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.
It’s no secret these days that it’s rapidly turning into autumn. It rained this saturday, I can’t wear just a tank top and a sportscoat at night anymore, and, perhaps most importantly, the Fall CW show is just around the corner. Today in Creative Writing we spent most of the period listening to theme ideas from Tony and Rachel and Carol (the person who gave birth to me, for anyone who didn’t know), our artistic directors. They took us through the various stages of David Bowie’s work as an example of an artist who has both gone through a very complete journey, and as an artist who works within in many different personas and genres. We then got to propose our own ideas for the show, which, like many matters of national security, will remain secret until it comes out of our proverbial oven, so to speak (to give a little food analogy retort to Midori who assumes I just never read the blog and so seeks to slander me with being an unpatriotic CW student).
On Friday, we visited the de Young museum, the cherry to top off the ice cream sundae of Maia’s Craft & Critique unit (this is for you, Jules, and all of your food analogies. Except, of course, Jules doesn’t actually read the blog, so I should actually slander his name, the jerk). We received a cute little fold-up worksheet and had free reign over where to go, the caveat being that we should do this quietly, preferably alone, as to enjoy the full museum experience.
I spent most of my time in the Inuit art exhibit, with all of the walrus tusk-carvings of intricate little creatures. I was particularly caught by the smoothness of it all, obviously pieced together yes, but fitted so proportionally that even the seams seemed natural. It’s awe-inspiring to consider it was all done by hand, the stone, ivory, and bone pieces as small decorations around the house, just for fun.
There was a room in particular that caught my eye, for it was really… weird. The de Young channels the sparse, elegant galleries very well, until one stumbles upon this room, with its brilliant array of glass and colors and stuff, all kind of crammed together, so there’s something strange everywhere you turn.
colors everywherestuff everywhereon the ceiling, too
Well anyways, it was super fun (italics absolutely warranted). I work right across the street at the Academy of Sciences, and I rarely go to the de Young. It’s a completely different museum experience than the hustle and bustle and screaming children of the Academy, and I must say, it’s nice to just settle down and enjoy art.
we practiced critiquing on this painting and its ekphratic poem
Once a marking period, freshmen, sophomores, and juniors are required to write a review on a piece of published writing, focusing mostly on the craft. I doubt anybody really looks forward to writing these lit critiques, but by now it’s a bit of a rite of passage within creative writing, and this practice improves our essay-skills drastically. Recently, Maia Ipp has redesigned the way lit critiques (formerly lit reviews) are to be written; instead of focusing on the work inside an issue of a literary magazine, we can now choose any work of creative writing, and have the chance to study it in-depth and write a longer, more comprehensive essay.
Today in Creative Writing, Maia, after noting the despairing looks on our faces after being confronted with this new assignment, had us workshop our first lit critique drafts with our writing buddies. She even kindly extended the due-date toMonday so that we can be sure to have greatly improved our essays with the help of peer-editing. Thank you, Maia!
Today in CW we watched Bohemian Rhapsody and The Nature of Offense, fall shows of past years, and then talked a little about our own show, which is coming up soon now. As I watched The Nature of Offense, I couldnʼt help but notice how young everyone looked only a year ago! As a freshman, there were many unfamiliar faces in Bohemian Rhapsody and a few in The Nature of Offense. It was funny to watch the upperclassmen shout out when they saw one of their now-graduated friends, although I donʼt personally know them. I think weʼre all very excited to plan our show, especially the seniors.
Our as yet untitled Fall Show is approaching fast—it’s on October 11th! Today in Creative Writing we did some brainstorming and outlining of potential themes for the show. I can’t speak for other groups, but mine had a very productive discussion out in the sunshine about communism and flour children.
This week is rather unstructured as it was initially set aside for Field Day practice—that is, before the field became a war zone. The WWI-esque trenches have been eliminated recently and it currently looks like a nice place to build grass seed castles or reenact the rest of 20th century military history.
After our group brainstorming sessions, three whole tables were laden with free books that were donated to CW! There was a wide range of literature, from The Dharma Bums to an assortment of newspapers from 1908 (one of which contained an intriguing article about a woman with an award-winning mustache). A civilized kind of feeding frenzy ensued, and everyone I observed seemed to come away from the experience with large, nearly unmanageable stacks of wonderful, wonderful books.
Giorgia (’14) and Frances (’14) then led a discussion about the CW submission requirement, specifically concerning the bios required by many literary magazines. The class had varying opinions as to what should be included in a bio and whether one should use one’s full name or discuss one’s cats. After a democratic discussion—democracy has become the norm in CW lately, introducing a wonderfully effectual aspect of civility to our discussions—we decided to stop talking about literary journals and instead make each other crawl around on the carpet whacking each other with them (it’s a community-building game, guys—for the community).
