Repetition Challenge

At our last two meetings we discussed a packet of published writings - the theme of this week's packet was repetition as a technique in writing. The pieces we discussed are as follows:

"This Person" by Miranda July from No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories
"The Mother" by Gwendolyn Brooks
"The Story of Progress" by David Ignatow from Great American Prose Poems
"The Sea Change" by Ernest Hemingway


The first two options in this week's writing challenge were stolen from assignments given in a class at Rutgers by Alicia Ostriker. If you write something from one of these prompts, you can post it on this blog, workshop it at the next WG meeting, or keep it tucked away in a journal under your pillow. Just do this: write!

Option A: Using the pieces in the packets as examples, write a poem, short story, scene, essay using repetition - choose a word or phrase and use it as a title and repeat it at least 3-4 times in your piece
Option B: Choose a line from one of the pieces in either of the packets and use it as the first line of a poem, short story, you get the idea (but make sure you use quotes or italics and dedicate your piece to the author whose line you used).
Option C: Write something (anything!) of your own choosing.

Writing Challenges

Lakshmi posed the first writing challenge on this blog (to write a haiku) and I think it was a good idea. We’re calling them writing challenges instead of assignments because they’re completely optional. One of my creative writing teachers once said, there is no such thing as writer’s block only lazy writers. So if you want to write, but need some direction, try taking a writing challenge.

Anyone with an idea for a writing challenge can post it on this blog.