The Creative Writing Club has a fun time writing and building connections, and is sponsored by English teacher Anne. Evans. The members meet through Google Classroom every two weeks.

The presidents come up with an open-ended prompt together and members write stories according to that prompt. Near the end of the meeting, members share their stories with each other. Sometimes they work on stories together. “Club members are free to write whatever they feel like, and about halfway through meetings people are free to share with each other what they wrote,” President Catherine Lim said.

The club also has special events. For example, last year there was a bake-off between club President Hannah Shapiro and a club member. “It’s guaranteed that in the club in general we tend to have wacky conversations and sometimes have bake-offs,” Lim said.

New members have joined and the first few meetings have gone well. The first prompt of the year was an introduction and club members came up with good stories to write about. “I actually really enjoyed the assignment, and I think that the assignment was a good icebreaker,” junior Yiorgo Zairis said.

Members get to know each other by sharing their writing. The members listen to stories about their experiences and enjoy the fiction that each member comes up with. They frequently push the boundaries of writing. “It’s not just talking, there’s also a lot of consideration for others’ work, and appreciation for parts of other’s work. It’s really positive and supportive, and that’s what I like about it,“ Evans said.

The presidents have a list of prompts and choose one to use each time the club meets. They add to this list when they get a prompt idea or use a prompt relating to an upcoming holiday. Sometimes the presidents search for prompts on websites like Tumblr. “It’s not super difficult, a writing prompt can range anywhere from being given a specific and weird situation that you must continue a story to being given a single word and you have to write a story that matches that theme,” Lim said.

The creative writing class and the club are similar in the core but different in the way that one writes. Since the creative writing class is taught by a teacher, the class tends to be more structured and focused, making it harder to build relationships. “Creative Writing club is more about self-generation, so the kids get a chance to try a whole range of writing, and not just limiting yourself to what you want to write,” Evans said.