I turned up for our weekly workshop last Thursday feeling a bit apprehensive because there is always an element of the unknown with visiting experts and of course River's thing is poetry- and mine isn't.
It turned out to be a great workshop. River had us challenged from the moment we got started, with a variety of short exercises that kept us writing and thinking all the time. Here are some of the things she asked us to do:
1. A piece of freewriting beginning with the words....'I remember...'
2. One life- six words. Sum up a life in six words. Here are some examples:
Big mouth, small brain - big noise. (by David)
Alpacas are not my only hobby. (by Averil)
We looked at some examples of poetry and used them as models. But -luckily for me- I didn't have to write poetry. We were free to write in prose or to push the boundaries and write outside the box.
One of the best things that came out of River's visit was the distinction between 'additive writers' and 'subtractive writers'. Now, I've always been taught that it is not good to add to your writing. So when I say to people that I am editing and my word count is growing they tend to get upset with me and say, 'But when you're editing you should be cutting back!' Or they look at me with raised eyebrows as if I'm an oddity. It's true that I do cut back. All those horrible bits of overwriting go, along with the tautology and the repetition and all the other rubbish that needs to get pruned but I might add whole scenes, or patches of dialogue, an extra kiss, etc. Because of this I've always felt as if the way I write is unwriterly. Wrong somehow.
Of course it's easy to say that you should do whatever works for you and that it is different for everyone but the belief that what I was doing wasn't 'proper' editing always lurked at the back of my mind and gave me GUILT.
What River helped me do when she explained the distinction between additive and subtractive writing is free me to be me. I shouldn't need it I know, but what can I say- it helped.
I finally have a label. I belong! I am an additive writer. That means that I start with a framework and gradually build on it.
A subtractive writer, Brian for example, starts by writing tons and tons and then cutting back everything superfluous until they're happy with the end product.
Of course this wasn't the aim of the workshop but it is a very good surprise outcome and one I will always remember. Thank you River!
You can learn more about River Wolton, Derbyshire's Poet Laureate here - http://www.riverwolton.co.uk/
Sunday, 5 April 2009
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
And today we have naming of parts.
Names and words generally are interesting. They have texture, taste and a music of their own. Take 'crennelations' for an instance. They are obviously, from their sound, small yellow flowers of the forget-me-not family. Actually they're not. Crennelations are the top of a castle wall. You know how they're built. A square block of stone, then a gap to shoot arrows though, then another block of stone. But my point is, they should be bedding plants, because that's more appropriate. Or perhaps what they are is the cascade of silver bells on a hot summer day, poured down from high above. The song of a skylark.
'Dearth' is another one similar. It means a shortage, usually of material. But it isn't really. A dearth is an old measurement surely. Ancient recipes I am confident would read: 'To make this pottage take a dearth of turnips, two smidgin of salt, a pinch of mandrake plucked at full moon and a quantity of Rhennish wine.' The measures were all standardised of course. A dearth is two handfuls. Five pinches make a smidgin. And a quantity of wine was the amount you would utilise to disinfect the dog.
What I am driving at, or more correctly rambling erratically towards, is that words don't have to possess the dictionary meaning. This is mere convention. Dialect words certainly don't. My grandma used to say 'study' meaning 'to consider' something. 'Towing' meant 'struggling to complete a task', and 'stalled' used to mean 'fed up.' 'Starved' indicated 'freezing' not hungry, because 'hungry' was 'clemmed'.
I've often thought that life must have been fraught with difficulty when language was in the process of invention. I mean like a jigsaw puzzle where you've only got half the pieces because no-one's got round to naming everything.
So Mr Grud is outside his cave with his new construction. It's made of wood. Two pieces flat and circular like the full moon with a short pole between them. He's going to call them 'the typewriter'. He's had the sudden realisation, that if you have two sets of these, you can put them under a heavy log and it moves easily, unlike dragging it. He has a vision of one of these with a draft animal in front of it and a man to guide the animal and maybe instead of just the wheels, a box structure, painted in a pale colour. He has, in fact, invented the white van and its driver. Later generations will curse his name!
There is a roaring, growling noise and his children, making mud pies, scatter squealing. Running back to the cave he looks up and sees fifty paces away -a thing. He cries out to his neighbour, 'Come quick, Larb, it's a bloody huge...er- thing.' In fact it's a woolly mammoth, but there's no name for it yet.
