Summer 2005 Youth Programs

Creative Writing Day Camps & Workshops for Children & Teens

For details about SummerWrite 2005, including registration fees, see the SummerWrite 2005 General Information Page.

Week 9: August 22–26

¡Una Mas! More Fun with Spanish

• Ages: 7–9
• SY5-M1S9
• Instructor: Julie Harris
• MORNINGS: August 22–26, 9 am–Noon
• $99 W&B members / $110 general public

Have you ever heard Ketchup sing? You will when you join our intermediate Spanish language and culture class, where students with a grounding in Spanish continue practicing speaking, reading and writing. Our journey includes learning about: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Argentina, Puerto Rico and Spain. The fiesta on Friday is sure to be fantástica! Children also receive a mini dictionary.

Magic Tree House Readers’ Club

• Ages: 7–9
• SY5-R2C1
• Instructor: Marna Rossi
• AFTERNOONS: August 22–26, 1–4 pm
• $90 W&B members / $100 general public

Take part in wonderful magical adventures from the Magic Tree House Series! Learn how Annie and Jack solve problems and help people as they travel through the world and through time. Like Annie and Jack, we will learn about the animals and people in each environment we visit. We will read some of the stories and act out some of the scenes. We will explore how we can learn about animals, landscapes and peoples in other times and places through museum field trips. We will take part in adventures of our own making! You will be able to illustrate stories through art activities, and with a team, create your own characters and scenes and act them out for your friends and family. You and your friends and family will also have a chance to reunite with classmates at a fall Saturday Magic Tree House Picnic at the Gell Center of the Finger Lakes’s amazing new Classroom in the Trees (only 45 minutes south of Rochester).

For A Song

• Ages: 9–13
• SY5-P3D8
• Instructor: Doug Waterman
• MORNINGS: August 22–26, 9 am–noon
• $99 W&B members / $100 general public

Anything can be a song! A book you love, or a day you hate. Strong feelings are the number one ingredient you need to turn everyday life into your own song. In this workshop, we’ll sharpen our songwriters’ tools, and explore techniques to help us find our own song. In the end, you will have an opportunity to perform for one another and your invited guests. Musicians are very welcome, but musical training is not a must. Robert Burns couldn’t carry a tune, and he’s one of the greatest lyric writers in history! We’ll share our new songs with invited guests at a performance on Friday.

Fiction Writing

• Ages: 9–13
• SY5-F3E8
• Instructor: Robbi Hess
• AFTERNOONS: August 22–26, 1–4 pm
• $99 W&B members / $110 general public

Do you have a story to tell? Is it funny? Sad? Absurd? Mysterious? Is it as long as a book? Is it about a far-away place in a long-ago time, or is it all about YOU? Our lives are filled with stories, pictures and ideas. The fun part is writing them down! By looking at the world around us and into our imaginations, we’ll learn how to generate ideas—and how to use the ideas we already have. We’ll learn how stories are put together. Whether you’re learning more about your inner storyteller, or just starting out, come and get creative.

Characters for Page & Stage

• Ages: 9–13
• SY5-D3F9
• Instructor: Eliot Fintushel
• ALL DAY: August 22–26, 9 am–4pm
• $190 W&B members / $210 general public

“It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.”—William Faulkner

Do you often see yourself in book characters? Or find yourself intrigued by them? Anyone can read about characters, but here you can create them! Playing theater games, you will discover how the people in your story move and speak. Once you make them come to life, all you need to do is write down your scenes the way your characters want them! We’ll make a short anthology of our characters in their best scenes, and you will also have the option of presenting your characters through reading or a monologue on the last day before an invited audience.

Teen Writers’ Circle

• Ages 13–18
• SY5-M5J8
• Instructor: Kathleen Wakefield
• MORNINGS: August 22–26, 9 am–Noon
• $99 W&B members / $110 general public

Poetry or prose, what’s your pleasure? While this workshop will focus initially on the reading and writing of poetry, our writing experiments will be lead-ins to the writing of either poetry or prose (creative non-fiction or short fiction). This class will provide a great opportunity for poets who are hesitant prose writers and prose writers who are hesitant poets to explore working in other genres, if they wish. We’ll explore how other art forms, such as music and painting, can be a starting point for our writing; we’ll visit the Memorial Art Gallery, the George Eastman house and an artist’s studio. Finally, you will have the opportunity to begin creating a “commonplace book” which you can continue using to nurture your ideas and writing after the class ends.

Essay Writing Skills for the College-Bound Student

• Ages: High School
• SY5-N5S8
• Instructor: Jeff Jones
• MORNINGS: August 22–26, 10 am–Noon
• $99 W&B members / $110 general public

Get past that blank page! You can write effective essays through a simple, reliable, four-step process, which you can adapt to your own style and needs. Approach the new SAT essay, college application essays and any school essay with comfort and confidence. We will break down the task and then practice, practice, practice. In a supportive environment we will cheer each other on, and learn from each other as we reflect on what has worked best in our practice essays. Each student will get an individual conference. There will be approximately an hour of homework each day Monday–Thursday.

Your Fantastic Novel

• Ages: 13–16
• SY5-F5G7
• Instructor: Jonathan Rich
• AFTERNOONS: August 22–26, 1–4 pm
• $99 W&B members / $110 general public

Are you unsatisfied with short stories, poetry, and non-fiction? If you would like to take a longer journey with characters of your own creation, this workshop is for you. Since getting started is sometimes the hardest part, we will brainstorm together, because once we get started, there will be no stopping us! You will investigate what elements make for compelling characters and situations in a first chapter, and actually incorporate what you learn into your novel-in-progress. We will work through the tangles that your characters and plot create for you, learning how to keep the novel going, and even how to tie it together at the end! Whether you write fantasy, sci-fi, or realistic fiction, this is a chance to grow as a writer while creating a whole world of your own!

Our Play: Let’s Do It For Real (2nd week)

• Ages: 12–15
• Note: Two Weeks, See Week 8: Two-Week Intensives.

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