St John the Evangelist School Year 8 Writing Group Day 1

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2010

St John the Evangelist Year 8 Writing Group

Day One: Thursday 21 October 2010

Not wanting to get caught in traffic, I had left Mission Bay quite early and was looking for a coffee shop even before most of the shops in Otara were open. If I was a little apprehensive about working with a group of shy Samoan girls, I should not have been; I received a wonderfully warm welcome from them and their teacher Pips Reddy at St John the EvangelistSchool, close to where the famous Otara market takes place and the Manukau Institute of Technology.

St John’s is a small Catholic integrated school, boys and girls until Year 6, when most of the boys move on to De La Salle College and the girls stay for two more years before going, mostly, to McAuley College. Decile 1, a DuffySchool, roll about 260, 97% Samoan, the rest Tongan, Maori and other Islanders; no palangi. I like to find out these things before I go into a school, to get a sense of the school’s culture, its special flavour.

It was quite a challenge: the group of 16 students to talk from 9.00 a.m. until 1.10 p.m. (with a 40 minute break) about stories and the anthology we are going to produce. For the first 90 minutes we introduced ourselves. Ms Reddy, from a third generation Indian family in South Africa, shared how she came to New Zealand, as did many of the girls subsequently, whether it had been their parents or grandparents who had made the courageous journey to begin a new life in New Zealand.

Most came from fairly large families, four and more; many named Maths as their favourite subject but I’m certain that wasn’t just to make Ms Reddy, who taught them Maths, feel appreciated! There was a wondrous variety of ambitions: flight attendant, architect, lawyer, doctor, carpenter, professional sportswoman, teacher, actress, accountant, chef, restaurant owner, photographer. Great to hear.

After break, when I was welcomed in the staffroom for a very fine brunch, we really got down to business.

We made a list on the whiteboard to remind us of the points that a professional writer or editor considers when creating an anthology: a great title, a colour cover, a back cover with a blurb, possibly some illustrations inside. The book will be A4, spiral bound. Stories will be up to 2000 words long, on mystery or adventure themes; their important order in the anthology will be discussed later. Drafts will be presented in double spacing, 12pt font, text not indented, but the book will be printed out in single spacing with usual indents, contents pages etc.

We also talked about the target market, who will be interested in a copy: the authors and families, school library, school principal, church Father, NZ Book Council.

We then brainstormed what helps make a short story memorable: generally one idea only, a problem, good setting and characters, some good dialogue and most of all, that ‘something has to change.’ Then we moved onto a brief discussion of Point of View, whether first or third person, and the classical arc of a good plot. We finished (and by this time the girls were definitely calling on their reserves of concentration to stay focussed) with sharing some thoughts about where ideas come from. All round, we agreed, in your families, in everyday life, things you hear about or experience yourself.

During the morning we had discussed how our 6 sessions might pan out:

• Day 1: introduction and discussion of short story theory
• Day 2: students to come with their synopses for one or more stories; ‘what my story is about.’
• Day 3: 1^st draft; discussion about cover art,
• Day 4: 2^nd draft; rough designs for cover, number of copies to be produced
• Day 5/6: final draft for editing; agreement re order and re cover, towards final print-out.

I was impressed with the moving prayer that began and ended each session, and delighted with the girls’ willingness to participate and especially, to listen. So I’m really looking forward the fulfilling our shared vision of their anthology with a lively and attractive publication.

Tessa Duder

21 October 2010

At Kaitaia College our aim was initially to create a range of poetry 'posters' that captured the Far North. Apirana took the students (Year 9 and 10) through a range of exercises (many similar to the ones he used at the local primary schools) to encourage them to write and see the world in a different way. Unfortunately, the students did not have the opportunity to finish the poetry for the project and so this part is still incomplete. Of course, they have now gone on holiday and we have to wait until the beginning of Term 4 to do this. Once students give me their work, I will be emailing it to Apirana for feedback and then we will endeavour to complete the project as we initially intended. Doing something like this has its challenges in a secondary school. I had to work around the timetable and there were times when it was not possible to have all of the students out of class for a scheduled workshop. We had two students filming the workshops with the intention of putting together a short documentary once all work is complete. Overall, it was a positive experience for the students and teachers involved, although admitedly, very demanding on staff. Below is Rita Lennon's account of her experience. (Ellender Wilson)

DAY ONE

I walked into the library and sat down at a chair. Then we began. I had missed the sessions which had occurred earlier in the week due to illness, so I was a tad worried that I wouldn’t be able to catch up with whatever we were working on. Luckily for me, it seemed we were starting on a new venture that day.

