Notes from a Workshop

I thought I'd share my plan from last Tuesday's Drop-In Writing Workshop.

If you weren't able to make it to The Cabin last week (or don't live in Boise) and wanted to be there, you can get a sense of what what we did. If you write on this now, or wrote something at the Drop-In and like it, feel free to share in the comments. I may do the same.

And if you REALLY like what you write, definitely submit it to Writers in the Attic before February 26. Happy writing!

Drop-In Writing Workshop - Water

By Shannon O'Neill-Creighton, as research for The Toxic Edge and The Precipice of Memory - 2015

Objective:
​Writing personal detail and sensory specifics on the page can trigger our audience’s emotional memory and influence their actions in life.
 
Introduction: Why Water?
The Cabin’s Water WITA contest is coming up, which prompted me to focus our time today on that theme. More importantly, water is a huge issue that keeps coming up globally and is only getting worse. Important to think about, talk about, write about.
 
Perhaps we can find the metaphor for how water affects us all individually tonight.
 
Where has water come up for people in their lives, in the news, in history?
 
Capturing water’s importance through specific, personal, sensory details:

• can show why water matters
• can share about the global water crisis – drought or deluge, others
• can remind people of how to take care of the earth’s water resources
• can invite people to make a difference for themselves, in community and world
• can be a metaphor for some aspect of our lives
• can create amazing conflict potential for characters
• can be personified, or be a symbol for a person…
• what else?           

​We’ll read a poem to inspire us, but you can write in any medium in response.
Story, essay, poem, scene, play. These can be true or fiction.

Water Water Water Wind Water
​
​BY JUAN FELIPE HERRERA

for New Orleans and the people of the Gulf Coast

water water water wind water
across the land shape of a torn heart
new orleans waves come louisiana the waves come
alabama wind calls alabama
and the roofs blow across red clouds
inside the divine spiral
there is a voice
inside the voice there is light
water wind fire smoke the bodies float
and rise
 
kind flames bow down and move across
the skies never seen blackish red bluish bruised
water rises houses fall the child
the elders the mothers underwater
who will live who will rise
the windows fill with the howling
where is the transfusion where is the lamp
who who in the wet night jagged in the oil
 
waves come the lakes loosen their sultry shape
it is the shape of a lost hand a wing broken
casinos in biloxi become carnations across the sands
and the woman in the wheelchair descends
her last breath a rose in the razor rain
uptown on mansion hill even the million dollar house bows
in the negative shade someone is afloat
a family dissolves the nation disappears
neighborhoods fade across lost streets the police
dressed in newspapers flutter toward nothingness moons
who goes there
 
under our floors filtered wooden stars
towels and glass gasoline coffins
the skin of trees and jalopy tires fish
bebop dead from the zoo the dogs half drag
ward number nine miss Symphony Spikes and
mrs. Hardy Johnson the new plankton new
algae of the nameless stroll in the dark ask
the next question about kindness
then there is a bus a taxi a hearse a helicopter
a rescue team a tiny tribe of nine year olds
separating the waters the oils and ashes
hear the song of splinters and blood tree sap
machine oil and old jazz trumpeters z's and x's
raffia skirts and jujube hats and a father man
holds the hand of his lover saying take care of the children
let me go now let me stumble stumble nowhere drink this
earth liquor going in petals
 
stadiums and looters
celebrities cameras cases more water cases
again and again a new land edge emerges
a new people emerges where race and class and death
and life and water and tears and loss
and life and death destruction and life and tears
compassion and loss and a fire stolen bus
rumbles toward you all directions wherever
you are alive still

Discussion
What specifics in the poem jolt us?
What feels unclear?

How here is a case of too much water. Water’s violence.
What is personal here?
How does it make us feel about water? Think about it? See it in new ways?
What tools does the poet use? Repetition, specific detail, showing a scene.
What do you enjoy about it?

Notes
Think back on last 24 hours.
How many places have you seen, felt, tasted, smelled, heard water?
List these. How has it a part of your daily life? 3 minutes
 
Think about your home and neighborhood, all through the year.
How many places and ways do you notice water?
List these. How does it improve your life? 3 minutes
 
Think about the world and even the universe.
Where is there water?
What is it like in those places? What does it look like/smell like/taste like? What’s it do?
List these things. How does it help us as humans? Overwhelm us? The planet? 3min
 
Now, imagine a world without water.
Imagine you haven’t seen water in the last 24 hours, or tasted felt heard smelled it.
Imagine you have little or none or it in your home, in your neighborhood.
That you have to fight to get it.

ALTERNATELY (or in addition), imagine that it's flooding everywhere.
That the world is covered in water. Jot down ideas, details, words about this. 3 minutes.

Write
Look back over your lists. Your details. Moments.
Look at words that stand out to you, that you like.
 
Now you have a chance to put this all together.
This can be a love poem to water, an ode, or a scene, a story. It can be tragic, horrific.
You can record a story showing a memory of water. Or a moment about water.
Show it how important it is. How much it means to you. By capturing all the details.
Be specific.
 
Use some of the details you’ve listed.
Everything you love about water.
How much you’d miss it if it were gone.

My hope is for us to fall in love with water by writing about it in outrageous specifics.
As you write about water, can you discover something new about it? About yourself?
 
You can write about something specific: a river, a glass of water, an ocean, a raindrop.
It can be to water as a whole.

If you write a love letter or poem to a person that says I love you I love you I love you,
that’s fine, but if you write a letter that shows through details why and how and who they are that makes them so lovable, and why you hope they will love you and why you want them to stick around, that says a lot more.

Do the same with water. Show it how important it is. Get other people to see how important it is. So they’ll help make sure it sticks around.