Wandering writers brought together: inspired, changed.

at Two Writing Teachers!

It's been an amazing two-and-a-half weeks at the Columbus Area Writing Project!  Every day, we learn and write and grow so much that I feel like I'm just overflowing with writerly wonderfulness!

For this morning's quick-write, Robin guided us through an exploration of short, structured forms, with types of poetry and prose both familiar and new.  She pours book floods out to us every day (Kelly Gallagher would be so proud!), and today's mentor texts included delights such as Tap Dancing on the Roof (I'd never heard of sijo!) and Not Quite What I Was Planning.  She then challenged us to play with short forms during our 10-minute quick-writing time.  I didn't get very far then, but the idea stuck in my head and crawled out again on the way home as I was brainstorming slice ideas.

So, here are some short forms to capture my CAWP experience.

1. Six-word memoir: did you notice it in the title of my post?  If not, look again!  :-)

2. Tanka: At CAWP, whenever we need to focus as a group, come together from writing or an animated conversation, or ground ourselves from tension, one of our co-directors leads us in the following ritual:

Kevin intones, "Breathe."
We gulp luscious life and pause,
away from the world.
Together, we push out stress,
finding selves in a new place.

3. Haiku: this just happened!

Husband cooks dinner:
pouring, stirring, simmering.
Grateful, I can write!