Annual Celebration of Writers in Progress

What Do You See Here?This gallery offers audiences a glimpse at our learning, made visible.

What do you notice?

Look for evidence of:• Reflection• Courage• Perseverance• Collaboration• Our willingness to seek understanding and share our expertise

When I write, I picture a blank canvas. There are endless possibilities. No rules. Just ink and paper. The great writers in the world may dream of the future, or may want to go back to the past, where they would like to see Flapper girls drinking exquisite champagne. However, the best writers would take a step forward, and can literally snatch the Flapper girl, or the man who’s a victim of totalitarianism desiring a humane life. This year, I was able to expand my understanding of writing, and learned numerous writing techniques from different authors. Being able to pick out exemplars or models is a very important strategy to have if you’re looking for different techniques. I found myself reading and writing other genres other than realistic fiction or fantasy including non-fiction and poetry. This is quite unusual because I tend to reach for teen fiction in Barnes and Nobles or my local library.

I used to have a great passion for realistic fiction, but now I feel as though that spark has moved elsewhere. In 2015 my goal was to at least start a small anthology or a group of ideas for poetry, and I have now completed my first chapter or part of the story. I was inspired by the book Leaves of Grass written beautifully by Walt Whitman.

In 2015 I was able to improve on my visualization strategy, and was thankfully able to input that into my poetry as well as a couple of my short stories. I’ve never been that good or interested in too much dialogue to the point where I’d rather just create a scene without it completely. There is so much you can get out of a couple details, and I especially love it when an author tries to make the reader think a step further then what they are used to. Another thing I was able to improve on was the ability to use foreshadowing well. I’ve been reading tons of stories that were very dramatic and left the reader hanging. I quickly used this to enhance my writing, and it actually made it easier for me to move on smoothly to the next part.

This year I was already so busy with my schedule that I am quite nervous I may not have that much time the next school year to give up some time to write. I want to be able to stop procrastinating, and manage my time well enough to have at least fifteen minutes to jot down or plan a scene. I also want to improve my dialogue in my new short story I am currently writing. Finally, I want to do some creative writing such as play writing or script; it would be so much fun to try out something new that I may find a strong interest for.

--Hannah

Hannah Reflects…

A peek into Hannah’s process

I can’t remember life before literacy. I experience some feelings when viewing photos of Young Melanie, but my first clear memories are all with books.

I was lying on the floor of my living room. My parents and sister were sitting on the couch with the TV on mute. They were impatiently waiting for me to finish my book: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Usually I gave into my sister’s demands pretty easily, but this time, I refused. I would not watch the movie before I finished the book.

I remember my fourth grade teacher letting my keep The Great Gilly Hopkins- and I remember being confused when the narrator used the word “colored” to describe people. (I pictured rainbow humans). I remember going through the huge Scholastic warehouse shopping for books with my grandma. I remember exactly where I was when Dumbledore died. I remember seeing the name Rick Riordan for the first time. Books were- and are- my life.

It was no surprise to anyone when I announced at a young age that I wanted to be an author when I grew up. I wanted other people to devour my stories like I had devoured J. K. Rowling’s. I wrote stories in school. I wrote stories when I joined the Western New York Young Writer’s Studio in its first year. I never stopped writing, but I changed a lot.

I changed stories so often that I never finished a book. I changed journals so often it would be impossible to gather a coherent narrative of my life. The biggest realization for me is that being an author is not my calling.

I love writing. I will not stop writing stories, even if I never finish a single one. I write, not because I want to be an author, or for other people to read my work, but for me. My audience is just a single person: Melanie Izard. And because of this, I can write whatever I want, whenever I want, and I can fall in love with writing all over again with each blank page I put a pen on.

--Melanie

I have always been a reader, though not always a writer.

It was only about four years ago when an opportunity came in the form of WNY Young Writer’s studio that I decided I wanted to start a more serious passion of writing. To be honest, when I was introduced to Writer’s Studio I was a bit reluctant. Until then I was never a phenomenal writer like some of my friends or wanted to create something new because I liked to just stick to reading. However as that year passed, I had grown to enjoy it. I had grown attached to creating new worlds and going on adventures and breathing in that creative air of the studio atmosphere.

That bond to writing still goes strong today. I am a writer that evolves. I have gone through different phases, enhancing my style after every transformation. Fantasy, realistic fiction, thriller, group works and poetry. From improvising to planning, fragmentary to complete, dull to action-packed, I believe that my experience with writing has immensely improved and will keep on improving. Because to me writing is a passion. To write isn’t something that comes and goes or a quality one is born with. Writing is an adventure. To write can take you places you’ve never before visited, include a bountiful of twists and turns, and full of surprising rewards. Writing is emotional, it’s malleable, it’s an experience. It’s not a skill you earn, it’s not an object, it doesn’t have a master. Writing is what you take it to be.

