chelydra

Now I want to see what the two other mum-kids do with this!

mum23

midnight, thank you! Anybody who has read Alex Haley's 'Roots: The Saga of an American Family' will know where my story came from. If only it were fiction.

My son was quietly thrilled when he read your comments. He reads voraciously, as do the other two, and is developing a love of writing.

chelydra, thank you for extending an invitation to the other two. This morning, I asked my other son, who is nine, if he'd like to do it. For him, writing is still about as painful as pulling teeth, but he was chuffed at being asked. I hadn't intended to ask our daughter, aged six, but she piped up and said she wanted to do it. That was enough to prompt son number two into action, though 433 words was never going to happen! Here's his:

One moonlit night the treetops are waving,
And the trees,
the werewolves are scaling,
To get to the crows, that they’d like to kiss.
Strange things happen on nights like this.
Across the raspberry fields they zoom,
And under the trees is an iron tomb.


More tomorrow...

chelydra

Gritting teeth to keep from commenting on individual contributions before Judgment Day... I guess Mum-Son Number Two is disqualified by the word-count having no mathematical relationship that I can see offhand to the number 433, so therefore is not a exactly defined as a contribution, so therefore I can say that --- no wait! --- I counted 45 words, and all it would take is a reduction to 43.3 words to sneak in (e.g., use ras'fields a colloquial contraction)... ---- now I'm trying to remember if I said the shorter ones must be part of multiple submissions each of the same length totalling 433 words... if I did, what are the chances of getting another nine 43.3-word submissions? Or if I did NOT say that (but left it as one of the many available options, not a requirement), Mum-Son No. 2 is definitely a contender already!
"Ras'fields" however would ruin the metrical rhythm of the line, and throw the whole poem into disarray, so find another solution. For example, substituting the archaic-poetic word "would" (meaning like or want) for the slightly awkward and unmetrical " 'd like to" might just about do it... "To get to the crows, that they would kiss" ... he might still need to come up with 1/3 of a word, or maybe it's 1.3 words, I've lost track now...

I think in my original assignment I said I wanted all the words to appear in the same form as on the list, no tense changes or any of that wimpy weasly stuff. However, I buried that under so many other rules, options and provisos that no one can be blamed for not noticing it. And if I'm going soft on one rule I thought was ironclad, I guess it's only fair that the other rules should also get a little soft around the edges.... just a little, mind you...
And therefore, if no one objects, this is now the Mum-Son No. 2 entry:

--------

One moonlit night the treetops are waving,
And the trees,
the werewolves are scaling,
To get to the crows, that they would kiss.
Strange things happen on nights like this.
Across the raspberry fields they zoom,
And under the trees is an iron tomb.

-----

(I am assuming everyone understands that one tiny editorial tweak by the judge is acceptable when the author is under age ten, and a worthy entry would otherwise be disqualified. 45 words was definitely not permissible, but 44 will sneak in, in this case.)

chelydra

After all that, I think I liked the untweaked original version better... "that they'd like to kiss" is much more effective in describing tree-climbing werewolves' urge to kiss crows than my rather bland and slightly pretentious revision. But the original form does throw off both the metre and the word-count, so if this poem is to have a chance of actually winning, some kind of tweak is still called for. The author himself is probably the best tweaker.

Never mind, I see it: simply drop ", that"... I only now just noticed "like to kiss" sort of rhymes with "like this" - duh!

Unless the author has a better idea, here it is again in the form I will be judging:

One moonlit night the treetops are waving,
And the trees,
the werewolves are scaling,
To get to the crows they’d like to kiss.
Strange things happen on nights like this.
Across the raspberry fields they zoom,
And under the trees is an iron tomb.