Actually there is. As far as the mammoth is concerned he's called Wilfred. But of course he can't talk. But he can feel hungry and he is. Now alright, mammoths, however peckish, didn't eat people, because they were vegetarians. Yes, they were all members of Greenpeace, worried about their carbon footprint and used to knit their own burrows out of homemade yoghurt and the rest of the tree hugging crap. Look, this is just a story. It's not meant to be taken literally.
So Mr Larb shoots out of his cave which he's just been decorating with three plastic ducks on the wall. In ten thousand years, these will be unearthed and pronounced to be, 'Probably religious ritual objects' which is what archaeologists say when they mean, 'I've got no bloody idea what this is'.
'Dearth' is another one similar. It means a shortage, usually of material. But it isn't really. A dearth is an old measurement surely. Ancient recipes I am confident would read: 'To make this pottage take a dearth of turnips, two smidgin of salt, a pinch of mandrake plucked at full moon and a quantity of Rhennish wine.' The measures were all standardised of course. A dearth is two handfuls. Five pinches make a smidgin. And a quantity of wine was the amount you would utilise to disinfect the dog.
What I am driving at, or more correctly rambling erratically towards, is that words don't have to possess the dictionary meaning. This is mere convention. Dialect words certainly don't. My grandma used to say 'study' meaning 'to consider' something. 'Towing' meant 'struggling to complete a task', and 'stalled' used to mean 'fed up.' 'Starved' indicated 'freezing' not hungry, because 'hungry' was 'clemmed'.
I've often thought that life must have been fraught with difficulty when language was in the process of invention. I mean like a jigsaw puzzle where you've only got half the pieces because no-one's got round to naming everything.
So Mr Grud is outside his cave with his new construction. It's made of wood. Two pieces flat and circular like the full moon with a short pole between them. He's going to call them 'the typewriter'. He's had the sudden realisation, that if you have two sets of these, you can put them under a heavy log and it moves easily, unlike dragging it. He has a vision of one of these with a draft animal in front of it and a man to guide the animal and maybe instead of just the wheels, a box structure, painted in a pale colour. He has, in fact, invented the white van and its driver. Later generations will curse his name!
There is a roaring, growling noise and his children, making mud pies, scatter squealing. Running back to the cave he looks up and sees fifty paces away -a thing. He cries out to his neighbour, 'Come quick, Larb, it's a bloody huge...er- thing.' In fact it's a woolly mammoth, but there's no name for it yet.
Actually there is. As far as the mammoth is concerned he's called Wilfred. But of course he can't talk. But he can feel hungry and he is. Now alright, mammoths, however peckish, didn't eat people, because they were vegetarians. Yes, they were all members of Greenpeace, worried about their carbon footprint and used to knit their own burrows out of homemade yoghurt and the rest of the tree hugging crap. Look, this is just a story. It's not meant to be taken literally.
So Mr Larb shoots out of his cave which he's just been decorating with three plastic ducks on the wall. In ten thousand years, these will be unearthed and pronounced to be, 'Probably religious ritual objects' which is what archaeologists say when they mean, 'I've got no bloody idea what this is'.
Anyway, the Big Thing called Wilfred is stamping about kicking up and scaring the village goats. So Grud says, ' Larb, nip back to the cave and fetch those things you made. The long wooden poles with flints on one end, what you can chuck.' This is Mr Larb's new invention. A great thing because you can strike down an animal and when it dies, retrieve it and use this weapon again, masses of times and it destroys things.
Yes, it's a weapon of mass destruction!
I do most profoundly apologise for that. I think my entire reason for writing this story was so I could do that terrible pun.
So Mr Larb distracts the 'Thing' while Mr Grud runs in with the spear and lunges at the monster's cardio vascular system or what twentieth century zoologists would call its left ear and it flees the scene in terror.
(You see things are what you call them. If the first person to see a rainbow had called it a 'suspension based refraction pattern' - which is what it is, then we'd call it that.)
Do you know that the inventor of the plastic ball point pen was the scandalous poet and libertine, Lord Byro? It's true.
By Steve Widdows. (Copyright remains with the author.)Wednesday, 9 July 2008
Found in books
Take a look at all the things listed below. Which things go together? Which things are linked? Why? How? Where are the commonalities? Which item is the odd one out? Why?
- old banknotes of from the World War II era - some Japanese, some German with burned edges
- an airline boarding pass from Liberia in west Africa to Fort Worth, Texas,
- an ad from the 1950s: ‘Rinsing Dacron Curtains in Milk Makes Them Crisp, Stiff, Just Like New.’
