If I Were in Charge of the World...

In the spirit of DREAMING big, do some thinking about how you might shape the world if you could...what you would change or eliminate, what you would add or emphasize, what you would want for yourself and all of those you share this big place with...

Using the folded sheet with the "If I Were in Charge of the World" poem by Judith Viorst as a starting point and a template, gather some of these ideas you have about what you'd like to see in a world of your own dreams or making. Polish and share your poem in a New Post on your own blog. Include at least one image, maybe several.  

Color Catch-Up

Please have all assignments connected to the the theme of COLOR posted to your blog before the beginning of class tomorrow (Wednesday).

You should have:

Paint Chip Poems (all in one post or separate--your choice):

• 2 haikus
• 1 acrostic
• 1 free verse
• 1 narrative (poem or short piece of prose)

Color Collage Poem

Color Association Poem OR Color Story 

JUNIORS ONLY (from the counselors):

Please make sure you are completing your scheduling form by 2nd block tomorrow. 
You can go to:
Canvas> Kickapoo Counseling Commons > Scheduling > Click on Current Grade Scheduling Form

You will also need to turn in the BLUE form with course recommendations and signatures for all courses you scheduled. 

If you are taking honors English, please turn in your honors reading form to your previous English teacher.

Counselors will be available at all lunches today to answer questions.

From Fraser: Creative Writing isn't being offered next year, but I'd love to see you and your friends in Contemporary Literature or Film as Literature or English 4! XO

Monday's Option #2: Color Story

In a New Post (of at least 300 words, with at least one image and a creative title) on your blog by the end of class on Friday, write a short story (fiction or non-fiction narrative) that begins with a sentence that includes the word BLUE.

Start each of the paragraphs (at least 4 total for your story) following with  a sentence using a different COLOR word.  Include at least one image.  If you need more than 4 paragraphs to tell your story, that's fine.  

Use the COLOR word only once in each paragraph, but suggest the color in as many ways as possible. Highlight the details you've used in the color they're suggesting.

For example:

The world had turned GREY. Nothing but mud and asphalt surrounded the unpainted house, little more than a box made of concrete blocks. Charlie, dressed in faded work pants, rubber boots, and a thick wool sweater, steadied himself with a hand on the top rail of a weathered cedar fence. Behind him, nothing but ash-coloured sky, bare trees, and plumes of smoke belching from the factory in the distance. A lone sparrow rested on a branch, one beady eye watching.

Please have all color-inspired pieces posted before the beginning of class Wednesday so we can comment on each other's work. 

Remember you need to do this piece OR the Color Association Poem-you don't have to do both (but you could!). 

Monday's Option #1: Color Association Poem

 Using the handout template as a rough guide, create a Color Association Poem and share it as a New Post on your own blog.  Include at least one image.  Fold the handout in half and tape it in to your journal to count as an entry this week.  

Please have all color-inspired pieces posted before the beginning of class Wednesday so we can comment on each other's work. 

Remember you need to do this piece OR the 4-paragraph Color Story--you don't have to do both (but you could!). 

Paint Chip Poetry

Please polish and post the paint chip inspired pieces (alliteration!) you came up with in your journal during class on Thursday.  You may group them all in one post or do a separate post for each one.  Include an image for each piece.  Let me show you how to do this if you don't know--it's easy and important to add visual interest to your work.

You can post all your poems, but at minimum please post these (in any order you choose):

• 2:  haikus 
• 1:  acrostic using a paint color name
• 1:  8+ line free verse poem using the paint name as a title or in a line
• 1   8+ line narrative poem that uses the 4 paint color names (or you had the option to write a short piece of prose--memoir or fiction, etc.)

If you finish with this assignment, click around on the info at HGTV about the Psychology of Color, how different colors affect our moods.   There are various color quizzes out there you could try, too.  Or you could continue to customize your blog with gadgets (quotes, images, tools) on your sidebar, or update your profile. Thanks!

Color Collage Poem

In a New Post on your own blog, please post a poem of 8 or more lines inspired by some aspect of your magazine cut-out collage in your journal featuring the paint chip shade you selected. (You could write a short story or memoir piece on this one instead if you'd like.)  

The color may or may not make an appearance in your writing.  Your poem might describe a place, an event, a memory, a feeling, a person, or a combination of those.  It might take the form of a Narrative Poem, a Free Verse Poem, a Rhymed Poem, an Acrostic Poem, or a series of 3 or more Haiku Poems.  

Please include an image to go along with your writing.

Title your post Color Collage Poem. 

Include an Author's Note about the origin of your idea. 

Please post all COLOR-inspired assignments (including another one we will add on Monday) by the beginning of class Wednesday, 29 January.

