Runestone has been selected as the winner for content in this year’s Association of Writers and Writing Program’s National Program Directors’ Prize for Undergraduate Literary Magazines.

The judge for content, Sharon Dolin, Director, Writing About Art in Barcelona, chose Runestone  saying, “There is an impressive array of bold student work with a generous number of writers from the Midwest. In all three genres: from creative nonfiction to fiction to poetry, this journal demonstrates a consistently high level of undergraduate writing. The editors have achieved the standard they set for themselves of publishing an online journal that ‘can maintain’ and possibly ‘exceed the standards of print.’ The undergraduate work showcased here eschews sentimentality, and in many cases, takes an unflinching look at painful subject matter. Runestone is an all-around inspiring read!”

An announcement of winners will appear in the September 2017 issue of the Writer’s Chronicle as well as its website.

In just its third year, Runestone takes seriously its role in creating the next generation of editors and publishing talented undergraduate writers. The journal offers mentorship and invaluable hands-on experience of the publishing process for both its editors and its authors.

While the submission period is open from April 1- Oct. 1, Runestone’s editorial process takes place each fall during our upper-level undergraduate course “Introduction to Literary Publishing: Runestone.” The class is a collaborative effort among its faculty-editor; associate editors (who are graduate students in our MFA program); and an undergraduate student editorial board.

Congratulations to our undergraduate contributors nation-wide, our undergraduate editorial board, graduate student associate editors, and staff here at The Creative Writing Programs of Hamline University. Special gratitude to  founding faculty editor, Katrina Vandenberg, whose brilliant vision and pure tenacity put Runestone into orbit.

As writers, we all know that a first draft of a piece is far from the final product. It often takes multiple drafts before you reach a point of satisfaction. Even if you’re a big planner, like me, you will go through at least five drafts before you are remotely happy with the result. This is especially true of longer fiction pieces, since it is impossible to catch everything in a novel that spans over hundreds of pages. But no matter how many drafts it takes before you’re officially done, we all must go through the two major editing processes.

The first edits you make to a draft are more often than not big picture edits. When I say big picture I mean you will change the major content of your piece. This includes but is not limited to:

• Plot–What sections are absolutely necessary to the story? What doesn’t add anything to the overarching story?

• Point of view–Is the point of view you currently have working? Have you tried writing from a different perspective?

• Pacing–What sections need to be sped up or slowed down?

• Scenes–Are there any unnecessary scenes? Do some scenes need to be lengthened or shortened?

• Characters–Do the characters experience any development throughout the piece? Are some characters even necessary to the plot?

• Structure–Should this chapter really be here? Maybe a particular section needs to come earlier in the story.

When you have finished with these edits, you might realize your piece has changed dramatically from the first draft. Don’t worry, it is completely normal for it to seem like you have a totally new story. For example, I recently looked at a potential first chapter of a story and realized the only part of it I liked spanned a total of two pages. But those two pages are now the foundation of a completely new and better story. While you have made many major changes to the piece, you will find that the important stuff remains.

Once you have completed the big picture edits, you will move on to line edits. These are the edits you make to the individual lines of a story. You remember all those spelling and grammar rules you learned in middle school? It’s time to put them to use. Making these edits will cut back on unnecessary words and sentences, helping the piece flow more smoothly. Like Dr. Seuss said, “So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.”

• Spelling and grammar–Have you spelled every word correctly? Is your grammar consistent?

• Sentences–Can you combine any sentences? Would a paragraph make more sense without a certain sentence?

• Words–Are you using too many words? Are you using a certain word correctly?

Although it may seem tedious, both types of editing are crucial for drafting a piece you are happy with. They may take time and energy, and your final product may be entirely different than the piece you started with, but these edits will likely save you embarrassment in the future. Because even if no piece is perfect, these edits make the difference between a good and a great piece.

Music as a form of storytelling has been part of human culture since time immemorial, and something as simple as a few note can tell us a lot about a person or a world. We can watch a love story unfold over piano with sparing use of instruments like in Pixar’s Up, or a sophisticated piece to illustrate a massive battle as in Star War’s Duel of the Fates. Horns providing a gravitas to the hair-raising strings and amazing orchestral work providing a deep sense of scale that can immerse us in its own scene. I dare you to put it in on during your chores and see if it doesn’t make the ordinary feel epic.

The rise of storytelling musicians for me came from a genre I had written off many years ago due to the rise of the gangsta mentality that had pervaded much of the hip-hop genre in the early 2000’s. That glorification and false imagery of an unattainable lifestyle wasn’t a story so much as an ad, thinly veiled endorsements, dangled in front of poor youth like myself .