- a gold ring set with a small diamond
- two printed lists of upcoming operations at a hospital
- 40 pressed four-leaf clovers
- a condom (unused)
- a holographic image of a lady who sheds her clothing
- a marriage certificate from 1879
- a valid driver’s licence
- a pair of scissors
- a cockroach (dead)
- a strip of bacon
- WW II discharge papers
- a child’s milk tooth
- a hotel serviette with a name and a room number scribbled on it – from Spain
- a WW II ration book (with stamps remaining)
- letters, torn out newspaper articles, shopping lists, business cards, postcards (send and unsent), family photographs, concert tickets, cryptic personal notes, theatre programme
What links did you come up with? In actual fact all of these items have been found inside returned library books/ second hand books. Fascinating yeah? You can see the full article at:
http://www.abebooks.com/docs/Community/Featured/found-in-books.shtml
Once you've checked it out try twenty minutes of writing. What might your character find in a book? Do they work in a second hand bookshop? Do they inherit a book? Using anything from above as a prompt, or your own imagination, try writing a piece of prose or poetry with 'found in books' as a prompt.
A Hamblen
Saturday, 14 June 2008
Open letter about Poetry
An open letter to Avril
‘I want to sketch stories in as few lines as possible. I want to be as vague as I dare. To leave gaps of description and dialogue.’
I long ago forgot the author of the quote but I never forgot the quote. It says exactly what I have tried to do with my writing over the years.
I began creative writing out of school when I was eight. I had a cousin who stayed week-ends and together we invented lands and castles and armies.
During the week, apart, we added to our constructions and brought them together each week-end.
The writing was incredibly detailed. If ‘Nordred’ had a shield then you got size shape, decoration, sword dents and all. I was in love with words and bugger the boredom.
We never wrote of the real.
Writing as we did in the back bedroom of a terraced 1930s house there wasn’t a lot of romance or adventure in the real. Certainly not enough to excite two eight year old lads.
I read at school. Of course, as did my cousin. But our home reading was comics such as The Wizard, Hotspur and Rover.
In later life I read scathing criticism of comics. Racist, sexist, jingoism; and they were but as a kid I lapped them up.
The 1039 war had just begun and the dirty Hun deserved all he got. The style of the comics influenced me greatly. No villain ever just bled in my tales. It spurted or gushed. Everything was very black or white and bugger the greys.
At eleven my cousin and I went to separate schools and he stopped staying week-ends. Without an audience I stopped writing.
Homework, sport and soon those strange creatures – girls, filled my time and imagination.
I also found religion. My new school mates all went to a Youth Club attached to a Church. Entrance to the Youth Club was paid by attending Sunday Mass. The Vicar of the Church plied me and anyone else he could corner, with books. He gave Dickens and Howard Springs, firstly.
By the time I finished the second book I was writing again.
I devoured books. I consumed in huge gulps everything from the ‘Song of Bernadette’, to ‘Sons and Lovers’.
I wrote a novel. Partly Hemingway, partly Lawrence. I began to understand that the less I said the better. The gushing of comics was not for me any longer.
The novel was full of torment. Love, politics, anger, male clashes. A truly awful book it led me to write a few final pages that were mine and no one else’s.
Writing as me I sold a story. I met writers and producers and they taught me the importance of the space between the words.They also taught me the drama of plain words when placed in the right order. Most importantly they taught me the weakening effect of qualifiers.
I took work with the WEA as a tutor of creative writing.
The pits were closing, steel works empty, women shoring up the picket lines.
Writers’ Workshops were born and ex-workers came to do something they hadn’t done from leaving school.
They wrote often about them and the work that had made them, often in street language. They also wrote poetry, often in fairly substantial lumps but using learned format.
All my reading life I have had a problem with many poets. I found myself arguing with the contrived similes. Clouds are rarely lonely and Wordsworth was a bit too substantial to be wandering.
Many poets create fancies, sugar-icing phrases that have life only as a poetic usage.
And poets tend to plug all the gaps with strained qualifiers.
There are wonderful exceptions. Philip Larkin is not afraid of plain spaces.
Simon Armitage writes in very ordinary ink.
I admire, applaud even, the cleverness of many poets. I can jaw-drop at the manipulation of rhyme and rhythm.
But these skills can be dangerous. The jam-sponge can become a wedding cake and the truth can be lost in the decoration.
Amongst the poets I am wary of are writers of genuine talent. Their feathered quills often find gold. The caution then is not to bury the vein under pretty rubble.
