One of Polyphony H.S.’s talented editors, Allison Light, tells us about how she’s developed as a writer. Allison explains her process of growing from writing her first story about Granny Smith (a horse) to writing “The Erasing Office” (published on www. everydayfiction.com)…..

My first story was entitled Nancy Drew: Mystery at Barrel Lake. It was scrawled in a palm-sized notebook with iridescent butterflies on the front, and the storyline featured a horse named Granny Smith. Although the final product left something to be desired, I still remember the giddiness I felt while writing. Since it hadn’t occurred to me yet that my writing could be awful, I could ignore the pesky grammar mistakes and galaxy-sized plot holes.

But now I’m in 10th grade, and I’m at the point where I can’t ignore those issues anymore. And with that self-awareness, I improved leaps and bounds. Polyphony H.S. is so great because it revolves entirely around this idea: we become better writers by analyzing our work, staring at our flaws head-on, and not being afraid of trying to fix them. Our editors do some of that work for the writers, pointing out areas with weaknesses and giving gentle pushes in the right direction. And yes, undeniably, our system mainly benefits the submitters, giving them feedback through both encouragement and criticism—we are not here to fluff egos, after all, but to refine our crafts.

As an editor, though, I feel (a bit selfishly) like I’m really coming out on top. In each of the many submissions that roll through my portal, I see my own writing. And in each submission that I comment on, I find my own flaws. I always think of writing like assembling a machine. We all have the same tools—the English language. We all have access to the same instruction manuals—the millions of books and poems already out there. It’s just up to each of us to decide how to assemble those words, and which instructions to follow. It’s up to us whether the finished product will fall apart in our hands, or stand on its own.

I edit because it means sharing something special and intangible with another writer. As I move the pieces of their machine around, tweaking cogs and oiling edges, I see the beauty in it. And that insight allows me to open my own document and try to figure out how that young author made that beauty happen.

Rachel Stone, our wonderfully expressive editor, takes us on her teenage journey with writing and Polyphony H.S., but be careful, she’s a little risk-ay….

When I was in eighth grade I decided that I would rebel. Although the requirements for submitting to Polyphony HS magazine entailed that one had to be a high school student to submit writing, I created an account with a fake graduation date, hoping that if my poems were chosen for publication I could reveal my true age with flourish and be hailed as the savant that I knew myself to be. Yet, after my submissions were rejected that year as well as the following year (and rightfully so), and after I had temporarily lost faith and had drowned my angst in caramel macchiatos, I started to actually look at my writing for what it was missing.

Without the suggestions from the Polyphony HS editors, I can safely admit that I never would have known how to approach creative work. The edits were helpful and honest. They suggested and shaped, complimented and critiqued, and in the cases of two of my poems, offered such exquisitely worded comments that I push-pinned them to the corkboard of my desk. Now on the other side of the rejection and acceptance letters, I think the reason I love to edit for Polyphony H.S. as much as I do is because I know how much it can truly impact the writers.

High school is a weird and wonderful time, mostly filled with experiences that can only be described with expletives, expressive hand gestures or exclamation points. We find our voices, our idiosyncrasies. We find out that what we hate is sometimes independent of what our parents hate, and we find out that what we love surprises even ourselves. We discover free verse and villanelles, we understand our pitfalls in terrible metaphors and our successes in sardonic first person. We discover who we are, as writers and as humans. Luckily for writers, this is the time when the moments are ripe.

The ability to influence other writers at this time (and allow their mistakes and triumphs in prose, poetry, and other critiques to influence editors as well) is invaluable. It is this shared experience that keeps me editing.

Editor of the Week, Sejal Jain
Interview by Genre Editor and Director of Editor Development, Mehr Singh

One of Polyphony’s many talented editors, Sejal Jain, is a sophomore in love with writing and the creativity it offers her. As Sejal explains, her motivation to be a writer and editor comes from “the knowledge that I’m contributing to the field of creative writing by simply giving someone my genuine advice and sharing what I’ve learned from my own experience with writing.” We had the chance to get to know Sejal a bit more and understand what makes her a wonderful Polyphony Genre Editor.

Q: When did you get interested in writing?

