ARCHIVE FOR Inspiration

Staring

By Alexa Bennett

You could only stare at him. Memorize the veins on his hands, and blotches on his skin, wondering what it’d be like to tell him he’s beautiful. He’s beautiful, and you don’t know if he knows that, but you hope he does. You hope he knows that you wish to leave bruises down his neck, run your fingers through his greasy hair, wrap yourself around him, and stay there

My family and I are renting a house in Maine for the week. It’s a cottage that sits on the property of a working farm. On the first morning of our visit, we met Shep, the border collie who lives at the farmhouse and on most days moves the sheep from one paddock to another. The farmers told us that on the days he doesn’t get to herd the sheep, the dog can be a handful. He’s just a year old, and has a puppy’s silliness mixed with an adult’s sense of purpose.

Here at Grub Street, we're still feeling the excitment from our yearly YAWP Summer Teen Fellowship (if you didn't know—YAWP stands for Young Adult Writing Program).  Each year the Fellowship immerses high school students in the writers' life of creative craft and publishing. During their three weeks at Grub, the teens work with published authors on original prose and poetry, meet with literary agents and editors, take field trips to inspirational locales like the ICA, and much more. In the spirit of writers' residencies for adults, all teens will receive a $300 stipend for their commitment to ...

Long, long ago in a United Kingdom far away, a thirteen-year-old girl (a thoroughly unpleasant age for all involved) prepared for a weeklong skiing holiday in Austria (as you do). She asked her mother, who was staying behind in London (already giddy with the prospect of solitude and books, books, books):

     “What will you DO while we’re away?”

Editors know about inner and outer story.  But most writers don’t.  They don’t realize the balance is essential to crafting page-turning fiction, memoir, even nonfiction.

Case in point:  A student in my classes was writing a serious memoir about an accident that almost caused his death and changed his life.  He wrote to gain insight and closure on his own experience.  But he also volunteers with similarly injured young people, and he hoped his book would help others going through the same trauma.