Mr Taylor read us a legend about how Kaitaia got its name, which was completely different to the one I had always been told. When I said so, I was encouraged to tell my version. Well. Easier said than done. I didn’t know the names of any of the involved parties, and I could only guess at the general storyline, since I hadn’t heard the story told in a while and I hadn’t grown up with it or anything. So I stumbled my way through what I remembered and came up with the vaguest excuse for a Maori legend possible. At this point, I was thinking to myself that it would have been better for everyone involved if I had just kept my mouth shut.

We were instructed to write a poem, “about a page long”, about the legend (the former one that Mr Taylor had read). It was a little difficult – I’m not used to writing poetry for an actual subject. Usually I just write down a mixture of feelings and fiction, and I’m good to go. So at first I was a little stumped, and spent maybe five minutes trying to figure out how to write the legend in a poem without making it sound like I was just recounting the whole thing in little verses. Eventually, I got started, and I ended up writing a few four-lined verses that fit into the page, not one line more or less.

Amber and I finished at the same time, so, neighborly friends we are, we swapped poems and read, both lamenting in whispers that ours was stupid. Mr Taylor approached and glanced over them. He seemed pleased. Encouraged to go onto the second, vague legend, I wrote a shorter poem. No break in it, no particular rhythm, just about ten lines of quickly-scribbled poetry that I probably should have tried harder on but decided was good enough, if – once again – vague.

DAY TWO

There were several reasons why it was a good day – one was that we started with a shared lunch. Then we went right into our work – short stories. “Use humour,” Taylor said. Right, then.

What seemed like an age of mad scribbling and hand-cramp later, we started to share some of our stories. Some of them were thinly-veiled jabs at infamous educators, others were bizarre snail matchmaking stories. Either way, they were entertaining.

“In the end, the best way to learn about writing is to write.”

Whilst the scribbling had been taking place, Mr Taylor had written this up on the whiteboard. “No one can tell you how to write,” he added, “although it’s good to listen to advice.”
After this, we wrote another story – a challenge had been issued, after all, that we couldn’t possibly write two stories in the short space of time. We proved him wrong.
Apparently, most of his adult classes couldn’t have done that. Maybe there’s something to be said for younger authors – we don’t have life experience weighing us down and telling us what can’t happen, so we come up with the most random ideas anyone has ever heard of.

DAY THREE

Plays. It was all about plays today. Turns out Mr Taylor is an actor too – add that to the list of things he does. He told us the basics of plays, how many acts some of them have on average, how there are usually several scenes in one act. Then we got down to setting our scene.

I decided on my story and got right into it, even though we were only really supposed to be writing where our characters were and what they were doing there. A glance around showed that most other people were doing the same – we all finished around the same time, except for some people who came in late because they had an exam.
Three scenes later, we all read out our plays – they all had some kind of conflict in them, a lot of them about a love interest. Some of them had really out-there plotlines – aliens, unicorns, the like. But they sounded like they would be fun to act out, and Mr Taylor encouraged us to do so on another occasion.

We went out onto the field at one point and listened to, then looked at, what surrounded us, so that we could write a poem about that moment in time. I liked this – it was easy to write about something I saw almost every day. In the same way, it was kind of hard to illustrate it in a way that really captured it.

“Wasteland”
(Formerly “What I saw at Kaitaia College 14/9/10, 12.10pm)

Outside is a wasteland
Rubbish blows like tumbleweeds
In a desert of churned grass.
Isolation and desperation
Tinge the trees blander, the sky colder.
Slow circles are meandered.
Behind me, the school
I turn
Beside me, the school
I turn
And see creamy-coloured classrooms
Windows gazing unseeingly, accusingly,
Are you allowed out there?
Aren’t you meant to be in class?
I close my eyes and hear activity
I open my eyes and see a lie
Or is it truth?
I see nothing happening
I hear, every moment, the opposite.
Is something happening?
In some classroom, maybe
But here in this cold, churned space,
It is muted by sight
It is muddled – as am I.

At the end of our time, Mr Taylor told us once again that the best thing you could do was to write and use our “built in lie detector”. That way, we could develop our skills and become better as writers.