The Hand That Rocks the Cradle

Write about your relationship with your parents/guardians by describing an event from your grade school years, junior high, and high school years. Each event should suggest the nature of your relationship with your parents at the time it occurred.

Half-Empty or Half-Full? (Assignment 12)

Is the glass half-empty or half full? is a common expression, used rhetorically to indicate that a particular situation could be a cause for optimism (half full) or pessimism (half empty); or as a general litmus test to simply determine if an individual is an optimist or a pessimist. The purpose of the question is to demonstrate that the situation may be seen in different ways depending on one's point of view and that there may be opportunity in the situation as well as trouble.

Without thinking, write your response. Fast. Now take some time and explore in writing why you hold this belief. Then write a brief essay (3 to 5 paragraphs) in which you try to convince someone who sees it the other way that you are right. If you want, write a rebuttal to your own argument. Or you can write a short poem (because I know you love poetry), using images to make the same point.

Family Guy (Assignment 11)

Tell a family story, one that gets passed around at holiday dinners more often than the gravy boat. Tell as many as you can recall. If you want, brainstorm for a while, tagging the stories with just a word or a phrase to help you remember them. Then pick a few and develop the narrative and the details.

I Could've Thought of That (Assignment 10)

Research a few inventions. Write about the circumstances for the inventions: How were they discovered or made? What obstacles did the inventors overcome? Write an essay about teh inventor and the invention

If you could only take five things....(Assignment 9)

Mr. Schmit's list:
Endless supply of Aloe sunblock.
Solar Powered cooler/radio with fan attachment
Family Size tent with rain guard
Wind-board (for wind-surfing)
Snorkling gear (including harpoon gun)

"If you could take five things to a desert island, what would they be?"
Write about why you choose each answer. Then imagine you've been on the island for six months or a year. Which items have grown dull in your eyes? Which ones continue to shine?

Secrets Don't Make Friends (Assignment 8)

Options 1)
Write about a time when you told a secret and found out the person you told revealed it to someone else. How did you feel? Did you confront the person? Describe the circumstances and consequences.

Options 2)
Write a monologue in which a fictional character reveals a secret, keeping in mind that Macbeth has really raised the bar high. In other words, make it a significant one. Give urgencey to the telling of the secret. This situation can add urgency to whatever you write. If you're feeling stale on a piece, imagine it as a secret being revealed.

Heffron, Jack, The Writer’s Idea Book. Cincinnati, OH: Writers Digest Books,

You Won't Like Me When I'm Angry (Assignment 7)

What ticks you off? Poor service in a restaurant? Traffic Jams? Incompetence where you work? The injustice of untalented people--far less talented than you, for example--enjoying unwarranted success? We all have our flash points, the buttons that people had better not push. Let's spend some time looking at what makes you good and mad and search for ideas.

WHAT MAKES YOU ANGRY?

Start with a list. Write down the things that have made ou angry in the past week--or the past month, if your week has been mild. Take some time and try to remember all of them, from stubbing your toe on a chair leg to your teacher's adamant refusual to allow you to go to the bathroom, to your senator's cowardly vote on a bill you strongly support.

Pick one item from your list and freewrite about it, telling in a rush of words (don't sweat the punctuation and style at this stage) how you felt and why you felt that way.

Place the items from your list above into categories, such as "home," "school," "family," "friends," "the news," "social injustice" or whatever cateogries are appropriate for you. Then add to each list by moving farther back in time- a month, even a year. Write down what you can remember, then pick a category and look for patters. Is there something at work or school that angers you on a regular basis?

Your Happy Place (Assignment 6)

Write about the best place you've ever been. "Best," can have a few meanings: most exciting, most fulfilling, most interesting. It could mean the place where you felt most in sync with the world, where you had the keenest sense of belonging, coming home to a place you've never been. Or it could mean the most exciting place, or the one where you had a great time. You choose. Take time to describe it in detail, beginning with those details that first come to mind. Avoid, at first, explaining why you like the place. Just describe it. After you have a good start with your description, you can begin to explain and speculate upon why this place had such a profound impact on you.