Object-Inspired Piece of your choice

Please post a new piece of writing on YOUR blog inspired by our look at how objects can inspire new thoughts, trigger memories, or provide writing ideas.  

Please spend time to come up with at least 500 words (draft directly on Blogger or you can type on Docs for a word count then copy and paste if you want to).  

Also: add at least one image  (click on the icon on the tool row that looks like a photo--I can show you how, just ask). 

Also: add an "Author's Note" at the beginning or end of your post briefly identifying the object/activity that inspired you and bit of your thought process.

Be creative and take this assignment in whichever direction you choose:  fiction, narrative, poetry...You may come up with a finished product today or maybe just a good start on something you revisit and finish up over the long weekend or in class Tuesday. 

Some options:

• use one of the objects we passed around during class this week (key, lock, giraffe, etc.--check out the comments on the Idea Share post below for lots of ideas)
• use one or several of the objects you cut out of the magazines for your journal 
• go back to one of the objects you shared with everyone those first days of class or something someone else shared
• use an idea from the What's in Their Bag? character sketch you created this week
• browse the website Significant Objects for examples of writing connected to objects--you might even find an object there that triggers some writing for you
• you can make a story up or you can write a story that is true
• you could be inspired by a combination of these objects
• the object itself may or may not end up in your writing

When you finish your piece (due at the end of class on Tuesday, 21 January), you can continue to customize your blog page with gadgets in the sidebar, an interesting background, updated profile info, etc.  Be sure you've figured out how to add images--they are an important aspect of your blog and will accentuate your writing.  I can also show you how to put in links like I did (the pink words above).  It's really easy.

Thanks for making class LOVELY so far!

In the bag

In the spirit of US Weekly's feature “What’s in my Bag?” and Abbi Jacobson's book Carry this Book...

Imagine the contents of another person’s bag…

• Celebrity (Oprah, Martha Stewart, Barbie, Trump)
• Book/comic character (Sherlock Holmes, Batman, Willy Wonka)
• Movie or video game character (Indiana Jones, Mario)
• TV character (PeeWee Herman, Carrie Bradshaw, Leslie Knope, Homer)
• Historical figure or icon (Ben Franklin, Ghandi, Freud)
• Writer/artist/musician (Ephron, Banksy, Kanye, Prince, Beyonce)
• Inventor/innovator (Steve Jobs, Einstein)
• Athlete (Michael Jordan)
• Criminal (Bernie Madoff, Robert Durst)
• Someone you know

Create a large, colorful, detailed, labeled, imaginative sketch with at least 10 items and at least 5 notations/comments.  

Some ideas:

Books/Notebooks

Jewelry/Accessories

Tech products

Food/Snacks/Drinks

Shopping List

To Do List

Tools

Beauty products

Keychains/Keys

Work materials

Identification

Souvenirs

Lucky Charms

Medicines/First Aid

Awards

Trash

Vices

Phone (apps/call/texts/Insta/Snap showing)

Due at the end of class on Thursday for 35 points.

This assignment does not have to be posted to your blog, but you are welcome to include it there if you would like!  

Idea Share: Object Pass-Around

Share at least 3 of your ideas connected to the objects we passed around in a COMMENT on this post.  You could share what the object reminded you of in your own life or your story idea or both.  Skim over the ideas of your classmates and if you like one of theirs, jot it down in your journal to turn into something of your own.

Your comment should be rather lengthy--at least 3 complex, solid sentences.

Then choose at least 1 of your ideas to expand on in a full page in your journal.

If you have some time, browse the website Significant Objects for examples of writing connected to objects--you might even find an object there that triggers some writing for you.

Browse the photos in Where Children Sleep and see if there's an object there that might spark an idea.

You could also check out Smithsonian's 101 Objects that Made America or their exhibit about the History of Shoes.

Thanks for trying this today!

Make it yours

Thanks for creating a blog!  I hope you will continue to add to and refine your layout to make the page reflect your style as we go.  I'm still working on the class blog...

Customize the front of your Writer's Journal using the triangle template and images you find inspiring in some way.  Show it to me when you're finished and I'll give you points for doing so.

Be sure to fill 5 pages in your journal each week!

I am...Mrs. Fraser

I am…

small-town sports, a life in the country
and the desire to be a good girl

two younger sisters, who really know me and love me anyway

riding horses bareback with my cousins and
picking vegetables
from my grandparents’ garden 

domino games and stories around an old kitchen table in Oklahoma 

shopping in a Ford Crown Victoria
piloted by my lead-footed grandmother 

Drury College, where I learned about Alice Walker,
the secrets of ПBФ,
how to live with roommates,
and that the world is much
bigger than Cassville, Mo.

