Submitting work to Troubadour

Today we'll take the time to submit work to Troubadour for consideration.

Here is a link to the form.

Also, here is a link to another contest from Highland Park.

And here is one last place to submit your work for consideration.

Austin International Poetry Festival

Endings

This is our last week together. We'll spend time over these last few days doing some final writing together, sharing some of our work, submitting some of our work for publication, and listening to each other.

We'll use this poem for today: "Aristotle" by Billy Collins

Re-writing stories - continued

In our first activity after winter break we took details from another person's winter break and crafted them into a new story.

Now we'll take that a step further and re-write opening paragraphs from our favorite books!

1. Think about which book you want to use. You can look around online for your favorite one or maybe choose one from these sites (note that you must choose something at least 6 sentences long - for some books that might mean more than just the actual first paragraph).
1. Great opening paragraphs
2. First paragraphs of classic books
2. Read the original opening paragraph closely - what does it do?
1. Sets the tone
2. Introduces characters and setting
3. Establishes the story
3. Think about how you might want to re-write it. The goal here is to be close to the original but also totally different. You should retain some of the same language, but you can change its meaning, shift the order, or put words in a different character's mouth. Maybe the whole paragraph will now be re-told from a different perspective!
4. Do your work in a new Google Doc. Paste the original paragraph in and then do your re-writing just below it. That way you can keep re-looking at the original while you do your work.
5. Submit your work to turnitin.com

Welcome back from winter break!

Welcome back!

To start things off today we'll read these two poems by Mary Oliver.


Then, we're going to write about winter break. You'll each brainstorm a list of specific words from your break - the more specific, the better. For example, instead of just saying "food," you might say "Colossal fish sandwich from Primanti Brothers in Pittsburgh." Here are some other examples of general terms you can not use:

• fun
• family
• friends
• sleep
• travel
• relaxing
• exciting

You'll create a list of 10 terms and write them on a piece of paper. I'll explain the rest of the activity from there...