Young Writers Project is an independent nonprofit that engages Vermont and New Hampshire students to write, helps them improve and connects them with audiences in newspapers, before live audiences and on websites such as youngwritersproject.org, vtdigger.org, vpr.net and cowbird.com. Young Writers Project also publishes a monthly digital magazine, The Voice. YWP is supported by this newspaper and foundations, businesses and individuals that recognize the value of writing.
Prompt: General Writing
Once upon a cloudy day
The sun released a tear—
A drop of purest sunshine gold—
Solid but almost clear.
The drop fell past the moon and stars
That winked and smiled at it—
It landed on a silken cloud
And there it stayed to sit.
The sky was velvet black and blue–
The air was crisp and cool—
But then the cloud began to split
And dropped our golden jewel.
The clouds below were far from fair—
The air was poison smoke—
No star could shine, no bird could sing—
The life below had broke.
Our drop of sun was fading fast—
But then it landed on
The golden shining petal of
The flower of the sun.
Once upon a cloudy day
The sun released a tear—
A drop of purest sunshine gold
That fell and landed here.
Myth: Write about a wacky urban myth.
Everybody had heard of him but nobody had ever seen him. Young children told each other the stories at sleepovers, and teenagers secretly wondered at the legitimacy of them. Everybody knew the story of the man, the man who wandered at night wearing a gold embroidered robe. Brothers told their siblings that he ate children, especially those that were naughty. This story was usually enough to keep a sibling on good behavior, but nobody believed them until the children started to disappear.
New York City is an amazing place. The lights and the crowds astound tourists, and so do the many homeless. They huddle in doorways or lounge in alleys, often unnoticed by the bustling citizens.
But there is one man no one can fail to see. He roams the streets of New York, from Times Square to Harlem, night and day, winter and summer. People who have lived in the city their whole lives remember seeing this man when they were children and see almost no change in him many years later. He is called Wanderer.
He is old, very old, and walks with a crooked back. His bald head is tattooed in swirling shapes of a deep, faded blue and his gnarled white beard contrasts starkly with his suntanned skin. His weather-worn, forest green cloak, like something out of a fantasy film, flaps into the faces of Yankees fans and fools in work boots on windy days. He leans on a long spiked hammer of tarnished metal, near as tall as he. The police have stopped him on many occasions because of this implement, but as the years have passed they have left him to his endless journey.
Children talk of the times he has fought off criminals harassing women or attacking some poor soul. Wanderer is feared but loved, more like the Naked Cowboy than a common miscreant. It is said he controls a drug cartel, and it is whispered that he gives every penny he earns to the homeless of New York City.
It is also said that he died decades ago and others have taken his place, tattooing their bodies and buying war-hammers to wander the streets, helping where they can and accepting nothing in return.