Ever since that point when I started to enjoy writing, it's been a part of my life. I started to carry notebooks on vacation, collect scraps of my ideas, and thought most everyday about story plots. I got to catch a glimpse of the lives of authors who wrote the books I had come to love and now inspire me to keep writing.

So although I have always been a reader, I will always be a writer. ---Jaiha

Jaiha reflects on her writing in progress….

Mary reminisces…..

Writing about writing is like staring at your name for so long that it loses all realness. After all, I’ve had the urge to make stories for as long as I could write my name.

When you’ve grown up as a writer, you can look back on your old work in much the same way you can look at a diary. Putting my old and new stuff in juxtaposition, it’s easy to see the evolution that occurred—that one phase when I was too pretentious to use the word “stuff” in my writing comes to mind.

Through a combination of bad advice, insecurity, and just a touch of internalized misogyny, I used to think that good writing was the exact opposite of whatever came naturally. My once innocent and evangelical zeal for writing became confusing and stunted—a dilemma that translated into a whole lot of clutter. But despite my frustration, my taste was still acute.

The first breakthrough was learning to storyboard. It was physically engaging, allowed me to associate writing with art, and, if nothing else, served to get me excited.

Subsequently, I gained more tools. The most directly impactful was the deep point of view method. In writing a deep point of view, the author brings the reader as close to the writing as possible by cutting out filter words—“he touched,” “she decided that,” “he wondered,” etc. It’s showing in place of telling, and it transformed how I tell stories.

I’ve learned to write authentically, to say exactly what I mean in the most simple and significant terms. Most importantly, I’ve changed my perspective on what good writing is and how it’s achieved. I’ve found that the most effective prose isn’t the kind that delves deep with lots of details and wants to show off its extensive vocabulary, but the kind that evokes meaning in the reader as well as the writer.

--Mary

Whenever people would say someone was a good writer, I used to think of heavy books hundreds of chapters long. I stand corrected. There are many ways to express your writing skills through newspaper articles, poems...etc.

A book I'm writing is called Kids' Revolution. Before I came to studio, I improvised everything as I went along. Obviously, that led to more than a few problems when writing long stories. That's why I wrote down what I knew about the plot, which is the beginning and the end. The middle I'm still working on. Luckily, with post-its it's easier to move things around.

I love it whenever authors come to visit studio. Usually they come with a lot of good ideas on how to improve my writing. One reason for that is because they actually finished and published something (better than me). At least I walk away thinking I learned something.

The first part of my book was written when I was very young. Now that piece of writing seems...inexperienced, so I tinker with it, and try to make it up-to-date with my other writing. One such idea would have made the book go in an entirely different direction. I'm not sure I want that, but it's still a good idea.

My homework essay once was to use all the vocabulary words in a story. I thought it would be easy...until I was sleepy and not a word was written. Desperate, I played Mad Libs to think of sentences, like: There was once a gallant knight that lived in...a tree? Okay then. After that, I quickly wrote the rest, and it turned out better than I expected.

Freda’s thoughts on writing….

Alina’s reflects on a year of writing….I have changed as a writer over the course of this year, because I am more aware of the processes authors go through in order to come up with meaningful works. I have heard from a local author, who provided insight on how she comes up with ideas, structures her stories, battles writer's block and achieves her ultimate goal of getting published.

One of my greatest struggles this year has been how to overcome writer's block. It is a problem a lot of writers face at one point of another, and through my work at Studio, I have learned how to spark new ideas and apply them to my stories. I now know that doing simple things can form new ideas like listening to music, looking at art, watching movies, and reading!

The best skill I have learned this year has been how to write poems in an organized, smooth way by looking online and  reading other author's poems. I can take note on how to word phrases, and include literary techniques in my poems.

A huge learning moment for me was when I learned to re-write my works more than once and change them a little bit each time, according to other's constructive criticism. This helped me become more flexible and open minded to other's perspectives on my work.

The first book I ever wrote was My Puppy Book. It was all about my dog and it was only published at my house. It was cherished by my parents and I received many praise for it. That was the spark of the idea of becoming an author when I grow up. I love reading which is probably what started the author idea at all. The idea of seeing my name written on the cover of a book always excited me. I love imagining stories about people and places I’ve only dreamed of before. The only problem was finding a place where I could write them all down. That’s how I found Studio. I drove past it many and never paid much attention to it until one day my mom pointed it out. After that I always perked up as we drove by it. Later I would be a student there spending my Saturdays every second week of every month from one to four. That’s how my first book would get started.

My greatest accomplishment this year was getting my story where it is now and this experience as a whole. This has improved my writing for the better and I learned a lot of things along the way as well that I know I will use later. I found out my story involved a lot of editing and a lot of commitment. These two things are my greatest accomplishments because of how it’s change me as a writer and its given me a sense of who I am as a writer. My goal for next year would be to finish my story and publish it.

