Writing Challenge #1 of ?

So, here's the backstory. My co-worker (the middle school English teacher) was telling me a couple weeks ago how she sometimes has her students to a writing assignment based on certain criteria. She explained that sometimes she will walk around the room and put a sticky note on each students desk with a couple of vocabulary words for them to use. The words come from a list they are working on.

Well, that got me thinking. It's a great idea, of course, to have students write regularly, whether there are strict criteria or not. I am a firm believer in the fact that there are very few naturally good writers. Most good writers developed themselves by writing even when they didn't think they could. Now, that's not to say that there isn't an occasional brilliant pupil who turns out to have extreme natural talent for writing. That does happen. However, many students are too much "in their heads" about it. They stress out about their writing, and they struggle to make it happen because it's a painful process when you stress and over-think. Giving them set criteria can make this easier OR more difficult, depending on the criteria and the individuals writing.

Well, I liked the idea of challenging myself to write more, especially by writing with certain criteria. I thought of it almost like a standup comedian who asks the audience for a setting, topic, etc. to make an improv scene happen. Things like that has always been entertaining to me. So, I decided I wanted to give myself some criteria and set forth on a writing adventure. I didn't particularly want to do this alone, so I asked my friend Amy if she would join me in this challenge. We were in the car, driving down to San Diego to visit another friend when we hammered out the details. As we discussed, we compared this to the television show on the Food Network called "Chopped", where the cooks are given a basket of random ingredients and they have to create part of a meal using what is included. Now, they are not limited to the basket, but each thing inside the basket is required to be included. Since we aren't cooking, our "ingredients" are things like vocabulary and literary devices. You know, the sorts of things authors and poets use when they write. Normal, but when they are more random, it creates a sort of "curveball" situation. The last time we watched "Chopped", we also noticed that they threw in the most ridiculous things possible to make the competition even more intense and see how creative the chefs could be. We called this the "jellybean", because one episode we watched had a different type of candy included in each basket/round. One round, the candy was a grape jellybean.

Based on the general idea we had, and the way we wanted this to work, we agreed upon the following criteria:

Genre: Writer's choice
Literary Device: PersonificationPoint of View: First Person"Jellybean": list of airports in US: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_airports_in_the_United_States#Random vocab words: tranche & airfoil Also need to include a title!Due Date: April 27, 2013

So, keep your eyes peeled for some sort of written work. I'll be posting it on or before April 27, and I hope you'll also check Amy's page around then, too. I can't wait to see what we come up with. 






Although, I must admit...I'm a little bit nervous about it, too!