Writing Comes from Reading

Soon I'll be sharing my writing-teacher secrets, as part of Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing.

Oddly, many of my secrets look like living. And reading. A lot.

My sweet Sara reads about a six hundred (unassigned) books during a school year and a great deal of poetry. All that reading, I'm convinced, has shaped her writing. Here, for instance, is one of her contributions to the sonneteering we've been doing over at Tweetspeak. It makes me think... I need to read... a lot more sonnets if I ever want to catch up with her abilities.

(Though not a perfect sonnet by any means, she wrote this one in 10 minutes, while I was also bothering her about coming to answer a phone call. Yeah, I'm proud of her. Forgive me? :)

The Narrator

I'll tell you now a tale both sad and true,
the story of the cuckoo in the tree
across the endless, vast, and wave-filled sea.
And of the flute, the crying notes it blew
to break and make a spell with one bright tune,
and what it did to everyone, and me,
a girl who only wishéd to be free
of the wicked witches, and now you

say that I know nothing of all that time.
Well, I'll tell the tale both loud and clear.
I'll even tell it—listen now—in rhyme.
And then I'll take from you, all you hold dear
and we will know the truth, and know the lie.
I'll make you beg on bended knees with tears.

— Sara Barkat, age 14


This poem is offered for The High Calling and Tweetspeak's Random Acts of Poetry/PhotoPlay celebration.