The constant use of the restraints and disciplines of poetry must surely arm the writers with a spear that plunges deep and clean.
To return to the opening quote, ‘To be as vague as I dare,’ I read that to mean as vague as I can be without losing sense or meaning.
Some poets I find present us with their personal Rubic Cubes. I feel such work should be labelled ‘For amusement only’.
Finally, in my attempt to write good prose, which demands rhythm, I understand only too well the danger of terminal embellishment.
By Brian Sefton ©
‘I want to sketch stories in as few lines as possible. I want to be as vague as I dare. To leave gaps of description and dialogue.’
I long ago forgot the author of the quote but I never forgot the quote. It says exactly what I have tried to do with my writing over the years.
I began creative writing out of school when I was eight. I had a cousin who stayed week-ends and together we invented lands and castles and armies.
During the week, apart, we added to our constructions and brought them together each week-end.
The writing was incredibly detailed. If ‘Nordred’ had a shield then you got size shape, decoration, sword dents and all. I was in love with words and bugger the boredom.
We never wrote of the real.
Writing as we did in the back bedroom of a terraced 1930s house there wasn’t a lot of romance or adventure in the real. Certainly not enough to excite two eight year old lads.
I read at school. Of course, as did my cousin. But our home reading was comics such as The Wizard, Hotspur and Rover.
In later life I read scathing criticism of comics. Racist, sexist, jingoism; and they were but as a kid I lapped them up.
The 1039 war had just begun and the dirty Hun deserved all he got. The style of the comics influenced me greatly. No villain ever just bled in my tales. It spurted or gushed. Everything was very black or white and bugger the greys.
At eleven my cousin and I went to separate schools and he stopped staying week-ends. Without an audience I stopped writing.
Homework, sport and soon those strange creatures – girls, filled my time and imagination.
I also found religion. My new school mates all went to a Youth Club attached to a Church. Entrance to the Youth Club was paid by attending Sunday Mass. The Vicar of the Church plied me and anyone else he could corner, with books. He gave Dickens and Howard Springs, firstly.
By the time I finished the second book I was writing again.
I devoured books. I consumed in huge gulps everything from the ‘Song of Bernadette’, to ‘Sons and Lovers’.
I wrote a novel. Partly Hemingway, partly Lawrence. I began to understand that the less I said the better. The gushing of comics was not for me any longer.
The novel was full of torment. Love, politics, anger, male clashes. A truly awful book it led me to write a few final pages that were mine and no one else’s.
Writing as me I sold a story. I met writers and producers and they taught me the importance of the space between the words.They also taught me the drama of plain words when placed in the right order. Most importantly they taught me the weakening effect of qualifiers.
I took work with the WEA as a tutor of creative writing.
The pits were closing, steel works empty, women shoring up the picket lines.
Writers’ Workshops were born and ex-workers came to do something they hadn’t done from leaving school.
They wrote often about them and the work that had made them, often in street language. They also wrote poetry, often in fairly substantial lumps but using learned format.
All my reading life I have had a problem with many poets. I found myself arguing with the contrived similes. Clouds are rarely lonely and Wordsworth was a bit too substantial to be wandering.
Many poets create fancies, sugar-icing phrases that have life only as a poetic usage.
And poets tend to plug all the gaps with strained qualifiers.
There are wonderful exceptions. Philip Larkin is not afraid of plain spaces.
Simon Armitage writes in very ordinary ink.
I admire, applaud even, the cleverness of many poets. I can jaw-drop at the manipulation of rhyme and rhythm.
But these skills can be dangerous. The jam-sponge can become a wedding cake and the truth can be lost in the decoration.
Amongst the poets I am wary of are writers of genuine talent. Their feathered quills often find gold. The caution then is not to bury the vein under pretty rubble.
The constant use of the restraints and disciplines of poetry must surely arm the writers with a spear that plunges deep and clean.
To return to the opening quote, ‘To be as vague as I dare,’ I read that to mean as vague as I can be without losing sense or meaning.
Some poets I find present us with their personal Rubic Cubes. I feel such work should be labelled ‘For amusement only’.
Finally, in my attempt to write good prose, which demands rhythm, I understand only too well the danger of terminal embellishment.
By Brian Sefton ©
Thursday, 12 June 2008
Creative Writing Activity. A likely story- tell me another one!
