Workshop5

Today’s workshop began with 20 minutes of writing on the prompt, Write about an experience that changed you. Jay worked with Karen while Eddie and I worked together. Christopher worked independently. Before we wrote, I explained the difference between a story’s protagonist and its narrator. The protagonist is the character involved in the story’s drama or conflict whereas the narrator is the older, wiser person looking back and giving the reader the big picture. “It’s like the movie Stand By Me,” I explained. “There’s the little boy on his way to see the dead body. And then there’s the adult voice over, who’s telling the story.” Everyone shared their work, starting with Olen (Karen read his piece). It was about how he got involved with gangs. Christopher said the story was relatable. We talked about the narrative reflection, and the meaning the adult narrator is able to make of the situation that the nine year old protagonist could not. Christopher read a story about his dealings with HRA and Medicaid. He described the bureaucracy and showed how frustrating it is to deal with the system. In the end, he reflected on “the big picture” and what he is able to do in situations like this, which are frustrating. Eddie wrote a story about wanting respect as a child, getting caught up in the street and playing the game. “The game doesn't end until you end it,” he concluded. We talked about how every story is a journey towards a conclusion. “Every story has a protagonist. That’s you. The protagonist is on a journey. You have goals, you encounter conflict.” We talked about how conflicts are external and internal. Explaining how the protagonist accomplishes his or her goals given the conflict is what we call the major dramatic question. It’s the narrator’s job to answer this question, to make meaning and find resolution. Participants applied these concepts to the stories they had written, and others journeys they’d experienced in their lifetimes.

Growing up in a gang
By Olen

I was a member of the [REDACTED] in Chicago. I was 9 when I was jumped in. My cousins Unique, Byron and Nathan were members, and they were older. My parents had sent me out to Chicago to spend the summer with my great aunt, and I would stay with her. They lived with her too. She was raising them. I stayed out there until I was 15. I didn't know about their ways.

My great aunt, Eula Mae, sent me to the store by myself for the first time. She told me, “It's time you learn your way around here, being that you're going to be living out here for a while.” She wanted me to get milk, flour and vegetables. She gave me a note to take to the store with the money. On my way to the store, I ran into my cousins. They were sitting in a car, and they called me over. They were smoking cigarettes and weed.
“How you like it out here?” Byron said.
“It's alright,” I said. It was hard for me to understand what they said, because they talked different. They had an accent.

“Since you're gonna be out here for a while, do you want to be a part of what we're doing?” Byron said.

I said yes, not knowing what I was getting myself into. So he put a gun in my hand, a .22, and told me to go to a car parked across the street. There was a man sitting in there with his son, and his son got out to go to the store. Byron told me to go over there and shoot the man in his head. Being that I was young, and I didn't know about street life, Unique told me that if I didn't do it, they would kill my aunt. I was naïve and scared, so I went over there and I did it. I didn't know if they would or wouldn't hurt my aunt.

The man didn't see me. He didn't pay me no mind. He was looking toward the store. He was a big, heavyset man. I shot him in the back of the head. I didn't look. I ran back to the car, and we drove off. When I jumped in the car, they gave me five, patted me on the back.

“You did good,” Unique said.

I felt like a big guy. I felt grown up. I was shaken up, and I hid out for a couple of days. I didn't go outside. There was word on the street that it had happened. When things had cooled down a little bit, they took me to the clubhouse where everybody else was. I met the head leaders, the army, from the captain to the soldiers. They initiated me. They beat me up. Everyone took turns hitting me, and then they all jumped me.

I felt like a little punk, afraid for my life. I wanted out, but there was no way out.

From then on, I ran with them for a couple of years. As time went on, I realized that they were using me because I didn't have a clue as to what was going on. They took advantage of me. I hurt people through stickups. I did a lot of things that I wouldn't normally do.

If I would have known what I knew as time went by and I got older, I would have never been a part of it. I wouldn't have gone through the things I went through. I'm lucky to be alive, and I think that's through God. I still have nightmares, but I know that a lot of that was out of my control.Olen: Growing up in a gang.