A: I’ve been writing ever since I was young. Frankly, I have no idea what got me “interested” in writing at first- I kind of just picked up a pen and wrote a very long winded, trite poem about lush green hills and sparkling blue seas or something like that. However, my interest was spurred by my love of books, especially fiction, and my increasing appreciation for good craft as I grew older. It was only a couple years ago that I was formally introduced to professional writing that existed outside of novel writing, including anthologies, poetry collections, and lit mags, and it was then that I really fell in love with both poetry and short story.

Q: What do you love most about Polyphony?

A: I think the greatest thing about Polyphony H.S. is the encouraging environment it creates for high school writers and editors in allowing them to experience the professional literary world for themselves. It steps outside the stigma of unfeeling or impersonal literary magazines and publishers sending off standard rejection letters with characteristically stoic expressions. Rather, the magazine and the editors it is comprised of, empowers young writers around the world to find and value their creative voice. It’s also clearly reflected by the amount of feedback that any Polyphony editor will give to a writer, regardless of their rejection or acceptance- feedback that is honest, thoughtful, intuitive, and conducive to creative thinking.

Q: What motivates you about being an editor?

A: There are a few main things that motivate me as an editor. The first stems from my response to the first question, and that is the knowledge that I’m contributing to the field of creative writing by simply giving someone my genuine advice and sharing what I’ve learned from my own experience with writing. Personally, I think that that’s probably the most valuable thing that any one person can offer to another. That idea especially applies to the literary community. The second reason is because the editing process, when applied to pieces that are not my own, informs my own writing quite a bit. When I spend time picking up on imagery, structure, depth, and originality, I am able to use that critical eye much more effectively while editing my own work. Understanding perspectives is absolutely key in writing, and being an editor allows you to actively harness that ability.

Q: What genre of writing do you enjoy the most?

A: Although I like to say I love all genres equally, nothing gets me like an incredibly well written poem.

Q: What is the most important thing you have taken away from working with Polyphony?

A: I think the most important thing I’ve taken away from Polyphony H.S. is an experience, rather than a lesson- and that’s the writing it publishes in every volume. I remember first coming across the magazine and finding myself literally dumbfounded by how much truth had been compressed and compounded into those pages. The pieces that Polyphony publishes are not your everyday finds. They will hit you, hard. They are revealing and submissive and volatile all at once, crafted impeccably, and worked into the kind of art that you will stubbornly remember. It has inspired me to grow as a writer myself, as I know it has done for a plethora of writers my age, and I love this magazine for that.

Q: What are your other interests and activities?

A: Outside of writing and editing, I’m an avid participant in Speech & Debate and various science and engineering competitions- yes, I know, nerd stereotypes abound. I love any kind of reading, biking, traveling, watching movies, puzzles, spending time with friends and family, meeting new people, and learning new things on a day-to-day basis.

A Letter to Grownups
from the co-founder and artistic director of Polyphony HS

Some time after April 15, 2010, the deadline for submissions for this issue, I met a friend
and poet, Laura Van Prooyen, for a cup of coffee. During her days as a graduate student
Laura spent a semester studying with the poet Heather McHugh. As I spoke with Laura
about my work with Polyphony HS, she told me that morning what Heather once said
about poetry. “Poetry is not our occasions,” McHugh said. “It’s what we do with our
occasions.”

I’m taking some liberty with McHugh’s statement—it’s at least twice-paraphrased—but
I’ve thought much about it while putting the finishing touches on this volume of
Polyphony HS.

I have read every one of the 1, 076 submissions that crossed my laptop this year, and
each one of them is a kind of testament to McHugh’s statement.
It is easy, perhaps, to dismiss the occasions of the young—we have lived three and four
and five times as long as they. How much can they possibly have gone through at
fourteen? we ask. How much at eighteen?

It is easier, still, perhaps, to dismiss the art of the young. This is as true, I think, for those
of who have studied craft as for those who have not. How much can they possibly know at
this age? we ask.

Most of us know, though, that we are fools to dismiss their occasions of disconnection:
the divorces and breakups and fallings and partings and dyings, small and large, and their
occasions of connection as well: their births and crushes and loves and risings; these
stories comprise their lives as certainly as they comprise our own.