Mum-daughter? We're waiting for you!

chelydra

Curses! Now I see that my erasing "that" takes out a "t" sound that served as a stepping-stone from treetops to tomb... maybe "the crows" could be just "crows"? You don't realize how much craft (whether it was conscious or unconscious) goes into someone else's work until you start to change things around and see it getting worse with your changes. And the teeniest little things can be doing a lot when they seem to be doing nothing.
This will be my last tweak:

One moonlit night the treetops are waving,
And the trees,
the werewolves are scaling,
To get to crows that they’d like to kiss.
Strange things happen on nights like this.
Across the raspberry fields they zoom,
And under the trees is an iron tomb.

chelydra

Nope, "the" was necessary too... one last try...


One moonlit night the treetops are waving,
And the trees,
the werewolves are scaling,
To get to the crows that they’d like to kiss.
Strange things happen on nights like this.
Across the raspberry fields they zoom,
And under the trees --- an iron tomb.

chelydra

(If we had a "delete previous message" option here, this could have been a neat pithy little suggestion, instead of the sprawling lunacy it blossomed into.)

mum23

We've both been wasting time, I see!

Another one, again 433 words, but this time all the words are in the same tense as on your list.

Last one from me...


The moonlit ocean stretched endlessly before them, the little foam-crested waves lapping rhythmically, hypnotically against the sand. Ryan found it endlessly fascinating to watch each wave clamber frantically across the top of its receding predecessors until it could kiss the shore, only to be pulled back into the ocean, making its successors struggle in just the same way that it had done.

He turned his gaze to watch Hope as she relished the last of his raspberry sorbet. He admired the way that she delicately pushed her tongue into the corners of the container to savour every last bit. She had been his saviour, he realised.

When Jennifer had died, his world had fallen apart. They had both known that climbing Mount Levison would be perilous; it was well up there on the scales of difficulty, but, experienced mountaineers that they were, they had taken all the necessary precautions. There was no way of knowing that the karabinders he’d bought at the last minute were made from poor quality, imported iron. He’d brought her body home to be buried, but had left his heart and soul up on the mountain with Jennifer’s.

After the service, he’d turned from the tomb to see Hope standing a little way behind Jennifer’s grieving family. The sun on her grey locks attracted his attention, but when he’d looked more closely, it was her beautiful, intense eyes that spoke to him. Their eyes met and she made her way over to stand beside him, silently sharing his pain. When all the mourners had departed, Hope accompanied him to his car and went home with him.

They’d been inseparable ever since. Though it surprised him that Hope had claimed his heart so easily, he didn’t fight it. His friends, even Jennifer’s family, were delighted that they’d found each other.

A noise in the treetops along the beach behind him brought him back to the present. He saw a crow settle onto a branch, followed shortly afterwards by another, and then another. In wonder, he watched as dozens of them arrived, jostling and arguing with each other as they fought for the best places to roost. He and Hope looked at each other and got to their feet. Companionably, they walked along the beach and left the cacophony behind them.

She really was beautiful, he thought. There was a grace, an undefinable quality about her that everybody he’d introduced her to seemed to recognise and respond to. He’d tried to find out where she’d come from, but only half-heartedly. They were meant for each other, this man and his wolf.

chelydra

Because Marg's poem is too oblivious of the word-count requirement to qualify for judging, I'm allowing myself to comment on it... On first readings of all the contributions, there was only one (before the most recent) that immediately grabbed me and pulled me all the way in - and it was NOT Marg's. Marg's struck me a lightweight nonsense, the only one of the lot that seemed not even worth a second look. But then, after all the struggles with getting Mum-Son No. 2 tweaked, I went back and re-read all the others. This time the one that had grabbed me on first reading no longer had that effect. There was nothing in its imagery that could hold a candle to those tree-scaling crow-kissing werewolves. But because M-S-2 had now opened my mind to offbeat and peculiar images, when I read Marg's again, it revealed unexpected marvels of such richness, depth, and zany originality that --- well, to be honest, I think she'd win by a country mile, although the formal poetic stuff still strikes me as pretty sloppy - I see now the rhyme scheme is careful and consistent, but the overall rhythm and music doesn't really come alive as it might, it doesn't sing or breathe the way a great poem should. (MS2 comes closer to that ideal.) What Marg DOES offer is what my high school English teacher (the tree man) called an "epiphany" - in which the character in a story or novel suddenly acquires a new awareness, or a new KIND of awareness, and briefly enters into "an altered state". It does this so eloquently, and with such wild abandon, that I don't think I've ever seen it done anywhere near as well, even by Hesse, Joyce or Dostoyevsky. And Marg's "epiphany" is so jolly, sensuous, unpretentious, not taking itself too seriously, or at all seriously - it's even better than any of those Zen Buddhist anecdotes about experiencing the flash of Satori. It's an amazing little creation. If it wasn't disqualified enough before by the word-count issue, it's totally disqualified now by my saying it would win by a wide margin if it did qualify.

