Savage Mountain Creative Writing Workshop for High School Students

June 20-24, 2005
Frostburg State University Campus

Pulling Stories From the Air: In this workshop, we will first invent a character, and he/she will belong to you. Then we will find your character's story, and get you to write it. We'll do this as a way of exploring what it is that fiction writers do, how they make people up, how they shape a story, how they let luck factor in, how they think about sentences, how they take the raw clay of a first draft and shape it into something beautiful or terrifying. We'll use examples, exercises, and your own work.

Work Sample:
At the Clown's Birthday Party

After cake and ice cream, the guests in their painted smiles and polka dot attire settle in to watch the man they've hired to entertain them. An actuary analyst! So much better, already, than last year's accountant or the year-before-that's linguistics scholar. In his narrow dark tie and shirt sleeves he opens his briefcase of tricks, produces an over-large ledger sheet and pencil, and, while the clowns watch open-mouthed, calculates a number of profitable, competitive insurance premium levels while determining the amount of cash reserves needed to assure payment of benefits and then, before they can even catch their breath, withdraws a dozen manila envelopes and reviews employee claims activity to see if premiums are adequate to cover losses. Hurrah! They laugh when he extracts a large seltzer bottle, lifts it high, and uses it to water down his scotch, because, he explains, Jill thinks he is drinking a little too much lately, though he can quit anytime he wants, and with a flourish he sets up a cardboard bar and sits at it and lights a cigarette and runs his hands through his hair, opens his wallet to a picture of Jill, who (surprise!) left him last week, the kids, still in their braces, and while his magic In-Box slowly fills itself and after he breaks five pencils with one hand, out come the skinny balloons which he deftly twists into a variety of shapes, including the 5-alpha reductase enzyme that is causing both his baldness and that little twinge in his prostate, and the Q-shaped ulcer growing in his duodenum. He leaves one balloon uninflated, but won't talk about it. The clowns are not, he tells them, his therapist, and he never liked them anyway. The clowns cheer and laugh; this is so much better than anything, despite the bite of pathos they feel as the man cries now, sobbing into his open palms, and the clowns all know, know in their hearts, that this funny sad man is really laughing on the inside.