But what has really struck me are the newcomers of the genre harkening back to the roots of hip-hop and its richest storytellers. Chief among them is Kid Cudi, whose work circles so much around depression and coping, both mental and physical, to get out of our own minds. In a time when suicide rates are at an all-time high among youth, Kid Cudi is truly one of the most timely artists to come up in this century, and this music is the soul food we need.

The resurgence of artists deciding to go beyond just making the happy sounds and chest-beating anthems, looped ad nauseum for more plays on the radio, and getting back to the basics of music as a device to tell stories. To me, most of that impetus comes from our nation where storytellers have to provide the guidance and stability that people need to get through daily life. The harshest realities of life can have their edges softened with a good line of verse to hold in the heart through the worst of times.

What caught my ear, were the sounds of Nujabes, a DJ out of Japan. Through pieces about his homeland, Nujabes was switching up the stories being told in hip-hop and music not only there but here as well. One of the most reflective pieces of the split for me came in the form of “Think Different”, a thoughtful commentary on the rap industry as a whole, the content of rappers’ characters, their lyrics and especially, their treatment of women.

But Nujabes really struck me in his scoring one of the most critically acclaimed anime of all time, Samurai Champloo. This unique and amazing score score narrates the story of samurai at the end of an era through hip-hop.

These kinds of soothing stories are what the world has been crying for, and the artists are here now. Here are my essential album recommendations for story in music. Hope you enjoy.

Nujabes – Metaphorical Music

Kid cudi – Passion, Pain & Demon slayin’

Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly

-DJ MuFu signing off

prompt: verb. assist or encourage (a hesitating speaker) to say something

American author Jonah Lehrer once said, “Creativity is a spark. It can be excruciating when we’re rubbing two rocks together and getting nothing. And it can be intensely satisfying when the flame catches and a new idea sweeps around the world.” Even the most accomplished writers, authors, and creative minds need an occasional nudge when attempting to generate new work. Prompts work especially well as they give the writer license to play, to experiment, and provide a mechanism for transcending writer’s block.

To overcome my own current state of ‘stuck,’ I enlisted the help of writing professors and cohorts at Hamline. Deborah Keenan, Jenniey Tallman, and Katrina Vandenberg offered their tried-and-true writing prompts which they themselves have used and continue to use when creative gridlock leaves the page blank. So, grab a pencil and piece of paper and let’s get started!

The first prompt is from Deborah Keenan: http://deborahkeenan.com/

“Know that your piece of writing can only have three seasons. Know that it must have only one creature. Know that an important elder in your life is going to say one sentence, only, in this piece. Know that you must write from a landscape you know very well. Know that you can only use one color despite the fact you may be deep in reverie about three seasons. Know that the first draft is in the lyric ‘I’ voice, but that the piece must immediately be rewritten in third person. Know that you may not need a plot, but a narrative will be helpful, and a kind of atmosphere must be created for the reader to live inside of as they read.”

Now for a different sort of prompt, requiring your scissors and glue, here is Word Scramble from Jenniey Tallman:

1. Begin with a quote. Flip through a magazine and find one; cut it out.
2. Cut the quote into lines.
3. Cut each line into words.
4. Scramble the words. Play with the words.
5. Create poems: do not allow yourself to be overwhelmed by sense-making. Go with the flow. Let your language get blown apart.
6. Arrange your words on the page and glue them down. See if you can use every single word and make no more than three poems.

And finally, from our own Katrina Vandenberg, Executive Editor: http://katrinavandenberg.com

1. Take two subjects you’ve been meaning to write poems about.
2. Write them on top of the same piece of paper, with a line drawn down the middle between the two.
3. Take notes on each subject, on its own half of the page.
4. After you’ve done this, giving each subject 5-10 minutes of your time, look at the two lists and ask yourself: is there a metaphor I can force between these two subjects?

“In one fashion or another, the prompt always works, because our minds have evolved to be meaning-making machines. I enjoy doing this because it allows me to be surprised by my own thoughts, and when there’s a surprise for the writer, there’s often a surprise for the reader (as Frost would say). I think the exercise works especially well when at least one of the two subjects is memory-based, because our memories tend to be familiar to us, and forcing a metaphor between some aspect of that memory and the second subject allows me to see familiar thoughts in new ways.”

Katrina reiterates the points which make prompts so effective: they are meant for play, surprise, and maybe even magic, but only if your brain stays out of the equation. I hope one of these prompts—or those found in Deborah’s book From Tiger to Prayer and on Deborah’s or Jenny’s websites (deborahkeenan.com/teacher or jennieytallman.com)—will help you if you’re feeling stuck or uninspired, and perhaps provide inspiration for all areas of your life.

-Special thanks to Deborah Keenan for allowing us to use her collage as our feature image.