But we are even greater fools to dismiss their attempts at making art—at doing something
with their occasions, for we cannot speak of our hope for a better world, we cannot speak
of our interest in the human gain if, at the same time, with the same mouth, we dismiss
the art of the young.

Not every one of the 1,076 submissions that came to us this year made poetry, made art,
made beauty of the occasions of their young lives, but the origins of these attempts—the
beginnings of these seventy-nine published works in your hands, as well as the 997
pieces that aren’t published here—represent the occasions of the young.

But here’s the thing: each of the 1,076 submissions we received this year represents an
attempt of a teenager to make art of life, to put words—precise and beautiful—to the
thing urging for release within. And in that way every submission we receive is
something to be celebrated, something to be recognized, is some kind of triumph.
And despite the ever-changing, ever-foggy, ever-uncertain world I wake up to every day,
this single certainty continues to fill me with hope: there are countless young poets and
writers out there who are looking for some poetic and literary value in their occasions,
trying to turn the beautiful and lovely and dark and troubled occasions of their young
lives into something that makes sense.

It is this sense of the value and import and triumph of every submission that we expect
our editors—all high school students from around the country—to understand when they
sit down to edit and comment on the fiction, poetry, and nonfiction we receive from
around the world. Through our National Editor Training (NET) workshops, our online
editorial workshops, and through our continuing feedback to their editorial commentary
throughout the reading season, we impress upon our editors the significance, the value,
the triumph, of every submission that we receive. We expect our editors to honor that.
We expect it. And yet, every day I am still surprised and delighted and heartened when
one of our editors says something like, “I am ready to fight for this poem.”
Or when I find something like this in the internal message box from one of our editors:

I’m not crazy about this one, but that’s not because I don’t like it. I enjoyed it the
way I enjoy eating scrambled eggs. They taste nice and they do the job, but most
of the time I’d rather have cake. Or a spicy burrito, or something. And maybe it’s
just me and that I’d rather get my teeth drilled than face bad line breaks, but the
line structuring here bugged me considerably. Especially because it’s supposed to
be in an older style. But, back to the egg analogy, which is horrid but I’ll stick to
it anyway, regardless of the fact that most people don’t go crazy for scrambled
eggs, the writer made some pretty darn good scrambled eggs. Great language,
and plus, the grammar’s good to go. Honestly, I’m pretty much neutral over its
acceptance, but I guess that typically means that other people reading it would
also feel pretty much neutral about it. Which isn’t the kind of feeling you want to
get from poetry.

That’s a response from a high school editor in California to the poem of a high school
student in New York. And it’s as care-filled and thoughtful a response as dozens that
come across my desk every day.

This magazine started with limited funding from a reluctant source who promised the
funding would be short-lived, and who warned me that “these things last for two or three
years and die when the funding is pulled.”

That was six volumes ago, three years after the funding was pulled. And though I wasn’t
quite sure what impact Polyphony HS would have when we started it, I cannot be
convinced that there’s a more important literary magazine in the world. And it’s as
important to the thousands of young writers who have submitted to us since 2004, as it is
to the hundreds of editors who have served on our staff in that same stretch of time.
Purchase a copy of Polyphony HS on your nightstand or your dresser or on the cabinet in
the dining room—somewhere you’ll see it every day. Read one story or essay a poem a
day and see what some of the young minds and hearts are doing with their occasions.
You’ll have read the issue cover to cover in less than three months. And when you’re
done with it, put it in the hands of a kid who writes or a kid who reads—a kid with
occasions. Or put it in the hands of a grownup—a writer or poet, maybe. Let her wonder
over it. Let him wish there was something like this around when she was a kid.
Billy Lombardo

