Talking with ... Not Back to School Camp (cont...)

I know in this workshop you critiqued pieces that the campers had already written, but when you have led writing classes in the past, or think about doing so in the future, are there any writing prompts that you have liked using or would like to use?

Dave: I'll usually just open to a random page of whatever book I'm reading or I'll open a magazine. I usually try and avoid using lines from fiction, because once I gave a line from a Vonnegut book I was reading and everyone wrote stories then that were very much like Vonnegut because the tone of this sentence was so strong that it affected the way they wrote. If I give a line from a National Geographic article, they tend to come up with something more interesting.

Reanna: I was hoping to lead a journalism workshop this week, but no campers signed up for it, so I didn't get to offer it. My vision though was to give people a simple set of questions and have them go around camp with note pads and do a vox pop style thing, to throw them right into reporting. It's a little bit sadistic, because cold-calling and doing interviews was what I hated most in university, but I guess also I think it was really valuable for me to be pushed that way. Now I do interviews regularly and I love having that skill and that access to information. I think it would be great for someone interested in writing to start getting comfortable with interviewing at a younger age.

Truff: Next year we might offer a speed song-writing workshop.

[Laughter.]

Reanna: What these guys did was amazing. Tell them.

Dave: Truff and I wrote 23 songs in less than 24 hours.

Reanna: One for each of the staff members.

What was your process for writing the songs?

Dave: We wrote out a list of names and then we would pick someone.

Truff: The songs on the album are one-take, but we usually would try a few versions before we were happy with it.

Dave: I really work best improvising. I don't like to think about things too long because I get too much in my head. So when we were writing these songs, we'd really just pick a name, try out different lines and instruments and then just delete what we didn't like and keep the stuff we did. The longest we spent on any of the songs was probably an hour.

Can I hear an example?

[Dave goes to get his guitar.]

Strumming

Reanna wanted a banana so she went down to the market
Reanna she wore a bandana when she ran
She ran so fast down the sidewalk
The banana was hard to find but the Mexican man showed her where
(Donde esta banana?)
Showed her where, showed here where, with great care

(Aqui! Aqui!)

I once knew a girl named Reanna
Who went down to Montana from Canada
She went down to Minneapolis
and went east to visit Kansas

Reanna loved her bananas
She often went down
To the market
To buy them

How much were these songs really based on the person's life and how much was just made up?

Dave: Oh they're totally made up.

Reanna: They hadn't even met me yet.

Truff: Yeah. We actually weren't sure if we were pronouncing your name right and if it actually rhymed with banana. The reason wasn't to write a song about the person, but to write a song for them.

Dave: Since we were just writing a song for Reanna, we could write whatever we wanted. The point was just to make a song that's cute for Reanna.

Truff: A number of the songs don't even contain the person's name; we just wrote it with the idea of giving it to them. It's just a song that we wouldn't have created for any other reason than them being alive.

Dave: It was good motivation.

Lastly I sat down with 16 year old camper, Emily "Blueberry" Keller who submitted a manuscript titled "Snapshots" to be critiqued in the writing workshop.

How did you feel the workshopping went?

Blueberry: The workshopping here was amazing. I felt like I got some really good feedback on some things that I already knew were weaknesses in the story and some things I had no clue weren't working in the story. It was a lot of fun to workshop everyone else's pieces too.

Was there any one thing in particular that you think you will take away from the feedback you received?

I think in the future after I've written something, I'll be more careful to try and step back and read it from the point of view of someone whose not inside my head and doesn't know the relationships between all these characters that I'm trying to hint at subtly, but it turns out I'm hinting at too subtly.

Can you see yourself leading a workshop like this at a future camp?

I might do one that's more of a "let's all sit down and write together" thing and maybe read a little bit of what we wrote. I can't see myself doing the more intensive class, not leading at least, but I would definitely like to participate in it again.

Are there any prompts you would use to inspire people to write?

I like a lot of the writing prompts that I have found on the internet or in books. I have lists and lists at home of prompts that I think are really interesting that I would like to write about someday. I have them tacked to my wall to look to whenever I want something to write about. One that I remember is: "I kept a pen and paper under my pillow and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark."