Creative Writing with Claire Campbell 2022
There are so many ways to look at the moon, to see a monster, to watch a crocus bloom. Whether we were searching hidden corners of impressionistic paintings or listening to classical music, this writing cohort reminded me that the best creative communities are courageous in seeing! We found inspiration in the work of Naomi Shihab Nye, Roald Dahl, and Mary Oliver; we sparked new ideas with time lapse photography and modern art. We gifted each other new character names and solved the mystery of a strange room. We offered up adjectives to describe our collective--turquoise, sunny, and hopeful, to name a few--and in every new word, these six writers saw a thousand potential stories. They wove fiction, poetry, and nonfiction with mystery, humor, and heart, and most importantly, they listened to each other's work and encouraged one another to keep going, to keep weaving, to keep seeing. – Claire Campbell
Collective Poem by Ms. Claire’s Writers
The hopefulness we bring to class is friendly in ways that last
Our stories are creepy and fun
But when all is said and done, it always comes back to fun.
It's a thrilling feeling when you write
My shiny pen
Sparkles in the light.
Our group is warm and hopeful.
A place for creativity to flow.
I look out at the yellow sun as I write
When I take my orange pen I think of the stories that I will write
Writing about the beach reminds me about turquoise water
We're very bright when we work.
We can elevate to bring the baddest down.
We describe easily or hard.
Our stories are enchanting, they bring the words to life, our stories are enchanting, they’ll make you smile twice.
Our stories have happy endings just like sun and clouds, our stories feel sunny just like the rainbow and clouds.
We accept each other’s ideas either big or either small, we accept each other’s ideas either wide or either tall.
You may say we’re imaginative, and yes I would agree, but the thing is, we dare to imagine, and so that makes us brave.
The Moon
By Lily Crystal Hummingbird, A.K.A. Colette Rye
It was a fine night in the house. Everyone in the house was asleep except for the cat Posie. The moon was full and hung low in the sky. Posie smelled the candle flickering in the living room. Then she looked at the moon and thought: “I want to go there.” The cat spotted an open window and climbed through it. She wandered around the neighborhood for a while. Then she got tired and laid down to sleep.
The next morning the moon was gone. Posie tried to get back inside the house. But everything was locked. The family went on a road trip and didn’t even notice that something was missing. Posie waited for a very long time. Then finally everyone came back, and they had just noticed the cat was missing. The family said they got some lavender from one of the shops and put it down for Posie to play with. But instead of that, the cat sneezed and blew it up into a vent. From now on, the house would always smell like lavender.
The end.
The Eye
By Diya Venkataragavan
Finally, Lily thinks as the bell rings and students burst through the school doors, freedom! She rushes out the door, her heavy backpack bouncing against her back. Walking quickly towards the bike stands, she waves good-bye to all her friends as she speeds by. When Lily reaches the bike stands, she kicks the kickstand on her light purple bike, secures her backpack to the carrier on the back, and rolls her bike to the crossing guard. After she crosses the road in a crowd of students, she hops on her bike and pedals downhill, in the opposite direction of most students, just like she does everyday. Lily’s done it so many times now, it feels like clockwork.
As she pedals down the empty sidewalk, she looks all around her. The birds are chirping, and the wildflowers are just starting to come into bloom. Her bike commute to school and back is probably her favorite part of her day, because of how pretty it is. Out of the corner of her eye, Lily spots a flash of purple. She presses the brakes on her bike and climbs off. It's a purple crocus flower, mostly bloomed, swaying ever so slightly in the breeze. Lily smiles at the sight of such a beautiful flower and whips out her phone to take a picture. The picture comes out beautifully. While Lily is admiring her photo, she sees something in it that she hadn’t noticed earlier. A greenish, turquoise eye, staring straight at her.
Oh, wow! What a beautiful bird, Lily thinks, snapping a picture of the cute, curious songbird with gorgeous aqua eyes, hopping around the flower, Nature’s blessed me twice today! Pocketing her phone, Lily happily climbs back on her bike, excited to see what other natural discoveries she’ll make.
Little did she know, the songbird was still watching her, through its fake, greenish-turquoise eye.
Jenny’s Moon
By Super Summer, A.K.A. Eva Mentgen
Jenny Adam looks up at the sky. Jenny Adam looks up at the moon, its glorious half crescent there in the sky. With all of its craters and mountains it might very well be looking back at her. The oak tree next to her seems to shift its position blocking the moon from her view. Jenny shifts herself a little. She looks back up at the moon, in its fullest content. She gasps and sits up straight, all of a sudden a strange smell of lavender fills the air, the same smell she remembers when the giants took her sister. She can feel the air getting moist. She runs forward down the mountain left onto 5th street then right onto 7th street right again then right through the big golden gates into her house. She runs up the stairs then slows down. I can't go up there. She thinks. I have to go down, and I have to cover my scent. So she cautiously walks up to the potion room.
When she enters she turns on a flashlight she found on a shelf, and walks over to the shelf with the toad and cheetah scent and pours them on herself. She lets them dry for a minute or two, then runs down to the basement. When she gets to the basement she smells something. A banana? No. A mandarin? Maybe. An orange! That's it! Wait, an orange? She thinks. That's strange. Why would there be an orange? She keeps walking and finds a purple tube. She puts her arm through then takes it out, she finds that it is a portal and she walks through but on the other side she is no longer walking. On the other side of the portal she is falling and falling into thousands of oranges. Thousands of oranges are in the shape of the moon!
The Flower
By Elena Mentgen
CHAPTERS
The flower.
Gon
CHAPTER 1: THE FLOWER
Rosa was in the forest. She found a flower that looked like… An eye?! No! She gave up when she tried to open it. Just then… She saw it! It was the eye she guessed on the wrong flower! When she got closer…
TO BE CONTINUED…
CHAPTER 2 : GONE
When she got closer. It was black. She was like, WHAT JUST HAPPENED! Then that was that…
Look at Book 2 to find out what will happen next!
The Bills
by Claire Flower Haley, A.K.A. Ava Groce
There once was a man named Soul. All day every day he would go to the park and smoke his pipe with his dog named Butler. He always did that because he did not have anything else to do. When he was not smoking his pipe with his dog at the park, he was in bed sick. No one knew what he got sick with. He would get a bad cough, and his teeth would start rotting.
One day when he was smoking his pipe with his dog, he felt a little dizzy, then he felt very, very tired and fell asleep. People sitting around him started freaking out. They thought he had died! But a couple, kind enough, took him to the hospital and found out he had cancer. Now no one would have ever imagined that he had cancer from smoking his pipe too much!
Once he had woken, the couple explained what had happened. He turned pale. The couple had told him that the hospital bills were 500 dollars. “500 dollars!” He whispered. “Where in the world will I get 500 dollars?”
The couple smiled. They had a plan. “Lucky for you, I own a business,” said the man. “And I will allow you to work for me to pay off your hospital bills. But!” He paused. “Only if you stop piping your pipe.
“Deal,” said Soul.
And he lived happily ever after paying off his bills.