Workshop 4

Today's workshop had five participants. We wrote on the prompt, "Write about a first love." I instructed participants to not write about a person. Participants wrote for a little over fifteen minutes. One participant gave his story orally to Karen. After we had written I talked a little about the difference between concrete and abstract language. Concrete words are the words you experience with your senses— the stuff you can see, smell, taste, etc. Abstract words, on the other hand, are words we experience only in your mind. Like Freedom. "What does freedom smell like?" I asked. "Freedom smells like potpourri." He said. "Exactly!" We use concrete words, like potpourri, to explain or show abstract concepts, like freedom. Participants read their stories. We gave each other positive feedback.

First Love
By Nancy

My first true passion when I was 14 years old was gymnastics. My father encouraged me tremendously—private lessons. Then my love of horses—my father bought me a mare and encouraged me with private lessons. He wanted to steer me away from things that would not be positive and tried everything he could think of.

Unfortunately, it took me til when I lost him to know how hard he tried and truly loved me. I never can forgive myself but I know we forgive each other. My father was a police officer—a narcotics detective. He saw what happened to others and tried to protect me with a broken heart.

Valentine's Day Special!

In honor of Valentine's Day, we had a special Sex Writing Workshop for individuals interested in writing about experiences related to our bodies, with an emphasis on sexual experiences. We started with an icebreaker, make a list of "sexy" words. As we made our lists, we had some discussion of what it meant to say a word was "sexy." People read their lists, and we continued to notice how how some words are sexy in some contexts, and not sexy in others. "Today we're rewriting about experiences related to our bodies- good, bad and everything in-between." I said that in a bit we'd be writing our own memoir, and that great memoir relied on using sensory details to create an emotional experience for the reader. After this, three workshop participants read three different mentor texts, each by a different author and portraying a different sexual experience. Afterwards, we reacted to the texts and to the process of reading other people's memoir. Then we spent 10-15 minutes writing our own. Afterwards, participants read their work.

The Box
By Synn

I remember I kept seeing that metal box thing in the women's bathroom and it always had a pile of paper bags on top. Finally I asked my mother what they were for. They were in the bathroom of some restaurant on the highway— a road trip somewhere. My grandparents maybe. When I asked, all the other women in the bathroom stopped what they were doing to listen, so I knew it was important. Or that I had made a mistake, like the time at dinner I'd asked if my tongue went all through my body because I could see it on both ends and my brother laughed milk out his nose. My mother explains about the blood for a baby and how if you don't get a baby you lose it so you can have new blood next month. Because I'd asked about the paper bag (I had no idea what was actually inside the machine), I spent several years after that knowing— in the way that only children do— that that was why women wore skirts. That all grown women walked around with paper bags between their legs and wore skirts so no one could see.

Workshop 3

Today's workshop was quiet. We wrote on the prompt, "Tell a story that involves a phone call." First, we talked about recreating scenes— moments from our experience that are full of sensory details and description. One participant wrote about a call he had just made to his sister. After we had finished we told the writer what more details we were curious to hear. Another participant told a series of stories from his days stealing cars. Karen wrote as he talked.

Whatever
By Twin

I don't feel like writing no type of story right now. My mind is racing, 100 miles a minute. I'm full of malicious thoughts. Thoughts that I know are not detrimental to my behavior. While I'm feeling this way I have to realize how I'm going to handle the pressure. Positive thinking brings positive results. Negative thinking will lead me back to upstate prison, which I don't ever want to revisit. So for every action is a reaction.

Workshop 2

Today’s workshop began with the prompt: “Write about a time you took a risk.” We wrote silently for 15 minutes. Then, we read our work aloud. A new participant at CORNER Project, didn’t want to read out loud, but preferred that I read his piece out loud for him. His story was about the first time he used heroin. Participants liked the way he showed the experience as both positive and negative. Another participant wrote about the time he nearly cheated on his wife but decided not to, only to find out years later that the woman he almost slept with was HIV+. A third participant wrote about the time she took a risk by leaving a bad relationship to check herself into an extended stay rehab. Karen, my assistant, read a story about a time she was out drinking and had no money to get home, and so she clung on to the back of a New York Times delivery truck. After we all had all read and discussed our work, we had the option to stay and write more. 