There comes a time every year (at least, I assume every year—this will be my first actual Creative Writing show as a Creative Writer!) where the entire department must take on the imperative task of coming up with a theme for our fall variety show, one of our best performances in the school year. Today Creative Writing consisted of pure brainstorming, filling up the whiteboard with ideas and brief phrases that would make no sense to anyone other than a Creative Writer (see: “nature of a fence”), and discussing the most entertaining, stimulating, and alluring ideas for our show. Splitting off into small groups, we all expanded on several ideas and proposed them to the rest of the class, then voted on our favorites. We are well on our way to uncovering that perfect theme and, obviously, I can’t spoil anything… but Creative Writing mermen? Definitely a possibility. Be excited, though, because this show will be a great way to kick off this year, and certainly something you won’t want to miss
I’ve been reading Petrarch— Scott, my Euro Lit teacher, introduced him to me (well, introduced him to the class, but I took major interest and asked to borrow some books). Prior to this, I’ve known Petrarch only as that one Big Deal Poet Laureate who got the crown from the Pope who wrote love poems to a Lady Laura. Y’know, the standard famous poet stuff.
Now, I know he had never met Laura, and suffered from a crippling depression that I’m surprisingly familiar with.
It’s just weird, y’know, to consider that this figure of practically-myth is actually such a familiar character. He glorified Laura to frightening heights and longed to reach that height, but obviously never could. The funny part though? Is that he knew exactly what he was doing. He was making Laura unobtainable, and hated himself all the more for not being able to obtain her love. This self-crippling cycle seems a very modern thing— we rarely think of figures from Back In The Days suffering from anxiety and depression.
Self-doubt is a very familiar feeling for me, and… Well, I don’t know if it’s comforting to know that Petrarch also had it, but it is somewhat easier to forgive myself when I remember that. It’s such a funny thing, see— just being told that your anxiety is all in your head doesn’t really help, because if it’s all in my head, it’s all on me, and I’m making a big deal out of something that doesn’t matter at all, isn’t that embarrassing? It just makes me more anxious, if anything. Reading famous poetry that many people studied and liked and empathized with reminds me that it’s not just me. Other people are people too; I am not living in a world of perfect Lauras. I shouldn’t hoist the greatness I perceive in everyone else above myself, because that’s not fair to me or to them.
This has been a little life advice, to myself more than others. Just ease up, man. Make like Petrarch and write through the sadness. Frances should make that into a motivational poster.
I love entertaining the thought of stars aligning– I always envision it to be like Hercules, where these giant planets just kinda sidle up against each other with the arrogance of frat boys and collectively build up this awesome mega sonic beam of power that pews down to Earth.
…And then something blows up, but in this Hollywood day and age? That’s practically a prerogative, even for non-film-tastic grand celestial phenomena. All ye beware, here there be C4.
So, there’s that whole thing about planets in orbit and electrons in orbit, which means it only stands to reason (actually, it really doesn’t, but whatever) that the alignment of stars is graphically comparable to the alignment of thoughts.
I googled “pretty picture of neurons,” which is something I’ll have to live with forever
(Tangent Anecdote: Photoshop is one of the things many middle school master Escapists learn to do in their spare time, and as a devout Anti-Realist of that time, I dedicated hours of my life learning to simulate those sparkles (which are, of course, just dots with the glow effect) on a hipster non-Photoshop program. It involved too many layers and manual dotting to count, and I soon gave in and used my father’s ancient Photoshop 5, which was a very decent step up. I now have family pictures buried in USBs all sparkle-tastic and color-balanced.)
In the scatterplot of life, how awesome would it be to be able to derive the the perfect linear function? Instead of completely random events and happenstances, I can say my life is f(x) = 12x + 11. Like, not even quadratic– we’re talking seventh grade-vanilla math. How awesome would it be for my writing to just be input-output simple and correct? Perfect in content and easy in execution. It’s so dreamy.
I’m dreaming and dreaming, and all of a sudden I hear Heather’s voice in my head, all excited-like:
But it’s not perfect or easy. Life’s not perfect, writing’s not easy, and that’s what makes it all so worth going through.
And yeah, snaps to that. I mean, why else would everyone get bored in math class? It’s all so predictable after a while, like eating exquisite European banquets every day and crying with feelings over fried rice (my entire family has a Chinese food complex, I don’t even want to talk about it, oh my god). It’s kind of the entire point of writing, y’know?
(The non-perfection, not Chinese food.)
(Though it’s debatable.)
If I had to identify my life philosophy, I’d probably say Absurdist (yes that’s a perfectly legitimate philosophy shush), which, to rehash sort of all my previous posts, is the notion that Life seems to mean so much when it really means so little, and that’s the joke. Absurdism easily turns to a kind of bitter nihilism once you lose the humor, so you can sprinkle in a bit of existentialism there too, that nothing matters unless you make it matter. It’s why I write, to assign meaning to things so I can better maintain my brain-filing system (just call me Radar O’Reilly, bugle under B, clipboard under K).
