Patchwork Poems

Feeling frustrated by this poetry business? Centos can really loosen up your creative machinary. A cento (latin for “patchwork) is a collage poem made up entirely (or almost entirely) of lines from other people’s poems. By rearranging or decontextualizing lines from other poems, your task is to create your own poem by stealing from other [...]

Fiction Exercise #1: 200-Word Sudden Fiction

Write a sudden fiction in exactly 200 words following these rules:
1.  A one-scene story that takes place on a dock.
2.  Characters:  a pilot and a runner, strangers to one another
3.  A second-person narrator
4.  Circumstance:  They’ve both lost something

100 Words or more: Smoke

During my last months in Helena, the smoke from the distantly burning forest fires covered the streets and the mountains in a gray veil, obscuring the valley and the hills. On some days, it blurred even the trees across the street, and you could feel it grating on your throat each time you breathed [...]

100 Words: Pitcher

“We want a pitcher not a belly-itcher!” Grubby fingers interlocked in the chain fence of the dugout. Half-empty yellow Gatorades on the concrete floor, Emily, on deck, balancing a bat on two fingers. “7’s up, it’s a up thing, 7’s up, she hits it every time…” Parents with newspapers and magazines [...]

Exercise: On Storms

Here are the rules:
1. Use a second-person narrator
2. Use 150 words
3. Use the following words: bones, glint, forge, salt
4. Title it “On Storms”
5. Make it creative nonfiction
6. Go…

Groups for Unit One

Enjoy a creative weekend filled with writing games! And if anyone has suggestions for exercises we might want to do on the blogs, please post them to the Motherblog.
You will be hearing from Maddie, Katie or Alex about meeting with them in one-on-one conferences this coming week to talk about the course and your [...]