Whitney with a favorite author, James Dashner, at the teen writing conference. All of the authors donated their time for the day long conference that taught teens how to become life long writers. Whitney loved the conference and came home on fire about the novel she has been writing. Here is an essay that she wrote for the conference:ALPACA
They say you are in trouble when the alpaca puts its ears back. I’m inclined to agree. At least I was, when I was holding onto the back of a baby alpaca and an adult put her ears back at me. At the time I was living in New Zealand. I was volunteering at an alpaca farm with one hundred plus animals. It was feeding time and we where trying to catch and separate all the babies from the herd so we could halter train them. We did this every Tuesday, but this time I did something wrong.
When you are catching an alpaca you want to get your arms around the base of its long neck. If you get that you have control of the animal. Then you can get a halter over its head and clip on a lead. Bet you didn’t know you can halter lead an alpaca did you? Well any way, you usually approach it from the front, but I approached it from the back. That was mistake number one. Mistake number two was grabbing two hand holds of fleece in my desperation. I had been trying to catch this one for fifteen minutes. And then I let out a triumphal yell to let everyone know I had finally caught her.
The end result was me being dragged across the corral, holding onto the back of a panicked alpaca. Ouch. To make matters worse when it finally slowed down, as to not crash in to the fence, an adult alpaca named Perfection came up. No doubt I looked like some fearsome predator that had attacked her grandbaby, holding onto its back, making it squeal in terror. I got a barrage of alfalfa cud spat in my face. Twice. Then she started kicking me! I had to high-tail it to the fence before she could get me again. Of course everyone was laughing their heads off as I vaulted over the rail. Perfection paced by the fence with a smug expression. Yes, alpacas can look very smug when they want to.
2 comments:
Sounds like a fun time! I love getting a boost of energy from a good conference. Although, I hope you don't become so consumed by writing that you don't want to babysit anymore :-)
sounds awesome! Was the conference connected with school? Or was it through another avenue? What was your greatest insight into writing?
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