(Okay, I just spent 10 minutes trying to think up a dashingly witty intro, and this sentence is about all I’ve got.) Well, we did it! You did it! Woohoo! Volume VI is finally on its way, and you mind-boggling writers gave us a mind-boggling year trying to figure out what was going to be in it. Being a contemporary poetry junkie, I (foolishly) thought I’d seen it all – but regardless of how much Simic, Strand, Ashbery, and whatever other big poetry names I read, what I realized through editing this year was that there’s so much more to poetry I’ll never experience if I keep only reading the work of people 40, 50, even 60 years older than me. I’d missed the whole point. Poetry can and should be as big, as small, as old and most definitely as young as you want it to be. It’s a freedom, it’s a necessity, it’s a desperate attempt to make sure something, anything is snatched away safely from the jaws of time and space – but whatever it is, it’s not something you can catch and stuff into a box. The poems this year showed me a rawer, braver side to poetry that I was never expecting, and there were so many great surprises: a sestina that was the best I’d ever laid eyes on, a couple of adventurous prose poems, a piece so subtle it almost didn’t exist, an artsy rant that made me love it for its bad manners. That’s not to say that everything I came across was a “good” poem, but everything I came across did show me something about how our generation yearns to express itself, and why it wants to express itself in the way it does. You guys taught me so much about how to read and understand poetry for all that it can possibly be, not just what it has been. So, to all of you, thanks for the ride!

That being said, “all that [poetry] can possibly be” doesn’t mean that any collection of words is a poem, let alone a good one. The large majority of the poems that needed more work weren’t suffering from a lack of creativity or potential at all- what they needed instead was just a better understanding of how to manipulate and communicate through poetry. Time for some tips! The three common myths I’ll be pinpointing concern misused redundancy/repetition, having description and imagery as the sole mission of a poem, and disregarding sentence structure because “poetry is art”.

Myth: Repetition of important lines helps to emphasize the direction of a free-verse poem.

Fact: Generally speaking, repeated lines are much less powerful than pushing the poem forward with new, constructive material.

I used to be an avid hater of poetry. To tell the truth I can’t really blame myself; the one poetry lesson I remember having in school consisted of the teacher showing us how chorus-like repetition is an ubiquitous, extremely useful poetical tool. Generally, in free verse it is actually far from, except in cases where the attitude of the message or narrator needs a certain listless or exasperating edge. More often than not, well, what can a conspicuously repeated line say that you haven’t already said? They’re sort of like lazy dogs. They sit around not really doing anything, and they’re always in the middle of the hallway, preventing you from getting where you want to get.

So try not to say something if you’ve already said it, especially in a genre where negative space and simplicity are prized. A key feature of poetry is that it “speaks against an essential backdrop of silence. It is almost reluctant to speak at all, knowing that it can never fully name what is at the heart of its intention”, as James Tate once wrote. Put words down sparingly, but suck out as much meaning from each word you put down, rather than putting words down generously and assuming that your general idea will be presented somewhere along the way. Before you put down any line, ask yourself the following questions: Does this line have a specific and irreplaceable role in both the immediate context and big picture? Does it contribute something that no other line contributes? Is it doing its share of the work in shaping the poem towards the final goal, or is it just along for the ride? (Of course, this advice is entirely applicable to catching redundant lines as well.) If the answers are yes, the precise direction of a poem will feel much more controlled and purposeful.

Unlike listening to a pop song with a chorus, reading literature requires that the reader actively pursue a poem, not just passively intake it. Making a reader go through chorus-like repetitions doesn’t come off as catchy; a lot of times it feels more like the writer ran out of constructive things to say. The great thing is that really short poems, e.g. less than 10 lines, are just as legitimate as really long poems, so it’s totally fine if what you have to say comes off strongest in just a handful of words. It’s a much more powerful alternative than unnecessarily tossing in repetition or redundancy to make it longer.

Myth: Detailed description and imagery are all you need for a good poem.

Fact: Detailed description and imagery are all you need for a good photographic painting. A poem should communicate something.

Description and imagery! They’re paraded as creative writing 101, and they certainly are in a sense, but they are by no means all you need to craft a poem. Of course, a great poem can be inspired by beautiful scenery or whatnot, but before even thinking about brainstorming phrases for detailed description or imagery, try nailing down exactly what inspired you about whatever it is you saw. It should be something less obvious than just the physical aesthetics of what you saw, e.g. the ideas it inspired, how it symbolizes something else, or simply the feeling that the sight gave you (and if that’s the case, try to dig beyond just “sad”, “angry”, “happy”, etc.). Make this the ultimate mission of your poem, and use imagery and description to cultivate and help push along this mission – but avoid making imagery and description the mission itself. Poetry is, at its heart, a form of communication, which is different from seeing a photo or painting. Details can be used to highlight certain sentiments, attitudes, or narrative direction, not just complete an image. An example:

The sky is white. The pallid light

hits here and there, crinkling your image

of the silver pencil canister. Your glasses

badly need cleaning, you realize. The apple slices

left on the counter have browned since you last

looked there, and it’s much too painful

to take them from their perpetual

solitude.

