Each summer I volunteer at the Page 15 Young Writer’s Summer Camp. This means each morning after I wake up and get ready, I mosey on over to the Urban Think! Bookstore to spend a few hours helping kids write their stories. The goal is to inspire and encourage little creative minds, but the truth is most of them are far more creative than I am.  Every time we do the fountain exercise I am reminded of this.

For the second year in a row now, we’ve gone to Lake Eola to do writing exercises. We have the kids spread out over the rocks on the far North-East side of the park and ask them to look at the fountain. Then we do a little speech about how there is no such thing as wrong (this is the word most of them have been brainwashed in school with) in personal writing and what creativity means. “It’s having the ability to write whatever you want. It’s freedom,” one of us will say. Then we’ll point to the fountain and say, “Like for example, the fountain–it can be whatever you want it to be. In fact, it might not be a fountain at all. It could be a planet, an island, a dinosaur egg hatchery–anything.” They look at us with big, curious eyes. They’ve never known what it’s like to be free, not yet.

Then we tell them to write about the fountain in their journals for five minutes. Afterwards, each of them stand up, one by one, and read what they wrote. There’s always one that blows me away. This week, it was Jori’s. She’s ten.

I hide all my deepest darkest secrets and treasures in my Fountain of Life. The fountain is my idea holder. It’s the secret that lies within me. It’s where I get my stories. It’s where I begin. I’m the fountain’s world. I’m alone. I am Jori. But that’s my real name. My other name started with that fountain and a duck.