Ryan, who knows I don’t like to talk when I first wake up,
who loves me even though I don’t like to cook, and who every day
tells me how pretty and smart I am, even on days I’m not.

Macauley, a junior with his own car and a job and
the start of his own life,
with a clever sense of humor
and a kind, sensitive heart,
my sunshine when skies are grey

I am…

sweet tea and chocolate milk, chips and guacamole 

pets on the furniture

puffy, comfy white couches, ironstone plates and pitchers,
chippy white furniture, burlap and linen,
mismatched silverware and old photos,
flea market finds and treasures that make me smile.

a tattered teddy bear bought with my birthday money
in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, when I was 8

tightly folded notes passed between teenage boys and girls
in class and church

photos and scrapbooks and a project always in the works.

books on my nightstand and magazines on the floor

sleeping late on weekends (especially when it rains)
in a bed with lots of covers and feather pillows

dark blue eyes and my dad’s olive skin,
black-framed glasses when I read or watch TV.

jeans and ankle boots, lots of black,
hair that always ends up in a messy ponytail,
Uggs and sweatshirt.

I am…

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is
fighting a hard battle.” (John Watson)

“Everyone you will ever meet
knows something you don’t.” (Bill Nye the Science Guy)

“Let it be…let it be…
There will be an answer…let it be.” (The Beatles)

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love.
It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot.
All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes,
the lump in your throat,
and in that hollow part of your chest…
Grief is just love with no place to go.” (Jamie Anderson)

Let's do this!

Blogs are an interactive, visual way to share our writing, and I'm excited for you to create your own. I am providing some written instructions on the handout I passed out, but I think you'll really just learn as you go. 

Your individual blog will be like an online, visual portfolio of your work for this class.  You might occasionally post something on your own, but your blog for Creative Writing is not meant to be a diary or like social media.  You will post your assignments to your blog for me (and often your classmates) to read.  You'll get comments/feedback from us right on your posts, too.

What I've set up here is a central class blog where I will post assignments and sometimes my own writing. You can usually check here for directions or what you need to get started, so please take the time to read the information I post. When you create your blogs, I will add each of them to a "blog roll" on the right hand side--from here you can hop on and see what everyone else is up to, and I'll be looking for you to make supportive and appropriate comments on your classmates' blogs beginning in the near future. This whole process of creating a blog might be a new one for most of you, and I appreciate your willingness to jump in and try something unfamiliar. You'll just have to spend a little time playing around with your layout, and I hope you feel free to add your own personal touches and make your page your own. You can start with the basic setup and let it evolve from there.

Some things to know/keep in mind:

• A post is a new entry you create from scratch with your own thoughts and ideas. A comment is an idea or thought you attach to someone else's post.
• While your blog is meant to be a place for you to express yourself and for others to communicate with you, we aren't using our blogs for socializing like facebook or texting. I hope you're kind and friendly to one another, but resist posting casual messages or silly small talk or really anything not related to our work together as a class. Later on, when you've moved on from Creative Writing, you may want to continue your blog and of course then you can do whatever you want with it!
• Since your blog is an "assignment" for a writing class, please attempt to use proper grammar and punctuation. You should not use text-speak or abbreviations or slang that you might use in texting or email. i do not want you to type in all lowercase like this. I DO NOT WANT YOU TO TYPE IN ALL UPPERCASE LIKE THIS. Use complete sentences and your best grasp on writing conventions. This is not to say we won't all make a few mistakes here and there, but we want it to appear that we were trying not to, not like we just haphazardly slapped some stuff down.

I do hope you enjoy this process...I'm here every step of the way so don't hesitate to ask me if you have questions or want some guidance.

• When you've created your own blog today, leave the url (address) of it as a comment on this post. I'll link all of them to this page and this will be our home base. You can name your blog whatever you want, but I'll be listing them by your first and last name in the blog roll because it's much easier for me to keep track of that way. 

• Your first post will be your"I am..." Poem you drafted on Monday. You should be able to copy and paste the text from Docs or you can draft directly on blogger. Add an image or two using the button that looks like a photo (next to the blue word "Link") on the tool bar. 

• Also, please leave a comment on my "I am..." post telling me something you found interesting or something we have in common. 

• Then do the same for as many of your classmates as you can.  Just click on their names in the blog list down the right side of this page. 

• If you've still got some time after that, you could work on customizing your blog with backgrounds, design choices, gadgets in the sidebar, etc.  Here is just one place you can get free stuff to use in your blog design:  Cutest Blog on the Block.