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Leap Write In!: Adventures in Creative Writing to Stretch and Surprise Your One-of-a-Kind Mind

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Leap Write In!: Adventures in Creative Writing to Stretch and Surprise Your One-of-a-Kind Mind

Paperback

$21.95

Paperback
$21.95

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Overview

Invite your jittery mind into quiet slips of timed or untimed writing experiments that are designed to encourage your timid heart to forge forgotten feelings and entice your shy-self to make friends with emerging emotions. With a bounty of prompts to select from, you’ll be inspired to explore all the wacky, confusing, brave, soul-stirring wonderings and wanderings of your emerging life’s inner treasure in a way that’s sure to unleash what you most need to say. In this book you’ll find:

   • On-the-Spot Drops that offer quick “free-fall” prompts on different themes, such as short-winded poems and seven-line stories.
   • Mini Memoirs to unlock personal narrative to share, or not.
   • Suddenly a Story suggestions to explore feelings and states of being like fear, reluctance, compassion, kindness, anxiety, anger, jealousy, happiness, and more.
   • Surprise Yourself Surveys for those who think they know everything about themselves.
   • Untie-Your-Mind Word Lists to jump-start stalled imaginations.
   • Definition Decoders to introduce new ideas and styles of writing.

Created especially for tweens, teens, and other earthlings, this book provides you with a chance to create imaginative poems, stories, fragments, and real-life on-the-spot sketches. All that’s required is that you take a breath, relax, reset, and leap write in!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611800159
Publisher:	Shambhala
Publication date:	04/02/2013
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Karen Benke has inspired children—and even a few adults—in the art of creative writing for over twenty years as a Poet in the Schools, writing coach, and visiting author. She specializes in leading on-the-spot creative writing workshops and has been known to get even the most reluctant writer to reach for a pen. Her poetry has appeared in many anthologies and national literary journals (Ploughshares, Rattle, Hawaii Pacific Review, Poetry Daily) and her books have been featured in FamilyFun magazine, The San Francisco Book Review, Kids' Book Review (Australia) and elsewhere. The recipient of two teaching grants from Poets & Writers and residencies from Djerassi Resident Artists Program and Hedgebrook, she runs The Writers Nest and lives north of the Golden Gate Bridge with her teenage son, magic cat Clive, and rescue dog Rasco Roon. Visit her virtually at www.karenbenke.com.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Karen Benke gives young writers permission to explore the illogical, the heartspace, the wilderness of the imagination. Unlike other books, she offers guidance in centering and being kind to yourself—prerequisites to freeing your voice. The clear, compelling writing adventures she presents gently pull down any guard, any walls you might have in order to release the unexpected within.”—Betsy Franco, author of Falling Hard: 100 Love Poems by Teenagers

“Writing is always work, but it is also play—something most of us forget as we grow up. In this most engaging guide Karen Benke reconnects us with the mind at play: imagining and observing, listening and remembering. She nods to our hesitations and then encourages us to leap write in! With her lively and gentle invitations we find our stories and poems are everywhere—in hair and bones, backward poems and imaginary paintings.”—J. Ruth Gendler, author of The Book of Qualities

From the B&N Reads Blog

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Editorial Reviews

In this companion to Rip the Page! (2010), Benke returns with exercises that encourage readers to “shake up your one-of-a-kind mind, heart, memory bank, and changing emotional landscape.” The workbook format includes blank lines every few pages (sometimes straight, sometimes wavy or zigzag), where readers can follow the many prompts and ideas Benke sends their way. In a section about observation, Benke suggests finding a quiet spot: “Keep noticing what you notice.... Then choose one thing from your awareness field.... Observe this one thing in five ways.” There’s a meditative, contemplative tone to the entire project (amplified by explorations of the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi and poetic forms that include found poetry and patchwork cento poems), which should appeal to those seeking a holistic approach to their writing. Agent: Stefanie von Borstel, Full Circle Literary. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Karen Benke gives young writers permission to explore the illogical, the heartspace, the wilderness of the imagination. Unlike other books, she offers guidance in centering and being kind to yourself—prerequisites to freeing your voice. The clear, compelling writing adventures she presents gently pull down any guard, any walls you might have in order to release the unexpected within.”—Betsy Franco, author of Falling Hard: 100 Love Poems by Teenagers

“Writing is always work, but it is also play—something most of us forget as we grow up. In this most engaging guide Karen Benke reconnects us with the mind at play: imagining and observing, listening and remembering. She nods to our hesitations and then encourages us to leap write in! With her lively and gentle invitations we find our stories and poems are everywhere—in hair and bones, backward poems and imaginary paintings.”—J. Ruth Gendler, author of The Book of Qualities

From the Publisher