I should probably say that I'm making some effort not to give the prize (if you can call it a prize) to Midnightpoet, simply because she had it before, and I think she'd happily agree that rebuilding the momentum of the ThinkWrite challenges requires bringing in "fresh blood" - new personalities, new ideas, new twists and tastes. Having said that, I'll reveal that it was Midnightpoet's second poem that grabbed me more than anything else on first reading, although I couldn't figure out why it did. (I guess it means she's a real writer!)

Please note, everyone, this challenge is very much a competition still, everybody is in, nobody is out (except Marg unless she does something with a correct or qualifiable word-count). Lest the attention and rule-bending I lavished on M-Son #2 leave M-Son #1 feeling "what am I? chopped liver?" - rest assured I was as impressed as anyone by the precocious skill of that restless undead sorcerer.

chelydra

Saying this will further break my resolution to refrain from premature comments on individual contribution, but I'll just add that "the most recent" contribution was M-Son 2's at the time I wrote that; Mum's 2nd offering (which I have read yet) arrived while I was rambling. But all my indications that M-Son 2 has leapt ahead of the pack (except for the disqualified Marg) could mean nothing by Judgment Day, after I've studied and re-studied everything a few more times. There's plenty in all the others that could grow stronger and stronger on further readings, and for all I know I might decide tomorrow that tree-scaling crow-kissing werewolves are not so appealing after all!

midnightpoet

Chelydra: "I should probably say that I'm making some effort not to give the prize (if you can call it a prize) to Midnightpoet." --I should hope so. One of the rules laid down from the beginning (though it hasn't been mentioned since it came back) is that you don't pass the torch to the person who passed the torch to you. I'm just writing for fun with your list.

Mum - Loved your son's poem! It was just beautiful - like your other son's story, I would not have guessed that was written by a child had I not been told. Of course, reading what you submit leaves no doubt as to where they got their talents from. Your second story was beautiful.

Also, I seem to have missed this poem by Marg that Chelydra's talking about, so I'm going back to look.

midnightpoet

In addition to Marg's poem - which rocks! - I also missed Mdawrcn's submission...and after reading that, I've decided I like trees better than people too ^_^

midnightpoet

(part 3, 108.25, provided you count the hyphenated words "once-raspberry" and "raven-black" each as one word.)

The notebook is covered with blood from my unwashed hands, and the words blur in the damp crimson. I look down to her moonlit corpse, wondering what to do next.
A part of me wants to pin the poem to her and sit her in the corner to stiffen.

A wolf’s howl tips the scales of my decision and breaks me out of my thought and into action.

Carrying her corpse is like carrying an iron statue. I look into her eyes, lifeless and raven-black, and kiss her once-raspberry lips one final time.

A sound in the treetops…sh –

I drop her body into her watery tomb, and wave goodbye.

chelydra

Now that I know Midnightpoet is officially ineligible to win, I'm free to say that if anyone wants a writing lesson, especially a poetry lesson, have a look at what she's done here. The poem (her part 2), on third reading, showed me again why it leapt out at me the first time around. There is nothing in particular in the content that stands out as particularly amazing, but the reading of it does what all the very finest poetry must do - it synchronizes with the reader's own heartbeat or breathing or both, and thereby comes totally to life. The best prose can (must) do that too. (Writing is rooted in story-telling, or perhaps story-singing, and its roots should be showing.)

mum23

Hey, no fair bending the rules for the kids and nobody else!

