Tag: Anthology

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 30th June

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

This week we published our anthology!!

The big news this week is the publication of our anthology, The World You Gave Us! It was written over the course of a year by young people who attend after school or Zoom writing clubs with Chasing Driftwood, and contains poetry, flash fiction, short stories and creative non-fiction. The children were so amazing in putting this together that we are already onto our next project which we hope to publish in October! Grab your copy of The World You Gave Us on the link below!

https://amzn.eu/d/dbFRecS

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: We started with poetry prompts today, aimed at creating poems based on their current ‘town project’ stories. They could also write any poem they wanted. We had various poetry starters to get ideas flowing and we also looked at how to write limericks. Great responses from everyone then onto making more progress on the town stories!

Monday CJS Club: They had the option of poetry prompts or carrying on with their town stories. Some are now starting to type their stories up on the laptop, which is amazing to see. This project is already coming together so nicely! Well done to all.

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: Great responses in this club to the poetry prompts. Most decided to write poems based on their town ideas. We are saving lots of these to add to the book! More progress on town stories too!

Bransgore Primary Club: Progress on town stories with one now completed, edited and typed up and another started on the laptop, while everyone else involved in the project wrote more of their stories.

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: Mostly working on town stories today but also one member of the group wrote the end of a long collaborative story started a year ago in this club! They have all taken turns writing it over a year and it is finally finished! Lots of editing to do now, but wow! What commitment!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Club: Half the group decided to concentrate on town story progress and half decided to write poems based on their stories or to go in their stories. These were fantastic!!

Wednesday CJS Club: There was a bit of poetry going on but most wanted to make more progress on their town stories. Another one was finished and started to be typed up, and a few more are creeping towards the finish line!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 23rd June

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

What have we been up to this week? Folklore prompts for Zooms, mystery envelopes for schools and more progress on town stories!

It’s been a week of excitement and accomplishments at Chasing Driftwood this week! The proof copy of our anthology, The World You Gave Us arrived and was able to show all the children on Zoom and in schools. They all enjoyed having a look through and finding their contributions! We had several more town stories finished and handed in for our next writing project. The school children are enjoying typing theirs up on my laptop which has encouraged discussions about editing.

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: We had some folklore prompts on Zoom this week. Six different prompts based around various folklore tales including The Green Man, fairies and fairy rings, selkies and The Wild Hunt! Some used the prompts to write more for their town story, while others wrote a separate piece. Great progress on town stories too and lots of excitement about the anthology!

Monday CJS Club: The kids were really excited to see the anthology, hold it in their hands and see their work and their names in print! The book is published on 30th June but they were all able to have an early look. We made more progress on our town stories and a few more have been finished and typed up! Amazing!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: More responses to the folklore prompts with this group and yet more progress on town stories. Some of them wove the prompt ideas into their stories!

Bransgore Primary School club: They were very excited to look at the anthology and find their work in it! This really spurred them on to work on their town stories and we had a few more finished and handed in. Fantastic! For anyone finished I took in mystery envelopes full of writing prompts. The idea is to write a story based on what you find in your envelope.

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: Fantastic prompt responses, again, some using the folklore ideas to further their town stories and others writing a separate piece. Their town stories are all way past the half way mark now which is very exciting!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Club: More folklore prompts and a mixture of separate pieces and pieces that are woven into their existing town stories. Progress on everyone’s stories! Fantastic!

Wednesday CJS Club: These guys were very excited to see their work in the anthology and also made progress on their town stories, with a few more being finished and typed up! A few who had finished their stories had a go with the mystery envelopes.

See you next week!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 16th June

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

What did we get up to this week?? More work on our collaborative project and out anthology is ready to preorder!!

Exciting times at Chasing Driftwood Writing Group, as an anthology over a year in the making is finally available to preorder! The World You Gave Us is an anthology of poetry, flash fiction, short stories and creative non-fiction written entirely by young people who attend our clubs. On the 30th June it will be published in both ebook and paperback by our own imprint Chasing Driftwood Books and will be available across multiple platforms. I’ll share the relevant links next week when the Amazon paperback version has been approved.

our anthology!

A huge congratulation to all the young people who took part!

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: This week we looked at tension; what it is, why its important and how to build it into our stories, We discussed various tips on creating tension, such as using short, sharp sentences, paying attention to sensory information and using the character’s body language, and we had tension themed prompts to respond to. Great work from all and further progress on all the town stories!

Monday CJS Club: Mostly progress on town stories today with a few actually finished! Amazing! Well done everyone. We also had a chat about tension and discussed the techniques we can use to add tension to our stories.

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom club: This group also had the tension tips followed by the tension prompts and we also had great progress on all the town stories. Well done to all!

Bransgore Primary School: Today we discussed how to add tension to stories and made more progress with our town stories with a few finished! Great work!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: The same discussion on adding tension to scenes, tension themed prompts to choose from, followed by progress on our town stories. Great work from all. Their on-going collaborative story is also nearly finished!!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Group: These guys did really well responding to the tension techniques and the prompts combined! Lots of progress!

Wednesday CJS Club: This group also discussed how to add tension to stories and continued to make progress with their town project. We also have a few finished stories in this group now!!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 21st May

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

What did we get up to this week?

There was no Monday clubs this week due to it being a bank holiday. There was also no club at Bransgore school due to an inset day there. Here is what the rest of us got up to!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 plus Zoom group: For this session, we discussed our group story which is now finished and has has been edited a few times. We discussed changing a bit towards the end that didn’t quite work and once that is done, the story can be added to the anthology all the groups have been working on. Today we also had a writing prompt: From a window. For this, they could write a fictional or non-fiction story, or a poem, describing a view from a window. We also discussed my new idea for another collaborative writing project all the groups will get involved in and this group were really enthusiastic about it!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 plus Zoom group: Similar to the above, we had some discussion over their group story which is drawing to an end but will need editing when finished. I set them the From a Window prompt and also explained my new idea for a short story collection.

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom group: This group had the same prompt and most of them decided to respond to that. They could also carry on with ongoing stories or poems too, and a few of them went with that option. They also seemed keen on my new idea for a big writing project!

Wednesday CJS Club: Today I told the group about my new idea and they had plenty of questions about how it will work. We set the goal for this term of each creating a character and working towards a short story for that character. We talked about simple and complex character bios and everyone started creating one. Towards the end some of them pretended to be their characters and were interviewed by the rest of us!

See you next week where we will have more news on the anthology AND the new book idea!