Fifty women writers came to a potluck yesterday at my house and energy and love of writing was bouncing off the walls. It was an all day retreat for mentors of WriteGirl – a program that pairs professional women writers with teenage girls to help them find their voice through writing. Powerful writing has come out of this. In one of my favorite WriteGirl poems, published in BoldInk, Perla Melendez takes her readers into the mind and heart of a homeless woman photographed by Dorothea Lange during the Depression: “Wearing her Sunday best clothes / Which were her only clothes, really / Which were her Sunday clothes / Or, what used to be her Sunday clothes / Back when there were still Sundays.” Also in Bold Ink Mariana Vasquez writes of an ordinary moment: “Some guyz on their skateboards, / Trying to do tricks. / Two little girls laughing ./ Laughing at their feet ./ My mom watches a movie / and me, I’m just writing this / @ 9:56."

In a world where a certain clothing store (no relation!) sells a t-shirt emblazoned with the message that girl’s breasts are more important than their brains, we all need to support programs like WriteGirl who send this message to teenage girls: your stories, your experiences, your memories, your fantasies, your dreams, your brains are important. Girls in WriteGirl who had never even thought of going to college, get scholarships, change the direction of their lives. The program, started in 2001, is the result of Keren Taylor’s vision and hard work. Check out their website www.writegirl.org

The retreat yesterday was a chance for mentors to get to know each other, get revved up for mentoring the girls and to hear three of us who teach at UCLA Extension talk about our experiences as writers and teachers and to learn a few new writing exercises.  Suzanne Lummis, a fixture of the L.A. poetry scene (I’m a huge fan of this woman. Her poem “The Regular Nice Guys” was mentioned before on this site under Fooling Around With Poems), gave a writing exercise based on where we live. She asked for a list of nouns that applied to the climate and geology of L.A. and we as a group came up with: marine layer, Santa Ana, strike slip, Richter scale, basin, June gloom. Then animals: coyote, foothill lizards, raccoons, chocolate labs, humming birds, feral parrots.  Flora was next: bougainvillea, eucalyptus, live oak, jasmine, jacaranda.  And finally she asked for a list of verbs and we came up with: glisten, storm, speed, echo, pulse, slant, slam, rage, buzz, sweeten, sprinkle, beep, call, lunge. Then, individually, we wrote a poem using these words. And it was amazing.  What did it all mean, the stuff I wrote? Who knows, I didn’t get that far. All I do know is that this exercise led me in a whole new direction and I fell in love with language and words I don’t usually use – wonderful nouns and verbs.  Try it.

Kerry Madden, author of books for teenagers, including OffSides and Gentle’s Hollar  and essayist, (she’s going to be my speaker at the next UCLA Extension’s Writers Studio in February when I teach the personal essay) gave a whole wonderful list of exercises for the mentors to use geared toward teenagers, but that writers of any age can use.  One of my favorites: Draw a map of the neighborhood you grew up in and then write about what kind of street it was. Name the neighbors, flowers, kids, pets, trees. (If you’re writing a novel, you could do this for your main characters.)

Another exercise Kerry gave: describe the hair in your family. Let somebody’s hair reveal a secret. I don’t know about you, but hair was a big deal in my family, a very big deal. In fact my brother’s wife had a hilarious routine imagining members of my family opening little presents of hair at Christmas. Fortunately she never did this for my mother who would not have been amused.

Hit comment below and let us know how these exercises work for you.