Before and after the workshop, I hang out in the drop-in center, collecting stories from people who can’t or don’t want to come to the workshop. Today, a participant recited a poem that he had written and memorized. He tells me he has hundreds more, on all different subjects. 

Full of Rage 

By Johnny

Fighting a feeling thats consuming my soul 

Unaware that this sentence would incur such a toll

Lighting constantly courses through my veins 

Livid at being shackled, and spending years in chains.

Oppressed my a system I entered through my own accord

Fury allows me to pay a price so few can afford 

Resentment and anger unleash a primal desire 

Armageddon couldn’t compare to my internal Hellfire

Gluttony awaiting to be released from this cage 

Eager to show the world I’m no longer full of rage. 

ROUND III

Welcome back!

WHCP participants' pens are scratching the pads so hard they are making fire keeping us warm in this winter season. Check out the new posts!!

Week 1: What is memoir? 

A participant read our mentor text, an excerpt from Nick Flynn’s memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. I introduced it as a memoir. Another participant said he could relate. This is one of the things people like about this genre, memoir. What is memoir? If you’ve taken this workshop before you might know. What do I ask you to do in my classes? We tell our true stories, a participant offered. Yes, and we tell them artfully. Memoirs are the facts, what happened, told creatively. We want details, to show— not just tell what happened but show the emotional experience. All of our stories are, in some ways, similar. When someone tells a story of what happened to them, we can relate or “identify,” as a participant said. And, in other ways, all of our stories are unique, with their specific situations and details. 

Participants were asked to make a list of firsts. Like traumatic things? Someone asked. Maybe, I said. It’s true, oftentimes negative firsts stick with us, but these firsts can be about anything. One participant worked independently. Another worked with Karen, my new assistant.  Two others worked with me. We read our lists out loud, participants told some details of their favorite stories. We talked more about how we could relate, and also about how our stories varied. 

Some of our firsts:

First relationship
First fight
First funeral
First Car 
First time I was in jail
First car
First time I witnessed a murder
First time I was discriminated against  
First time I flew pigeons 
First hustle 
First trip 
First time someone paid me to not steal cars 
First steak 
First time I was traumatized
First time I had a pet 
First time I had a girlfriend

Workshop 6

Prompt: "I am from." Write a story that begins with this phrase. Return to it as often as necessary. Today's writing class had two participants. We wrote and shared our work, and talked about the cold.


Numbers
By James

I am from a small town in New Jersey. Teaneck, NJ. When I look back on life and ask myself— All I've been through, I'm still alive. I'm from the 60s. I come from a middle class family. At times I often wonder where I'm going. Where I'm from, the neighborhood is nice. I'm 48 years old. All I've been through, I'm still alive. There are people that never make it to see 48. 48 is a good number for me because I'm alive.

I worked in a cemetery, Potter's Field. My job was to put the bodies in the ground, and to dig them up if someone claimed them. We get bodies from all the hospitals— unclaimed bodies, from accidents or whatever. They stay in hospital for 30, 60 days. When no one claims them, the medical examiner picks them up, puts them in a truck. It goes to City Island. We take the truck and put it on a boat that goes to Hearts Island, that's what it's called. The bodies are in wooden boxes, heavy, wrapped in a plastic bag with a string. It's an awful smell, an awful smell you cannot get out of your clothes. I cannot tell you what it smells like. We put a hundred, hundred fifty fifty bodies in the ground at once. Once we get a thousand bodies in a grave, we close that grave up and we open another one.

Some bodies is unknown some are known. The only way you can find your loved ones is by numbers. The graves are marked with a pole, and each pole has a number, one to one hundred. If you find your loved one is in Potters Field, we will go and dig up that grave. We will put the hearse on a boat and go there with a tractor, and we dig up the grave. Sometimes the bodies have fallen out of the boxes. We put the body in a coffin, and we put it in the hearse. We bury babies on fridays. They go in separate graves from where we bury the adults. Babies, we stack it ten high in a grave. We bury people of all ages.

It was not a job that affected me; it was just a job. The sad part about it, though, your being identified by number.