The National Writing Project
A NATE grass-roots educational research project
  • Home
    • Privacy Policy
    • NWP Blog >
      • Weekly write 1
      • Weekly write 2
      • Weekly Write 3
      • Weekly write 4
      • Weekly write 5
      • Weekly write 6
      • Weekly write 7
      • Weekly write 8
      • Weekly write 9
      • Weekly write 10
      • Weekly Write 11
      • Weekly Write 12
      • Weekly Write 13
      • Weekly Write 14
      • Weekly Write 15
      • Weekly Write 16
      • Weekly write 17
    • NWP Gallery
    • How It Works
    • Background & Principles
    • Who's involved >
      • Morlette Lindsay
    • Find out more
    • Updates >
      • Directors' report 2015
      • Directors' report 2016
      • Directors' report 2017
      • Directors' report 2018
      • Group leaders' review 2017
  • Courses
    • 2016 Residential
    • Belsey Bridge Oct 2016
    • 2017 Residential
    • Texts used at 2017 residential
    • Tate Modern 16 Aug 2018
    • Whitechapel workshop
    • NWP 2019 writing retreat
    • 2018 Residential
    • Metaphoraging
  • Digested reads
    • John Dixon
    • Harold Rosen
    • Raymond Carver
    • Janet Emig
    • James Britton >
      • Britton Anthology
  • Research
    • Publications >
      • The Rights of the Writer
      • Making Room for Writing
      • 41 reasons why you should join a writing group
      • The benefits of freedom
      • In our own hands
      • What has writing ever done for us?
      • PowerPoint presentations
      • Diving into Writing
      • Folding paper, opening words
      • Book of the Project >
        • Free writing
        • Notes on publication
      • Harold Rosen lecture 27 June 2015
      • Writing spaces
      • Writing teachers
      • Symposium slides 17.11.2016
      • If we teach writing ...
      • TED talk 18 March 2017
      • TESS article 2017
      • Affordances
    • Poesis, literature and learning
    • 4 benefits of teachers' writing groups
    • Teacher Testimonies >
      • Teacher Testimony 2015
    • In defence of creative writing
    • 40 years of writing pedagogy
    • DIY classroom research
    • Recommended reading and links
  • In Your Classroom
    • NWP in the classroom
    • Writing ideas >
      • Using Shaun Tan's 'The Arrival' >
        • Developing ideas: Garth Nix
        • paper shapes
        • Using film
        • Using drama
        • Postcard conversations
        • 1a Gothic Underground >
          • 1b Gothic lexicon
          • 2a Gothic body-parts
          • 2b Gothic passages
          • 3 Gothic investigation
      • New ideas 2015 >
        • Only connect
        • Answer
        • Collections and connections
        • Sherlock extracts
        • Characters from names
        • Developing Characters
        • Flip books
        • Small books
        • Names (A) >
          • Naming stones >
            • Geological terms
            • Stones writing example
          • Names and images (D)
          • Names in lists (B)
          • Further reading (C)
          • Examples (E)
        • Collections
        • Colours >
          • Colour names
          • More colours
          • Colour poem
        • Door tags
      • Quick writes >
        • Slightly longer exercises >
          • The world's a zoo
          • Word starter
          • Metaphors
        • Longer structured exercises
        • Short texts for quick writes
      • Collaborative >
        • Wendell Berry
      • Memories
      • Responding >
        • Ideas to develop response partnership in classrooms
    • Writing journeys
    • Writing histories >
      • Snapshots
    • Writing Journals >
      • Prompts for writing journals
      • Advice on journals 2014
    • Examples of Writing >
      • Writing from photos
      • How NWP works
      • Teachers' writing and reflection
      • Isabel Palmer >
        • Nightlife
        • Poppies
      • MK NWP
      • Whodunit writing
      • Writing alongside
  • Get Involved
    • Visit a group
    • Join an NWP Writing Group
    • Start an NWP Writing Group
    • Write Together Online >
      • NWP Group Login
    • A month's writing challenge
  • Contact NWP
Naming stones

Stones writing example

Picture
Written in 10 minutes by a teacher in an NWP writing group in May 2016 - using her own ideas, some of the prompts suggested by others, and seeing what emerged from free-writing. This is writing as the beginning of thinking, the playing with ideas and contradictions, the holding of possibilities ...

The sound of the sea in the darkness - the shine of it - the tumble and seethe of it. The foam across the deck and the boat rising. Something big, something dark, something moving beneath the waters, deep and dangerous as stone - the marble waves pounding the deck like a fist in the night - an ebony battery of saltwater - the boat as fragile as a shell, a miracle in the trough of the wave, vulnerable, hard to find, climbing up to the crest while under it the bulk of the ocean heaves and swells, tumescent, full of some awful, deadly birth. 'Breaching' they call it - the whale rising. A breach birth: an agony of tearing - black blood, black teeth, biting black flesh. Here is the end - a submarine, a bullet, a torpedo, a slug of marble, full of gravity - a plumb weight, taking you down, down, down.

    The National Writing Project UK is a research project supported by NATE,
the National Association for the Teaching of English. Contact NWP.
Picture
Picture