This is just a snippet of a poem, so we don’t know what the writer’s full mission was. However, we can sense something more complex than just the picture the writer presents. You don’t just picture the sky, the glasses, and the apple slices; through the specific wordings and phrasings of the description, the writer is actively herding the reader towards a specific feeling. However subtle they may be, the phrases “crinkling your image”, “your glasses badly need cleaning”, “the apple slices … have browned”, and “perpetual solitude” sculpt the feelings of blighted or weak vision, prolonged time, and isolation. Farther on in this poem the writer ties together these feelings into a more constructive statement, but even in these few lines there is an added dimension, an added “mission” to the description that you couldn’t just see in a photo. It’s that slippery, more complex dimension that poets should try to capture in imagery, not just the physical details of the picture itself, however stunning they are.

Myth: Poetry is about uninhibited expression, so correct syntactical, grammatical, and punctuational structures can be ignored.

Fact: Generally, ignoring syntactical, grammatical, and punctuational structures in poetry is about as communicative as ignoring them in everyday speech.

The great thing about poetry is that neither I nor anyone else can give a black and white definition of what makes a poem. So, really, if you want to write poetry and ignore SGP structures, there’s no reason why you can’t. But for poetry be accessible and communicative to others, there just can’t be distracting comma splices, missing periods, and fickle tense usage hanging around. There’s a simple analogy for this. If you’re going to have a conversation with anyone, you’re going to seem unfocused, clumsy, slightly rude and possibly even unintelligent if you purposely toss grammar down the drain. (If you want a poem to appear unfocused, clumsy, slightly rude or possibly even unintelligent, that’s of course a different matter – but in such a case the material and tone of the piece would also have to be in character.) Generally, to be able to speak honestly and coherently, a poem has to obey English conventions in the same way any other form of writing does, simply because funky or nonexistent SGP structures are distracting, and cannot convey the subtleties needed to make the tone feel human and genuine.

Of course, there are always exceptions, like the ones I mentioned above. The trick with these exceptions, as I alluded to, is that the poem in its entirety must conform its entire personality to make wacky SGP usage appear natural. Basically, the stylistic identity of a poem should not have multiple-personality disorder; if it’s aiming to create a certain attitude with unusual SGP structures, then that attitude should be present in every other aspect of the poem as well, so that the whole thing speaks as one unit. For instance, if you’re writing a solemn, haunting sort of poem, dropping periods and using sentence fragments would appear distinctly un-solemn, and probably not coherent enough to feel haunting. However, dropping periods and using sentence fragments work much better in the following poem snippet:

Syntax of rendition:

verb pilots the plane

adverb modifies action

verb force-feeds noun

submerges the subject

noun is choking

verb disgraced goes on doing

there are adjectives up for sale

now diagram the sentence

- from “Tonight No Poetry Will Serve” by

Adrienne Rich

Part of the reason lack of punctuation works here is that the poet’s mission in these lines is to pinpoint a “sinister side” of sentence structure in a very stark way that is completely devoid of emotion or inflection. I mentioned above that the subtleties of SGP structures help create a genuine, human tone, and the poet exploits this by using the lack of SGP structures to make a distinctly raw, almost empty, “un-human” tone. So in cases where you want to create an extremely alienated or barren feeling to a poem, disregarding SGP could help you out – but in the vast majority of cases, just stick to English conventions.

Some more notes:

1) You could write the bestest poem in the world, and still have it get rejected. An editing team is just as human as you are. We have our bad days, our grumpy moods, our times when we just can’t focus on a submission as much as it deserves because there are 20 jillion projects due the next day for school. Or, maybe your poem just happened to be the fifth one in a row popping up in an editor’s docket that had to do with cats, and that poor cat-drenched editor is so darn fed up with cats that you couldn’t even pay him to accept it. Don’t pay any mind to a rejection. Well, read the comments, but then go prove us wrong.

