Another Writing Lesson from the Undead

Teaching at the Young Authors Academy this week provided interesting (a purposefully vague word open to interpretation) experiences. Along with a supervisory role for parts of the camp, I taught two classes: “Building Better Stories” and “Tales and Villains.” Yes, teenagers do sign up to go to summer writing camp, and no, I did not come up with the titles of the classes. Each morning we started in true Writing Project format with a scribble where I was able to begin flexing my writing muscles again. It’s been a refreshing change from writing a dissertation. (Still recovering.) Several authors came to present and talk to the students about writing. We had a great lineup: J. Scott Savage, Chris Crowe, Tess Hilmo, Ann Dee Ellis, and Hannah L. Clark. Matthew Kirby also came for an evening chat with the campers. Each brought their expertise and among other things, validated my own writing practices as well as writing strategies I promote in my regular classroom. 

One of my many takeaways is a revision tool—one that Chris Crowe shared during his presentation about micro-revision, a topic I spend quite a bit of time on with my own students. I had seen most of his presentation before at various workshops, but this one was new.

He had the students first write a word-ku, a deviation of a haiku. It is still a three line poem, but instead of counting syllables, you write five words on the first line, seven on the second, and five on the third. Words instead of syllables. He instructed them about the traditional content of haiku: nature. However, when I wrote my example, I couldn’t shake my previous experience writing haiku with Chris and the rest of my Writing Project fellows, and I composed a word-ku of a decomposing nature: zombies. What else when working with Dr. Crowe?

(taken from https://authorselectric.blogspot.com/2016/03/
the-book-that-wasnt-written-by-zombies.html)

none escape this rotting curse,

this infestation that enslaves my mind when

I write haiku—the undead

The next step, a revision strategy, was to take the word-ku, and without changing the content, turning it into a traditional haiku. Syllables instead of words.

the infestation

enslaves my mind, zombifies

my thoughts, my haiku

By forcing one format into another, you really have to think about what it is you want to say. Rules are there to help. It helped me look to tighten up this scrap of writing as well as a few other pieces I worked on during the week. I could go on about different ways to implement this small exercise, its benefits, the buy-in from the students, but I fear the brain activity might attract the undead hordes roaming the campus. I’ll leave it to you to figure it out how to make word-ku work for you.