So this filing, most of the time done with intention, but sometimes, things just line up, y’know? Jules (’14) tells me that someone told him that things come in waves– the happy wave, the sad wave, the people-getting-the-wrong-orders-at-random-cafés wave– and maybe, maybe. It’s a fun thought to entertain, but a bit too unsubstantial for me (which is strange, because I’m certainly not above superstition and strange beliefs, like whistling at night or untying friendship bracelets). Though there was the time with the Connecticut school shooting happening right after CinéClub showed Elephant, and the intruder alert practice at SOTA soon after. Maybe I don’t consider three “a wave,” just connections. Perhaps if five or six folks in my life all gave birth at the same time or something I’ll consider it a wave (of babies, so many babies), but it’s too big a unit of measure for me to consider viable.
Well anyways, things happen, big surprise there, and when things happen, other things happen, and though correlation is not causation, correlation is correlation. When things happen that I feel connect, the stars align. Stars move fast in my world, all this hyperactive spinning, and sometimes, I get three in a row, or an apple, a pile of gold, and the Taj Mahal. It’s all very motion sickness-inducing, but also awesome when I find the connections and draw a straight line.
I like bookend endings, so I often scroll up to reread what I’ve written and find the one thing to nicely tie things up (though Maia Ipp has told me to refrain from that urge, because it’s not necessary). Now, though, I can’t think of anything to tie back into Hollywood explosions, except maybe that they’re unnecessary, but is kind of necessary (c’mon, Pacific Rim was awesome)? Just like life. Alright there we go, ending tied up, life is unnecessary, but also kind of necessary. You know what I mean.
I do the “I can’t believe it’s already/only been the first week of school!” thing only ’cause it’s true. Both ways.
It’s already been the first week of school: five whole days passed, memories of it were not a blur and can be willed easily into definition, my relative time has changed.
It’s only been the first week of school: what?? Have I not already been here for five whole days? Whaddaya mean only five days? How many more to go??
Warning! Warning! It’s not a binary! They are not opposites, do not have to exist with or without each other, my feelings of relief and longing are in no way contradictory. Trust me. Please.
I don’t know– it’s been so strange. It’s not like I stopped thinking over the summer or anything, but now I’m back I have to make the conscious effort to flip my brain back on. Maybe it’s more like switching tabs on your choice of internet browser– I’ve got to function through a different scope.
Allow me to pull another cliché and share a word of wisdom. Not my word of wisdom, which either makes it better or worse. It’s the words of my Psych and Human Geo teacher, the ever-wise Ms. Coghlan:
Yes it’s on my wall.
And, for such a simple thought, it’s surprisingly esoteric. Procrastination has always been the norm for me, and there’s always a reason why– I’m in the middle of a page in the middle of a book, I’m knitting a scarf for my father’s birthday, I was just about to cook pasta. It’s never really occurred to me to actually consider my actions in a more objective perspective, where there’s this set amount of time in which I can get things done, I am in that block of time, why not do it?
Why do it? is a loaded question. Why not do it? is a flippant one. I like my attitude flippant, the operational definition of “flippant” being completely positive and not rude in any way.
And do the things you put off because it actually doesn’t make sense not to.
The first week has passed and is settling slowly around me, and I must sleep it off. More next time on senior-ism. Man that’ll be a long post.
It’s no secret these days that it’s rapidly turning into autumn. It rained this saturday, I can’t wear just a tank top and a sportscoat at night anymore, and, perhaps most importantly, the Fall CW show is just around the corner. Today in Creative Writing we spent most of the period listening to theme ideas from Tony and Rachel and Carol (the person who gave birth to me, for anyone who didn’t know), our artistic directors. They took us through the various stages of David Bowie’s work as an example of an artist who has both gone through a very complete journey, and as an artist who works within in many different personas and genres. We then got to propose our own ideas for the show, which, like many matters of national security, will remain secret until it comes out of our proverbial oven, so to speak (to give a little food analogy retort to Midori who assumes I just never read the blog and so seeks to slander me with being an unpatriotic CW student).
Our as yet untitled Fall Show is approaching fast—it’s on October 11th! Today in Creative Writing we did some brainstorming and outlining of potential themes for the show. I can’t speak for other groups, but mine had a very productive discussion out in the sunshine about communism and flour children.
There comes a time every year (at least, I assume every year—this will be my first actual Creative Writing show as a Creative Writer!) where the entire department must take on the imperative task of coming up with a theme for our fall variety show, one of our best performances in the school year. Today Creative Writing consisted of pure brainstorming, filling up the whiteboard with ideas and brief phrases that would make no sense to anyone other than a Creative Writer (see: “nature of a fence”), and discussing the most entertaining, stimulating, and alluring ideas for our show. Splitting off into small groups, we all expanded on several ideas and proposed them to the rest of the class, then voted on our favorites. We are well on our way to uncovering that perfect theme and, obviously, I can’t spoil anything… but Creative Writing mermen? Definitely a possibility. Be excited, though, because this show will be a great way to kick off this year, and certainly something you won’t want to miss
CREATIVE WRITING 