2) We’re all teenagers. We all have way more than enough heartbroken, love-dazed pop songs on our iPods. So if you can name a mainstream pop song that accurately reflects the style and/or material of your poem, we’re probably not interested.

3) Back to 1). Those icky things called final projects and IB/AP exams are just as much a part of your life as they are of ours. The truth is that a disproportionately huge amount of submissions comes pouring in right before our deadline, and it just goes according to logic that not as much attention and opportunity can be given to each one when a) there are so many and b) it’s the Nightmare Quarter of Testing. By all means, if you finish the final draft of a totally genius submission the night of April 15th, submit it – but if you’ve got good stuff earlier in the year, don’t wait until the last minute to send it to us. You face less competition that way.

Keep writing, and keep submitting. We’re the next generation of the literary world – and that’s one big charge.

- Clara Fannjiang, Poetry Genre Editor

One of the most important constants I have found in my time as a Polyphony HS editor has been that if the author does not know what they want to write, the final product will turn out poorly. This may seem obvious, but many a piece has come through the submission manager without meeting this criterion. Knowing what you want to write includes knowing what you want to convey to the reader, what your own strengths and weaknesses are, and what type of piece you wish to create. I will quickly focus on the last of these factors.

In my opinion, nearly all pieces of fiction fit along a one dimensional scale. At one end of the scale is “character/setting.” This means a focus on developing complex and realistic characters that can be related to or giving the reader a great feel for a specific geographic region. The highest purpose of this type of piece is simply to use the power of language as a chisel to create a skillful sculpture of words. What the reader may take from that sculpture is secondary. Don Delillo’s “Underworld” is a great example of this type of piece (for those readers of last week’s blog, by the way, “Underworld” is a very strong title). Delillo certainly develops themes, etc., but he is really focused on the language itself and the world he forms.

At the other end of the scale is “philosophy/ideas.” This means a focus on the overarching themes. The piece is trying to be convincing and didactic. The individual pieces are really not as important as the overall concept (which is somewhat ironic, given the following example). Most political writings fall into this category. Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” (Amazing title) is a perfect example. The writing is not “pretty” and the characters have one dimension. But you will not read any ten pages of the work without knowing what Rand is trying to say.

There are two caveats to the above points. First, almost all works lie somewhere in the middle of the scale. You should not try to force your piece to one side. Just know where it fits along the scale. Second, it is not necessary to know exactly what your goal is before you begin to write anything. Sometimes just a vague idea will do to get started. By the final draft, however, if you still don’t know the point of what you yourself wrote, it might be time to go back to the drawing board. I speak from experience, both as a reader of work that should have been better directed and as a common traveler myself from the conclusion of a piece back to the drawing board.

A wise English teacher once gave me some good advice about creative writing. He told me that the most important parts of a work are the title, the first line, and the last line. That is what the (casual) reader is going to remember. (If he is right, I am already 2/3 of the way through the most important part of this blog entry.) In this post, I want to focus on the first aspect of that triumvirate: the title.

During my time as an editor at Polyphony, I have encountered many a good work that was encumbered by an unworthy title. In the case of a shorter piece, or one whose meaning is otherwise ambiguous, a lackluster title can even be the difference between a successful overall piece and one that falls short. But what makes a good title? I believe that the power of a title really comes down to two things: its pertinence and its creativity.

A good title should reveal something important about the piece. It is not appropriate to add an abstractly good title to a piece simply because you always wanted to name your story “the son and the moon.” If the exciting/witty title has no discernible connection to the piece, it should not be used no matter how clever. Similarly, it is not advisable to reference a minute aspect of the piece in the title. Just because you think it makes the work should more interesting. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is a perfect example of a failure to adhere to this rule. “The Goblet of Fire” does sound more intriguing than the correct title of the book (in my opinion, based on how Rowling named all the other books), “The Tri-Wizard Tournament.” Naming the book “The Goblet of Fire” is like naming the first book in the series, “Harry Potter and the Sorting Hat.” The title should apply to the piece in some way, preferably illuminating or highlighting the main idea. (Who is to say how many more books Rowling would have sold had she named them all properly?!)

