In the meantime, check out the coolest new nonprofit in town – Motionpoems.SO inspiring and beautiful!

www.motionpoems.org

If home is water,
Then it flows down a waterfall
And eventually brushes past coral lying along the ocean floor

If home is a snail,
Then it slithers down a sandy beach,
Leaving a silky streak of slime
That the sun dries up slowly

If home is a game,
Then it ends far too soon
Yet the sensation it leaves lingers

If home is a person,
Then he or she has no face, only shadows
Or perhaps the face is hidden behind a mask

If home is a smell,
Then it is always changing, whispering
Sometimes fiercely, other times softly

If home is a question,
Then it asks only of value and importance

If home is an answer,
Then it is the simplest and the most complex ever thought of

If home is a memory,
Then it remains vivid and clear,
Even at the end of your days

If home is anticipation,
Then it is like watching dough rise in an oven
Maybe it will be a batch of cookies or a loaf of bread
Almost perfect, with just a small area slightly overcooked

If home is dependable,
Then it is the foundation that which holds everything up

If home is love,
Then it is as true as anything ever was,
Though no one said it was always easy

If home is a secret,
Then it is the most important one

If home is a monster,
Then it screams and it hides

If home is pain,
Then it’s a sweeter pain
Than any other

If I gave home a description,
It would be:

Perfection at its worst,
Imperfection at its absolute best

-Mariel A.
poet, Loft student, high school sophmore

FIGMENT WEB PANEL: Forget English Class! What I Really Want to Do is Write
Does Writing in School Prepare Students for Careers as Writers?

A provocative title for what we’re guessing will be a frank, compelling, entertaining conversation.

This Thursday, December 8 at 7 p.m. ET, we’ll be hosting our first live web panel. Four of our favorite YA authors— Lauren McLaughlin ( Scored), David Levithan( Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist), Scott Westerfeld ( Uglies), and Robin Wasserman ( the Cold Awakening series)—will be joining the thousands of young writers on Figment to discuss the connections between writing in school and careers in creative writing.

Among the topics to be covered: Does perfecting the art of the 5-paragraph analytical essay make you a better creative writer? How important are things like grammar, spelling, and syntax for a fiction stylist? Do test scores or grades in high school English class reflect your chances for creative success later on? And what’s the one thing that successful, professional authors wish teenagers knew about writing?

Save the date,spread the word, and be sure to join us here: http://blog.figment.com/forget-english-class-author-panel/

For more info go to www.umass.edu/juniperyoungwriters. Now start writing!

Read about them all at Rachel’s cool blog: http://www.rachelbongart.com/?p=122

By Kate, age 11

From the prompt "When I'm alone..." -- By Kate, age 11

By Kate, age 11

By Kate, age 11

From the prompt "I sometimes wonder" --By Kate, age 11

Also from the prompt "I sometimes wonder..." This one is by Lauren, age 9

From the prompts "When I'm alone..." -- By Michelle, age 10

Young Justice: A Superhero Story, by an intelligent and adorable crew of 5 young writers/superheroes who wrote it collaboratively in Kristin Fitzsimmons’s Superheroes: Dramatic Storytelling & Theater Games. (Click on any image to enlarge.)

By: Andrew K., Iris S-M., Adam M-C., Sophia W., and Jakin L., ages 6-8

One day, five friends discovered they were superheroes. Denard Span found out he was a superhero by hitting a five hundred foot homerun. Captain America broke a wall into a thousand pieces.

Patricia was out on a sunny day – she wished it could rain and it automatically thunderstormed.

Viper was walking in the woods and a snake went up on her head. Her hair turned into snakes. She turned into a snake.

Lance was a superhero at first. He was a superhero and then he found out he wasn’t. Just your typical normal, awesome guy.

Somebody puts a bomb in our base. Denard Span hits the bomb out and it lands on the bad guys’ base and their base blows up. Then the bad guys cry like babies. Then they remember they’re bad guys and they stop crying. The villains escape and they say they’re going to destroy all the tall buildings in the city.