Poetry Is.......(Assignment 5)

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

-Billy Collins

The above poem is a poets take on how he would like his readers to interact with poetry. To experience the words as they are and for the image and experience they create. He expresses his distaste for the way in which poets (and writers in general) have their personal lives pulled into their work as if critics aer the CSI team looking for the secrets that are hidden. For this assignment we are going to take a very light approach to poetry.
You will be given multiple prompts from which you must select four (totaling no less that 30 lines of poetry). You can write in the form of prose or rhyme. For many of you this will be difficult. Take your time and play with the words. Poetry is the greatest form of condensed writing and the most liberating. In your poetry you must demonstrate an understanding of the following terms in your poetry: stanza, end rhyme, simile, metaphor, line break, alliteration.

PROMPTS:

Local Poem
Write a poem about a place you know well. This can be about8t Minnesota, your hometown, or anywhere else you are familiar with. When writing the poem, think about what makes that place unique. What is special about this place? Why is this place familiar to you or comfortable? Capture a specific moment, emotion, or feeling that place conveys inside of you. Be as specific as possible with your details. Your goal here is to have the reader understand what it is like to be in the place you've selected.

Prose Poem
Write a poem that tells a story. Don't worry if your lines are longer than in your other poems. Your goal here is to tell a story using as few words as possible. Begin by writing down a sequence of events from beginning to end. Then add in the details--descriptions, characters, conflict, and if possible, resolutions. you may want to write this poem out as a prose, then worry about line and stanza breaks when you complete your first draft.

Love Poem
Many writers struggle to write good love poems. They are often difficult to write because conveying an intense emotion through words is about as easy as plucking a rhino's nose hair. Instead of writing about your abstract feelings of love, try focusing on writing concrete events that illustrate your feelings. If you don't want to write about love, try flipping it around and writing about why love is bad, an anti-love poem.

Imitation Poem
This activity works best with a poem you either love or hate. Once you have a poem, write your own poem that mimics the form, tone, ideas, images, or emotions. If you don't like the poem, try satirizing the author. Make sure you include the name (and text, if possible) of the poem you are imitating.

Dual Voice Poem
A dual voice poem requires two people and is often part of performance poetry. the idea with a dual voice poem is to have two individual voices, each telling their own story, or communicating to one another, while maintaining a constant theme in the poem. This type of poetry allows you to show tow perspectives in the same poem. Often one of the voices is the "overseer" and the other voice is the "actor" who is overcoming an obstacle.

Snapshot Poem
Find a picture and tell its story. You have lots of options here. You can describe what is happening in the picture. If there are people present you can write about what they are thinking or feeling. If there is an object, you could tell the story of the object. If you are feeling really creative, try to write the poem from the object's point of view.

No doubt you have many questions about this assignment. Please, speak to me directly. This assignment requires more direct instruction than most.

R.I.P. (Assignment 4)

Imagine that you are old and on your deathbed...sorry. Your entire family and all of your friends are standing around you. As you look out to this crowd, what words of wisdom would you like to pass onto them? What life long lessons would you like to share? What's still on your bucketlist?
Think about what you would like to see accomplished in your lifetime, how is today's generation or the generation to follow going to achieve these goals? Who do you model your own life after and why? Think about these questions and then post a blog about the final words you've choosen and why?
Select three of the questions above and in no lesson than 350 words (thinks about it as 6 paragraphs discussing 3 significant questions. I didn't ask you what's your favorite candy bar, I'm asking what will your life be?) respond carefully. In your first draft of your blog, I want to focus purely on Ideas.

Keep in mind that this is a ficitional event...for now. If you would like to do this by telling a story feel free to do so. It may help for you to describe the setting and the people in attendance. Perhaps you have some celebrity friends in attendance, maybe the Pope has arrrived or Paris Hilton, it's all up to you. Have fun with this and try not to be too mournful.



Heffron, Jack, The Writer’s Idea Book. Cincinnati, OH: Writers Digest Books, 2000