I’ve confronted many struggles when writing my story and I still have some problems even now. The hardest would probably be when I had to get rid of pieces of my work. Once I got rid of them I was sort of lost. Will it still make sense? What will happen as a result of me crossing out that certain part? These questions went through my head. I read my story over and over trying to see if it will still make sense. I still have to add more and fix a couple things now and those questions still occasionally go through my head but I was able to get through it(thankfully).

I’ve learned a lot of things along the way. But the biggest thing that’s affected my writing for the better is writing to appeal to the reader. Making it seem like a real thing that’s happened or make it relate to them. Another big thing I learned was how to critique other’s work by giving them the right advice to people about their writing. Next year I hope to improve my writing even more and continue to learn and grow.

--Katarina

I’m discovering that…I’m not the same writer I was five years ago.

Five years ago I was in sixth grade, eleven, and enjoyed writing fictional stories.

Now, I’m approaching my senior year in high school, I’m almost seventeen, and my writing taste has definitely changed.

As much as I sometimes wish I could stay eleven forever, I proud of the progress I’ve made as a writer. Given the choice between staying eleven and growing up, I’d pick growing up because of how much I’ve developed and changed over the past few years.

Five years ago, all I wrote was fictional stories, and I loved it. Now, I still continue to write stories, but my passion for creative writing definitely has plateaued. This doesn’t mean I have distaste for writing, as I still love it (and probably always will), but the type of writing I’m most comfortable with and enjoy the process of writing the most, is actually literary writing. Ironically enough, I’ve grown to love writing about writing more than making something out of nothing. I still have a special appreciation for authors and writers, because I know the difficult process of writing. I still think it’s incredible that full fledged novels and series stem simply from an idea in a brain. I think the biggest reason why I feel like I’m so different than my eleven-year old self is the fact that my idea of who I am as a writer and what I like to write about most, has solidified and become apparent. I don’t think at eleven I even realized what literary writing was or that there were option of writing something other than fiction.

Elyse’s self-

assessment

One of my greatest challenges is that…I struggle to write as often as I’d like to. I believe that writing is something that I will always carry with me, and it’s become a very important part of my life. However, finding time to actually do it, has always been a struggle. I’ve found that many of life’s obligations and distractions seem to take place at a time that could have been used for writing. I also feel like I have to write or add to a creative writing piece I’ve been working on. I forget the fact that I can make up my own writing prompts and write about them. I feel and hope that I can write more this summer, and I plan to. I’m thinking about creating my own book review blog where I review books a few times a month. It seems like a good way to improve my writing, as well as giving me the opportunity to read more books. Here’s my advice to upcoming writers…Never. Stop. Writing. I guess most importantly, never stop doing what you love. So if that’s writing than keep pursuing it and exploring who you are as a writer. As a writer, I believe I’m constantly evolving as is my writing, so as long as you keep on writing, you’re going to improve and get better. Also, read as much as possible. I think writers should always read what inspires them and pick out what you like about a certain book. Reading books that you truly love, will help your writing as the books that you read and are inspired by, will influence you the most. I know that after reading a good book, my writing style or ideas may evolve to fit or share commonalities with the book I’ve just read. Lastly, stay inspired. Hold on to that spark of inspiration that first drove you to want to write(or become a writer), let it motivate you to continue crafting your identity as a writer, and your writing.

Roy rants about his notebook:

The notebook I use is a place to dump raw material of thought. Later, I’ll page through it and use it as inspiration for my writing. In it are reflections, doodles, short stories, more doodles, and random scraps of sentences. Some of these scraps can be combined to make another, one idea blended with others to create a massive concept. They become as one, a collective of thought, a dystopia of knowledge. Every piece builds upon another, brick upon brick. Thus ends my unnecessarily philosophical rant about the contents of my notebook.

Nina

Nina is among our most prolific writers, submitting an abundance of poetry to each year’s anthology and consistently contributing to a variety of collaborative writing projects.

Nina’s talent is overshadowed only by her humility. We learn much from her at Studio.

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader” -Robert Frost

As a writer I think differently than the New York state curriculum, most writers are like this. We think in more ways than just the graphs and other ways of writing that are taught in school. Writing comes, it can’t be taught. In school we learn how to graph, and write essays. But being a writer is not in paragraphs with opening and closing sentences. It is being able to let feelings come out in the form of words. To be a writer, you have to have an open mind set, willing to let new ideas take over and push the story forward. If you use one idea and “fluff” it, the story ended 15 chapters ago, new idea please.Who you are as a writer, is who you are as a person. Not a lie you tell your friends to seem cooler, not a made up story. Fantasy is not in your head. It is real, as real as your daydreams. If you think it, it can be real. Once you describe it enough to put it in someones head, it is real. It lives in their daydreams, their nightmares, everywhere. When i’m writing, I live in the story. I forget the real world, Because my writing becomes my world. As a writer i’ve grown to respect other people’s ideas, and what they think. Because to them, it’s who they are, and someday that idea they shared that you thought was weird, could be your favorite book someday.