BATTERED BROWN STRUGGLES TO RESTORE HIS IMAGE
This newspaper headline creates some immediate thoughts...batter...chip shop. PM accidentally falls into a tub of batter (or is pushed!) on an official visit. He spoils not only his brand new suit (£350+) but has even more trouble cleaning up his favourite photograph of himself he carries 24/7.
This newspaper headline creates some immediate thoughts...batter...chip shop. PM accidentally falls into a tub of batter (or is pushed!) on an official visit. He spoils not only his brand new suit (£350+) but has even more trouble cleaning up his favourite photograph of himself he carries 24/7.
Here's a piece of writing inspired by this headline.
"On a stage managed visit to Charlie's Chippy in Central London, Gordon Brown almost had jis chips, quite literally. He arrived with his Downing Street entourage at the newly opened chip shop just off Whitehall adjacent to the Ministry of Food, at precisely 12.30 BST yesterday. The premises are conveniently located about one hundred yards away from the secured gates of the PM's home..."
Now do one of your own!
Select a newspaper headline. For example:- Samantha Cameron's £950 Nancy bags sell out
- 100'swing' seats will decide election
- Cook your leftovers and save the world
- 'Brain drain' as students leave regions
You can access headlines from online news sites or from old hard copies if you don't like any of the above. Take a few minutes to jot down ideas of any that inspire. Then allow about 30 minutes to expand on up to three or perhaps you would prefer to do one extensively- that's fine too.
Activity by Mike Elliott ©
Wednesday, 16 April 2008
Ian Clayton workshop
This was a great workshop that generated quite a lot of discussion and was, at times, quite controversial. I have reproduced below, with kind permission from Ian, part of the workshop- the least challenging I'm afraid. (Well we have to be allowed to keep some bits back!)
Ian showed, quite successfully I think, that stories are very rarely linear as the beginning- middle- end structure of stories suggests. Rather they are cyclical with things cutting across laterally.
He went on to say that the important part of any story is how our characters relate and what they do to one another. Actions are always connected to emotion. Actions power a story and emotions power the actions.
So get your pen ready:
Now pick an emotion ie, satisfaction, rage, joy...
Ian showed, quite successfully I think, that stories are very rarely linear as the beginning- middle- end structure of stories suggests. Rather they are cyclical with things cutting across laterally.
He went on to say that the important part of any story is how our characters relate and what they do to one another. Actions are always connected to emotion. Actions power a story and emotions power the actions.
So get your pen ready:
Now pick an emotion ie, satisfaction, rage, joy...
- Write a visual description of it (avoiding cliches of course.) Be as detailed as possible;
- What does it sound like? (again, be as detailed and different in your description as possible;
- What does it taste like?
- What does it smell like?
- What does it...(you guessed!) yes what does it feel like?
Reproduced with kind permission drom Ian Clayton. ©
Ian Clayton calls himself a jobbing writer, storyteller and broadcaster. His book 'Bringing It All Back Home' is available now, published by Route. ISBN 9781901927337
Here's what I wrote in the workshop to describe rage:
Red with black folding in along the edges. The occasional flash or spot of light.The scream of a mandrake that deadens the ears and breaks glass. Thick and rusty on the tongue, it smells like smouldering coals and feels as ragged as a cut from a tin lid.
You try it now!
Thursday, 13 March 2008
Creative writing activity. Week 5 Picture it in Words
To complete this activity you'll need access to some artwork. Some of these tasks are specific to the Cooper Gallery where local artists are displaying their 'responses' to the gallery collection. However it is flexible and you will still find this activity useful. Have a go!
Explore the artwork in the gallery and...
Explore the artwork in the gallery and...
- Look for really interesting relationships between the Cooper Gallery collection piece and the new Hen piece. Choose a pairing. Can you discover a story/ poem in the space between?
- Landscape - timelessness - find a landscape depicted and put a character of your own in this setting. Use the juxtaposition to explore time - or whatever you like.
- Find a piece that tells you a story - write the ending first.
- Find a piece of jewellery you can link with a character in your head. Use a detailed description of the piece as part of a story/ poem. Present? Lost? Stolen? Found? etc.
- Find an element of magic you could explore.
- Choose an artefact and give it a strange / original purpose. Put it into a poem or story or...
- If one (or more) of these sparks something for you, see if you can find what one of these artists explored around it, then write...
veiled, broken china, window-sill
flower-girl, sewing-box, thorn tree
frame, coast, Green Man
vessel, memory, 'Royal, Courtier, Bishop...'
Activity by A. Hamblen.©
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