A good title will not just reference a key portion of the work; it will expand upon it in a surprising or insightful manner. “Treasure Island” is pertinent but does not add much to a reader’s understanding or enjoyment of the piece. We know from reading the book that it has to do with a journey to Treasure Island. The title does not provide a deeper insight or a clever phrasing of what is contained within. Titles that break the second rule can work, but they cannot be great. Shakespeare was a big fan of rule one; not so much of rule two.  “Hamlet” is about, well, Hamlet.  “King Lear” is about King Lear.

From the above, it might appear as though the search for a great title is a hopeless quest. If Rowling and Shakespeare cannot pick a good name, you have to ask yourself, “are there any titles that ARE good?” I am here to tell you that although it is certainly a heady task, great titles have been achieved before. “Infinite Jest”, by David Foster Wallace, is a great title. It works on multiple levels. Most superficially, it refers to one of the main plot points of the novel, the search for the video titled “Infinite Jest.” One level above this, it connects the book itself with the contents of the tape. Furthermore, in an even higher realm outside of the work, it references the incredibly long length of the book and the less-than-conclusive ending at the end of those 1200 pages. “Gravity’s Rainbow,” by Thomas Pynchon, is another great title. It references the importance of missiles in the book itself as well as providing a unique and intelligent metaphorical phrase.

Although I am graduating and will therefore be unable to experience the Polyphony submissions of the coming years, I will continue to read the publication. I am confident that the level of teen writing will only increase from the excellence I have already encountered. I am sorry that I will not be able to witness first hand this improvement in skill and, hopefully, after this post, titling.

Seth Perlman, outgoing Editor-in-Chief

When the social networking site Twitter launched in March of 2006, teenagers received it with a resounding mixture of confusion and dismissal. “What’s the point?” and “I don’t understand it” became the most common response to Twitter-focused conversations in the cafeteria. But beyond the walls of high schools around the world, professionals—musicians, politicians, and actors—signed up to self-promote.

A longtime fan of standard blogging, I found Twitter and fell instantly in love. Many of my peers scoffed at my new toy, and when asked why I “wasted my time” with Twitter, I had no response more eloquent than “because I like it.”

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Beginning writers take great pride in their individual spaces on the web, whether it is their Facebook page or their Gmail inbox, and I’m not exception. I meticulously plan each of my blog posts, always sure to use proper grammar and appropriate word choice. During my sophomore year, however, between final exams and the Polyphony HS submission deadline, I couldn’t find time to post. I had no new words to give my small virtual following. School had zapped my creativity, like it so often does during the busy months. I didn’t write for weeks.

Even after school let out for the summer, though, I didn’t rediscover my stories or characters. It seemed they had left me, and the emptiness rested, heavy in my chest. Even the arrival of summer camp, the one event I felt positive could change even the worst situation, didn’t help. Disillusionment hung over me until a girl from my cabin asked for my help with one of her stories. The mild surprise I felt at discovering her shared desire to put pen to paper sparked something—a sort of warmth. I approached her story with my hypercritical eye, and that’s all it took. Her words filled the part of my brain that, for months, I had considered dead. I began a list of suggestions for her. I imagined possible subplots for her characters, too, though I didn’t write them down. I felt so in touch with the writer I had been just a few months earlier that I picked up my cell phone and tweeted.

The first tweet was about the look on my cabin-mate’s face when she saw the long list of suggestions in my hand and the red pen marks all over her story. At first, I felt guilty, but as I continued tweeting about it, I found myself becoming more engrossed in the thoughts that may have gone through her head at that moment. I had begun a short story based on her reaction when I realized the power behind those 140-character status updates. Writing begins with casual observations, and Twitter allows people a place to publish them. Each tweet had reinforced my obsession with human emotion, which led to the creation of that short story.

To a non-writer, careful observation may not seem so important, but I pray that other young writers don’t think that way. In elementary school, I always asked visiting authors where they got their story ideas, and the answer was always the same. “Everywhere,” they would say. Then, I considered such an answer a cop-out, assuming they didn’t want to share their secret, but now I understand. My story, which focused on the intricate relationship between stepsiblings, emerged from my cabin-mate’s disappointment. Ideas are everywhere, and taking careful note of the life around me helped me discover that.

