A Poetic Pandemic
Last year in the Creative Writing Club, Covid-19 affected the number of members who joined. Now, the club has over twenty-five people, and is ready to show St. Charles High School how reading, writing and art can change lives.
Creative Writing Club in Ms. Ramsey’s classroom
Creative Writing Club is located in Ms. Ramsey’s room, A(206), and they meet from 2:30 PM to 3:30 PM. The main focus of the Creative Writing Club is to showcase the talents, artworks and creativity of St. Charles High School students. They achieve this by hosting challenges (with prizes!), publishing Blue and White Ink submissions, and right now, they’re planning on doing much more. Anybody is free to join at any time, and anybody outside of Creative Writing can submit their works to Blue and White Ink.
“We want to empower people as writers, help people share what they write, make them more comfortable with their writing, and just build a writing community,” Club Sponsor Tori Ramsey said.
The Creative Writing Club began a long time ago, and Ms. DeVoe was the club sponsor before Ramsey. After DeVoe retired, Ramsey took the spot as club sponsor. Despite this year being Ramsey’s second year as Club sponsor, she feels like it’s her first. Since COVID-19 strongly impacted the club last year, she and the club members were unable to experience the Creative Writing Club’s regular events and fundraisers.
“I think it was much harder for us to recruit. We did have a lot of people who participated passively in the club, but we didn’t have many active members. We had a lot of people who were virtual, so they couldn’t actively participate in meetings and things. And that put a damper on what we were able to achieve. But it did give us good advertising. And a lot of those virtual people are in-person now, which is nice,” Ramsey said.
Due to the lack of in person students in the Creative Writing Club last year, and the effects of COVID-19, they were not able to achieve the activities that they usually do. But now, with a larger community and more opportunities unstifled by COVID-19, they can participate in more events.
“This year, I’d like to see the club do writing competitions,” Club member Axel Underwood said.
Underwood joined the Creative Writing Club because he enjoys writing and looks up to his teacher, Mrs. Ramsey.
“I’m excited about, I don’t know, getting to meet new people,” Club member Melanie Mota-Luis said.
Mota-Luis joined the club because their friend invited them, and because they saw it as an opportunity to create more friends.
“I want the club to get submissions,” Club Discord Manager Amber Sutton said.
Sutton joined the Creative Writing Club two years ago, and they originally joined because they saw an advertisement for the club in Ramsey’s class. Sutton says that the Creative Writing Club last year was very different from the Creative Writing Club now. One of the biggest changes they’ve observed is the amount of people. They had four people in the club, Sutton recalls.
But now, the member count has skyrocketed, and club members are enjoying their time at the revived club. Last meeting, they had chocolate milk and cookies, and now, they’re planning fundraisers and events for the club.
“Right now I love that everyone who has shown up has been passionate about writing. Everyone has been very nice and accepting of everyone that has joined the club, and it’s just made out of good people,” Ramsey said.
Mota-Luis and Sutton both agree with this sentiment, stating that the club is accepting, kind and supportive to everybody.
“I feel that there’s like different people in the club. That they all have their different ideas and opinions,” Mota-Luis said.
If the community and kindness of the club wasn’t enough, Underwood provides another reason to enjoy the club.
“I like the snacks. Because who doesn’t like snacks?” Underwood said.
Creative Writing Club not only inspires its members to be kind, but also to be creative. The club offers writing theme challenges every one or two weeks, showcases writing on the Creative Writing Club Google Classroom, and also hosts an online booklet where St. Charles High School students can submit their artworks. The club even has a website, accredited to Alaina Gerdemann. Ramsey feels that the club not only inspires her creativity, but also inspires her as a teacher.
“I think it makes me think a lot more about creative writing class, but also about encouraging and inspiring the people who don’t like to write and what we can do to make that better.” Ramsey said.
Mota-Luis feels that seeing other’s ideas and works can give them inspiration for their creativity.
“Well, I get to see different ideas from very different people. And then that inspires me to come up with more ideas,” Mota-Luis said.
Both Sutton and Underwood also agree that the Creative Writing Club inspires them to write, learn and use their imagination. Sutton, Underwood, Mota-Luis and Ramsey also agree that any students at St. Charles High School who have created literature or art should submit their pieces to the Blue and White Ink publication.
“We always need artworks. And it does not matter if what you write is on theme. We still want what you write and we want to share that even just a piece of it. To broaden our horizons and to beef up our own publications, we would love that,” Ramsey said.
In the end, despite COVID-19, the Creative Writing Club and it’s love for literature and stories won, and now a creative, supportive community can flourish within the halls of St. Charles High.