MS2 was highly amused at your contortions on his behalf and doesn't mind which version of his poem you eventually consider, so long as he's in the running!

MS1 did feel a little piqued and overlooked (he was rather thrilled about his story), so your acknowledgement of his writing was very gratefully received.

midnight, thanks again. You're the real star of this writing gig, but it's fun to join in.

I must say too, that the kids are brilliant in their own right. They read (and read, and read) so they pick up most of it on their own. I don't claim any responsibility, though I am one very proud mum!

Finally, here's the contribution from my girl (I wasn't allowed to write 'little girl!) She's standing next to me impatiently, just wishing I'd get on with it and send you her story.

You’re not going to believe this. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it happen. It proves the value of reading to, and encouraging a love of language in young children. Watching the kids enjoy producing these works, knowing that there would be an outside audience, has also made me realise how important it is to have a reason for writing, even for the littlies.

This is all my daughter’s work. She typed it herself and I haven’t changed a thing. Every time she made a spelling error, I was quietly pleased, because it would make it more believable that this was written by a six-year-old, but every time (almost, she did miss a couple, thank goodness!) she’d get to the end of the word, realise that it was wrong, and keep trying until she got the spelling that looked right. This was not spell-check doing it for her. The only words she couldn’t work out were ’beautiful’ and ‘follow’. I haven’t taught her about apostrophes yet, but she even used those correctly as she wrote. All the reading they do obviously makes all the difference.

Her joy in the process was beautiful to watch. She’d planned how to incorporate some of the words from the list before she started, but when she realised how she could add the remaining ones she lit up with excitement. She’d write a sentence and just about burst with pride, she was so pleased with it. Last night, she wanted to stay up late so that she could write her story. It was the first thing she did after breakfast.

This taught me a lesson too, about how we underestimate our children. I hadn't intended to ask her if she wanted to try this. I didn't think that she'd want to, let alone be able to. I knew she was doing well, but seeing her do this has floored me.

Thank you for giving all of the kids the opportunity to participate and for the encouraging feedback they’ve received. They’ve loved it.

Without any further ado...
……………………………


One day two children named Hendy and Mindy went into a forest. They knew that they shouldn’t go into the wood but they felt like exploring. Mindy said I think we need to turn around. Hendy said no I have been spreading a trail of bread so we can’t get lost. So they walked on and on until they reached the end of the forest. There, right in front of them was not an iron house but a yummy looking candy house. Mindy said now let’s go eat. They ran to the house and then Hendy said hey look there’s a crow in the treetops. Mindy said I’m off to eat that raspberry looking thing. And then the witch came out and frowned. The children shivered with fright. Hendy whispered I would hate to kiss HER! The witch said what are you whispering about in a very deep voice. We will go home said Mindy. No said the witch come and have some tea. No thankyou said Hendy I’m to sleepy. And what about you Mindy she said. I’ll go to bed as well If you are ok with that. yes I am ok only if you leave in the morning. Ok thankyou said Hendy goodnight see you in the morning said Mindy. Oh and I will wake you up when the time is right. Hah hah’ I’m finding it hard to get to sleep said Mindy. Then Mindy had a idea I think I’ll look out of window. And that’s when she saw the moonlit wood. It was a beautiful sight. In Hendy’s dream he was being chased by wolf’s. In Mindy’s dream she was being chased by a scaly snake. Ding dong go and follow the trail of bread that you made. She waved them off. Ready? Ready said Mindy .And off they went. And that’s when they found out that the crow had eaten the bread. We have to go back to the witch’s. Can you please give us a ride on your broom to get us back to our home? Yes I will give you a ride home. This is fun. Hey look there’s someone bilding a tomb. There’s home.

mdawrcn

Wow, an excellent story by Mum child number 3! All Mum kids are very talented, just like their Mum. Good luck figuring this one out Chelydra.

five

Moonlit. Kiss werewolf.
Rasberry treetops wave.
Raven scales iron tomb.