“Books are powerful, it turns out. A book can save lives. A book can start a war. A book can topple a government.”-Evan Angler

Alanna’s Reflections

Hannah S. reflects…..

A struggle I've had this year is trying to connect different events smoothly and fluently. One of my triumphs was when I rewrote the beginning of my story to make my story more in-depth.

I have grown as a writer because I learned more strategies to spark an idea. Some tips I have are when you have writer's block don't automatically go to the next story and give up on the previous one.

Ask friends or peers for different options or events that could take place. You may be surprised to see how much they can help you.

Hannah S.notebook strategies

This year I learned what some buttons on my keyboard mean. Like some buttons help you save what you write when you press “ctrl” and when you press shift and the number, it makes things happen on the computer.

I also learned that I need to add feelings and actions when I describe my characters. I also need to have a setting so that you can picture what’s happening in my story.

Shea’s self assessment…..

Mia’s reflections…..I learned that when I draw the setting or the plot that I come up with better ideas. Also, I learned that I can put the part of short story in a different area into my story.

I think that me focusing on my writing has been hard. I overcame it by adding something fun—pictures! This helps me focus more.

Mia’s notebook strategies…..

ZoeThe most important thing I learned to do as a writer here at Studio is how to brainstorm and really plan my writing. This is important because now, before I write, I have a good and strong understanding of what my writing is going to be about.

One thing that is hard for me as a writer is creating my characters. This is hard because the characters have to have just the right feelings and personalities to fit into my stories. I have overcome this by writing less complicated characters.

Zac

h I learned how to tinker with my stories this year. And I learned new words. I learned how to brainstorm and how to publish my stories. I learned to do nice deeds for others in December.

One thing that was hard is it took a long time to think of a story and characters. But one day I thought of something and with characters in it. The story was called FLARES!

Zoe and Zach

EllaI learned how to make my characters more interesting this year. I described them more than I did last year. I learned how to use dialogue too.

The hardest thing as a writer was to make my characters and stories interesting. I tried to think of better and more fun ideas to solve that problem. It was also hard for me to use dialogue.

StephenI learned how to add details to my writing and revise using Google Docs. I was challenged when I had to give my characters more traits, and I had to add details.

ClareThis year, I learned how to put dialogue and feelings into my stories. I also learned not to make my characters the same. This helped me like my stories better.

Alyssa reflects…. I learned how to use good

word choice and voice to display mood and tone in my writing. Plus, I learned how to write and use descriptive details to show how my character feels, thinks, and acts. I learned how to do this without saying, “Then she did…” I am proud of my work this year!!!

ALYSSA’S ARTIFACTS

Gabby’s reflections…..One of my greatest challenges in writing is putting my thoughts into words. I’m always coming up with new ideas for stories and books, but when it comes to writing them out, it feels as if something is holding me back. I’ll write a chapter or two, and then I just stop. No matter what I do, it feels impossible to continue.

I’m discovering that if I take the time to plan everything it out and then put it all together, my writing improves. Charts and lists help me figure out what I’m going to do with my writing and how I’m going to do it. Then, I can end my story and move onto the next piece.

Being able to finish my work is what I’m most proud of this year because I’m never really able to end a story, and it feels great to do so. Writer’s block is almost like a prison, because I feel trapped, like I can’t do anything, and overcoming that is amazing.

Minecraft has inspired SO MUCH

writing this year!

Erin’s special strategies….Erin uses cartooning, doodling, and other types of illustration to sketch her characters and story ideas. She engages with her pictures, and she does, her stories come to life. This is how she fills her notebooks!

Peter learned to sequence his story!

Peter reflects on his writing…..

April contributed a significant number of poems to our annual anthology. Please take some time to read them before you leave today. Our draft is available on the printer stand, along with issues from previous years.

Kara, Sydney, and Julia persevered through all sorts of technology upsets this year. They never let this stop them, though. Proud of these girls for publishing their notebook strategies at Amy Ludwig Vanderwater’s Sharing Our Notebooks site!

Jordan is in the process of seeking publication for her book of poetry, which she dedicated most of this year to completing.

She is learning a great deal about querying agents and publishers, and we can’t wait to hear more about her journey!

Remi is an incredible thinker and creative story designer.

So many have appreciated her insight and thoughtful perspective this year.

Anna represents our community so well, and she gives a great deal of herself so that others might shine.

She’s a cracker jack journalist, and you may find examples of her work hanging in the back room at Studio.