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Back on my feet now, it would be easy to knock Twitter, but I don’t. My friends still say I’m indulging myself, publishing my thoughts on the Internet for an audience of strangers. My friends have asked who reads my tweets, and honestly, I don’t know. I have 71 followers, and I haven’t met most of them. But their anonymity isn’t important—their presence is. Not knowing them allows me to publish my tweets without fear of judgment, and although that was just as essential to my development as a writer as that first tweet in early July, but I won’t dwell on it.

That’s a lesson for another day.

Shelby Brody

@shelbyiswriting

The ability to create a unique and captivating voice is essential. Voice is composed of multiple things: vocabulary, tone, sentence structure, connotation, etc. It’s how your words sound on paper. For example, say you are reading a story written in first person. As you read, you should hear the words in your head as if the narrator were talking aloud. Sometimes, it’s a voice you’ve never heard before, something the author created.

Voice can also be third-person narration. This would be a reflection of the author’s style more than a reflection of the author’s character. Though the two are different, the skill necessary to create either is similar. Every author strives to generate a unique voice. It brings the writing alive.

Creating a voice is tricky. If you hear the narrator’s voice in your mind, it’s easier for the readers to hear it in theirs. You can learn by reading other authors’ works, as well. Some classic examples are J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Practice, like with everything else, always helps, so I’m going to give you an assignment of sorts to help you practice developing a voice:

Choose one of the following sentences as a starting point for developing a voice. The piece needn’t be long, just make it a sketch (300 words or so). Look for clues in the sentence’s intonation, word choice and sentence structure to continue the development of the voice.

1.) You simply must understand that I am no imposter.

2.) There ain’t nothin’ more beautiful than a noble deed.

3.) The tender clouds opened, permitting the dazzling sunlight to pour on to my glorious face.

4.) The rain, as it always did, soaked through my clothes and soiled my shoes, mocking me and telling me life could get worse than I thought.

If you’d like to share, feel free to leave it in the comment box. Have fun!

My middle school education was mediocre at best. All students were treated exactly the same. There were no grades, just checks and minuses. The more advanced students did the same work as the least advanced students. I left middle school not knowing what I was good at (or had the potential to be good at), and that was the biggest problem. If I’d known I had potential as a writer, I would have started sooner.

For me, the thought process came before the writing skills. I had always prided myself on my imagination and creativity. This was what initially sparked my interest in writing. When I was twelve, I saw the movie, “Finding Neverland,” about J.M. Barrie, author of the novel, Peter Pan. The film is about the family who inspired Barrie to write the novel, and how he inspired them in return. One of the boys in the family, who Peter was named after, had a huge imagination. Barrie showed him how to put his imaginative thoughts on paper by buying the boy a journal to write down his every idea. After seeing the film, I asked my mom to buy me a fancy journal for my thoughts. Ever since, I’ve kept journals to record concepts for novels, or short stories, that I hoped to eventually write.

I still wasn’t a full-fledged writer at that point. Stories fascinated me – I read more books than I could count – but I wasn’t sold on the act of writing itself until freshmen year of high school.

We had just turned in our first essays of the year; my English teacher posted unclear sentences from each on the board. Our assignment: clarify them. I was immediately able to reorganize them in my head, and was first to raise my hand each time. After about the fifth one or so, my teacher stopped and addressed the class: “Wow. The one thing you guys should know about Rae is that she has tremendous strength as a writer.” This blew me away. In fact, it’s one of my most vivid high school memories; certainly one of my happiest. I had never really known I could write before then. After that, I really got going. I was writing all the time.

Now, instead of doodling in my math notebook, I write. When I’m upset, I write. When I’m happy, I write. Nothing pleases me more than getting an idea and flushing it out on paper. It all plays out so clearly in my mind, kind of like a movie, but so much more personal and internal.

My friends don’t get my obsession with writing, reading, and editing. When I get an idea for a story, I immediately grab my journal and write it down. After I read a great book, I have to tell an English teacher about it. Every creative piece I write, I have my parents and friends read. You can never stop developing as a writer, so I do the best I can to make progress.

The great thing about writing is that it’s accessible. All you need is a pen and paper. You’re in charge of everything you write. And how often are you completely in charge of something