[I could not resist merely rearranging your words.... I know it doesn't count.]

midnightpoet

I could not help but smile the entire time I as reading "mum child #3"s story - how wonderful that she did that all on her own! I think "Ding dong go and follow the trail of bread that you made." is my favorite sentence in this challenge so far - though I couldn't say why.

Five... ^_^

Hazer

It's been fun to read all the entries and the children's stories are just precious!
It would be nice to have a children's category for Think Write, but then only if they all got loads of praise and encouragement...I wouldn't want to be the one to single any of them out as a winner... it would be everyone who participated!

I will not be here on the weekend. I plan to take my laptop along but there are no guarantees I'll get a chance to peek in here. I'm off to visit the in-laws and hope to get a headstone picked out for my late hubby...a labor of love that breaks my heart all over again.

Wishing you all a great weekend and I'm looking forward to seeing the next word list.

mum23

The children have thoroughly enjoyed reading your comments (and stories and poems) and being a part of this. Thank you all for embracing their contributions.

Hazer, I think part of the fun of this for them is that there will be a 'winner', but they know that it doesn't matter at all who that 'winner' is. And being allowed to join in with the adults is definitely a major part of the attraction!

My thoughts will be with you on the weekend, as they often are anyway. Your love for your husband and your extraordinary grace will give you the strength you need. I feel honoured to 'know' you.

Five... very clever! Loved it!

Now, I know I said I was done with this, but yesterday I was asked a question which got me thinking, and these words had been swirling around in my head... and this thing just wrote itself last night. I thought I'd read it again this morning to see if it was worth posting, and decided I might as well, worth it or not. Definitely the last one!

.....................

The penny was starting to drop.

Everything looked ordinary enough as they walked past the ornate wrought iron gate that opened into the cemetery. Cemeteries fascinated her. She’d always wondered how people condensed the life of a loved one into a few short lines to be inscribed on their tomb. If asked, she couldn’t imagine what she’d write for her own, let alone anybody else’s.

It was a lovely evening. They stopped to rest on a park bench and sat silently for a while, watching the treetops kiss the moonlit clouds above.

“So, it’s inevitable that we develop an ego?” she asked.

Maria nodded, “If we grow up around other people, yes” she replied, “… inevitable and essential for us to define ourselves, begin to find out who we are.

But if, say, you are a wolf, and you grow up in a flock of birds, then you won’t fit in very well. Your ego will tell you that you are a terrible raven because you cannot fly. This has nothing to do with the reality, which is that you would make a perfectly wonderful wolf. Your ego is what you think of yourself based on the messages you get from those around you.”

“So, if you grow up and you’re a good fit, then your ego is a good thing?”

“No, but you will be comfortable and it won’t seem to trouble you too much. Sooner or later, though, you will realise that you want to dance to your own tune. Ego won’t let you do that, because it will worry that you won’t fit in any more.”

“I think I get it! Once the wolf stops trying to be a raven, he will be what he is and stop being miserable about being such a terrible raven. And because he’s happy being what he is, it won’t matter to him what the ravens think. And, chances are, that if he’s happy being himself, the ravens will accept him because he likes himself and is no longer being miserable.”

“Exactly! Being yourself is ultimate freedom,” Maria smiled.

It was true. Already, she felt as though the weight of an entire lifetime had lifted from her shoulders. She was sure that if she hopped on the scales she would weigh half what she had that morning. Although nothing had changed, the night was now anything but ordinary. It was the beginning of the rest of her life.

They parted with a hug at the edge of the park. One last wave. Then a raspberry icecream to celebrate, just because she felt like it.