh in my mind, and thus it might be slightly relevant. So here is a list of things that I advice highschoolers to do (keep in mind that I have not done all of these things but I wish I had):

    1. Do your homework. It’s so much easier than rushing to make it up at the end of the semester
    2. Show up to class.
    3. But it’s OK to sometimes not show up.
    4. Be nice to everyone. As much as people suck in high school, most people are going through some crazy and horrible s*** and you don’t want your rudeness to add to their sadness and anger.
    5. Find at least one person (student or otherwise) that you completely trust and feel comfortable with because it will make everything a whole lot less lonely.
    6. Participate in things you’re interested in. Join a club and if none of the clubs interest you, make your own.
    7. If you have a crush on somebody, do something about it. You’ll regret if you don’t, and take it from someone who got rejected from all her top colleges, rejection really isn’t as bad as it seems
    8. Peer pressure is super easy to avoid if you simply say “No.” Don’t be dramatic about it, don’t make other people feel bad for their decisions, just be super casual and say “no” and no one will bother you about it, trust me.
    9. Along the same lines as #7, if there is something you really want to do, even if it upsets your parents, do it, as long as you are safe! Seriously.
    10. Be happy. One of the most important things I learned while in high school was that happiness is a choice and no matter what is going on, your outlook is all that really matters. And honestly, it does take some effort, but after you get the hang of it, positivity is pretty great.

    There is definitely more to add (a lot of things not appropriate for this blog) but, no matter what you are doing, just have fun! It’s clichéd but it is not overrated.

  • Graduation, by Olivia Weaver

    The seniors are leaving. Each one of them is such a unique individual and yet they manage to work together so well. They treat each other with respect and kindness. At this point they’ve grown up together; the trauma of high school has brought them all together.  They understand each other, and although they may or may not admit it I think they all love each other a little bit.        

    At SOTA, high school doesn’t just make friends. It makes families. It’s a small high school to begin with, so everyone vaguely knows each other. Then you mix in the griefs and losses each grade itself undergoes, and you find yourself leaning on your classmates for comfort. Even if you don’t like some people, what you both experience bonds you. I know the seniors, as freshman, lost both a student and a teacher, along with the tough but common cases of kids missing school or dropping out because of drugs, mental health and ED outpatient programs. As a result this senior class is one of the bravest, most vibrant, creative, funny and kind group of individuals any of us will ever encounter. Their talent by far surpasses that of the class before them, and their charm and sincere interest reach even to the freshman.       

    You know how close classes get. Take it to a departmental level and you’re looking at some people who’ve spent over two hours together for five days a week for four years of their lives together, give or take. I’ve written about how close I personally feel to my class. If I take that and double it I can only imagine the depth and level of empathy our seniors must feel for each other.

  • The “C-Dub-Der”, by Isaac

    Today Creative Writing had our form of a Seder, which Maia dubbed a “C-dub-der.” We each brought in a food that somehow portrayed freedom to us, and combined them to create our own Seder plate (shown below). The rationales ranged from genuine to comical. Colin came up with a separate metaphor for each kind of snack in his bag of Munchies™, which I will not attempt to recite (you can thank me later).

    The food was accompanied by two pieces of writing per writer: one piece written during the Haggadah unit, and one piece written by another artist. Giorgia sung a capoeira thingy (Hymn? Chant? Just song?) in Portuguese. The readings, though we only got about halfway through, rounded off the C-dub-der nicely. Overall, a pleasant ritualistic feast and poetry recital. Also, I got Swedish fish out of it, and we all know that’s what really matters in the end.

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