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.

Workshop 5

Today’s prompt: The Fall. Maybe you want to tell a story that takes place in Autumn. Or you could interpret “the fall” to mean something else. Wrote for 15 minutes. Let people continue writing if they wanted to. Those that were finished shared their work and we responded to it.

Most people read, gave each other positive feedback. Then, we wrote for a second round. Participants could choose from two prompts: Who’s afraid of the dark, and trick or treat?

Before we read the second round, we discussed the mentor text, an excerpt from Piri Thomas’ memoir, Down these Mean Streets. Joe commented that he didn’t like the text, others agreed that it lacked realism. We talked about writing for different audiences.  Sometimes when you write for a reader that doesn’t know, I explained, you sacrifice some of the realism. We talked about the difference between the protagonist and the narrator- the character you were then, versus the character you are today. Sometimes, and sometimes as a result of our writing, we become a completely different character— older and wiser.

We might feel like completely different people at times— and in some ways we are; but in some ways we’re still the same.


What Happened to Belinda in the Fall
By Belinda

Like two years ago, I'm pretty sure it happened in the month of October. I was walking up and down through the hoe stroll and I see this guy but I really don't pay much attention to him. All I know is that he is looking at me and asks me what I'm doing. I say, "Nothing, just trying to make some money."
"How much money you trying to make?"
I say, "Well, like forty or fifty dollars."
Real quick, but really quick he said, "Ok, that sound good. Would a blow job work?"
I said, "Hell yeah."
So anyway we walk to the park, and I do notice that he had a limp. As we got deep in the park, I notice that he no longer had a limp.
All I know is that he was trying to choke me and I'm losing my air and thank God that I have a scraper. I take the scraper and I try to stab him whoever, just so I can stop him from hurting me.
It happened in the fall.

The Fall
By Christopher Vonderlieth

I remember counting the loot we just got from the robbery. About $160 give or take. But being dope sick and broke, it was more like $160,000. Straight to East NY to get high. About three months later, big ole scene with the cops. I felt like I was Gotti, the cops kept high giving and patting each other on the back, saying "good work." To make a short story shorter, my offer went from 11 flat to 9 flat to 7 flat to 5. I jumped on the five. I took the fall.