The bad guys release t-rexes and they destroy some buildings. Nooooooooo, T-Rex! Patricia makes it thunderstorm and hail at the same time.

Captain America hangs onto Viper when she turns into a snake and uses sleep bubbles to put the dinosaurs to sleep. Denard Span throws baseballs at the dinosaurs. Viper poisons them. Lance goes crazy with the car machine. They beat the dinosaurs but they have to fight the regular bad guys and they win. They go around the world fighting crimes.

THE END

Shaw, age 15, is a rising high school sophomore from South Minneapolis. The 7 Loft classes he took this summer are:

1. The Alternate Universe: Creating Fictional Worlds with Carrie Mesrobian
2. Writing Mystery and Detective Fiction with Carrie Mesrobian
3. A Character Building Experience with Joan Linck
4. Fantastic Fiction with Philip Fuller
5. I Want to Be an Author! A Tour of the Publishing Industry with Jacquelyn Fletcher
6. The Write Stuff: Elements of Fiction with Kathryn Savage
7. Advanced Writing the Dark with Jeanne Bain

The most interesting and potentially useful class, Shaw said, was I Want to Be an Author!, but his overall favorite teaching artist is Carrie Mesrobian. “She was great, she was funny, and she helped me a lot with my work,” Shaw said.

Shaw has written 23,000 words of a novel, so he’s about halfway done. He hopes to publish it by the old-fashioned route, but he has no definite goal or deadline. “It takes me a very, very long time to write a scene,” Shaw said. He plans each scene carefully before actually writing it, which is a time-consuming process. The story of his novel is all planned out in his head, he said, though he has only a vague idea of the ending. Shaw describes his novel contemporary and contemplative, and though it has sci-fi elements, he said, it is “totally genreless.”

Despite preferring to work late at night, Shaw has yet to develop the stereotypical writer’s habit of chugging coffee. “I hate coffee—I despise coffee,” he said.

Shaw has had the fortune of working closely with a mentor, Twin Cities’ playwright Reginald Edmund, who came into Shaw’s 9^th grade class to help instruct Romeo & Juliet. Shaw shared some of his work, to which Mr. Edmund replied, “Man, you can write your butt off.” They continue to correspond by e-mail and occasional meetings. Mr. Edmund’s guidance has been very helpful to Shaw. When I asked if he has any advice for other young writers, he responded immediately, “The best thing you can do…is to find a mentor of any kind…Even your English teacher is fine.”

“Your parents and peers don’t know anything about it,” he said. Finding Reggie (as Shaw calls him) “really, really helped me,” he said.

The feeling, it seems, is mutual. When I contacted Mr. Edmund to ask about Shaw, he responded with these kind words:

I was instantly drawn to Shaw’s mind and his spirit. It was an added bonus when I learned that he was a writer, and upon having the honor of reading his work, I felt overwhelmed with the opportunity to discover that Shaw is a writer with a unique look and feel, rich with both philosophy and dark wit in a way that I never imagined a young writer could tackle things. I’m looking forward to watching this exciting writer’s voice grow and thrive.

When he isn’t writing, Shaw said, “I dabble in everything.” He especially loves cars and video games. “I have an automobile addiction,” Shaw said. Bioshock, a game set in a 1940 secret underwater city, is Shaw’s “favorite story ever written or told.”

Apart from the stories of video games, Shaw’s favorite author is Kurt Vonnegut. “He’s funny, he’s weird, and he has amazing messages,” he said.

We look forward to reading Shaw’s amazing messages as soon as he can finish his novel and get it published. There’s no telling right now when that will be, but one thing is for sure: there’s a lot of good stuff to come from our 2011 Most Valuable Young Writer.

“I’d like to have a profession in writing,” Shaw said. While he prefers to write fiction, he said, “I’ll take whatever I can get.”

–Emily Joan Smith