I’ve taken some advice and rewritten my writer’s bio in the form of a poem. Here it is – see what you think!
Gail Aldwin:
hardworking between episodes of musing, driven and reflective.
Daughter of a man whose dreams withered,
lover of long horizons.
Who feels alive when the sun drenches,
who needs quiet spaces,
who gives ribbons of guidance,
who fears she’ll be unmasked as a fraud,
who would like the bearable lightness of being.
Resident of an eternal spring.
During the latest Lit Up professional development training for facilitators, activities to develop autobiographical prose and poetry were presented. Participants responded to the very structured tasks in a deeply imaginative way and this impressed me so much, that I thought I’d share the activities here. To create a 10-line poem, respond to the prompts in the centre column by recording your ideas in the third column.
| Line 1 | Your given name | |
| Line 2 | List 4 of your traits | |
| Line 3 | Complete the line | Daughter of/Son of… |
| Line 4 | Lover of… | |
| Line 5 | Who feels… | |
| Line 6 | Who needs… | |
| Line 7 | Who gives… | |
| Line 8 | Who fears… | |
| Line 9 | Who would like… | |
| Line 10 | Resident of… |
Another idea uses free writing where every sentence begins with the words I am… Have a go with these activities and let me know how you get on!
The Dorset Writer’s Network have secured Arts Council funding to launch a new project with the aim of publishing an ebook which celebrates the diversity of the county. I recently delivered a workshop to support entry and you can read about this here. To have your writing considered for inclusion in the ebook, you are invited to join a competition. Stories must be no longer than 500 words and set in Dorset. Anyone can enter the competition (information for adults appears below) and a further category for 11-16 year olds will be made available shortly. Entrants can live or work anywhere in the country but the story must take place in Dorset (including Poole and Bournemouth). The full rules for the competition appear below.
I do hope you’ll take the opportunity to submit a piece of short fiction. Good luck!
I have joined a course of CPD to support skills in creative writing workshop delivery and facilitation. The programme is organised by Lit Up! with 16 sessions offered by Simon McCormack. With two session already completed, I thought I’d share one of the activities I’ve developed.
Participants were asked to think about time, place and action in writing. Frequently, it is possible to combine two of these elements and Gun fight at the OK Corral was given as an example. The idea made me reflect on product placement as an effective way to:
Examples of product placements might include Pressure Cooker, Sherbet Lemons, Vim Scouring Powder.
I was reminded of the powerful effect of product placement when I reread the following extract from The Devil’s Music by Jane Rushbridge.
Janice brings a tray with tea in a teapot and four lemon puffs on a plate. The ritual of pouring – milk jug, strainer, sugar cubes and tongs, the teaspoon stirring – steadies you, but one bite of Lemon Puff and the nausea washes through you again. The teaspoon clatters down in the saucer and you ask Janice where you can go to powder your nose.
Although the story is set in 1958 (before I was born), I can taste those Lemon Puffs.
For the purpose of using this activity in a workshop, I would ask participants to list products that bring time and place to mind and use one or two as a prompt for story writing.
Anyone game to give this activity a go?
As part of the Dorset Digital Stories project, a series of workshops will be held in January and February 2015 at rural locations throughout the county. The idea is to encourage local writers to submit a story up to 500 words for inclusion in a new e-book. All stories will be set in Dorset so that the anthology reflects the diversity of Dorset: from the human perspective to the sense of place.
I will be delivering a workshop on Friday 16 January 2015 from 10-12 at Cerne Abbas Village Hall DT2 7GY. Everyone is welcome! To book a place please email sue@dorsetwritersnetwork.co.uk or get in touch with me through the contact page on this blog.
For details of other workshops please click here.
Last week, Dave and I travelled to Oxfordshire for the launch of Carol McGrath‘s novel The Swan-Daughter. This is the second book in the Daughters of Hastings trilogy and it’s great to be back in the company of an accomplished story-teller. Carol’s style of writing is charming, allowing readers to enter the life of Gunnhild, the daughter of King Harold and Edith Swanneck. Based on research, the novel provides a lasting impression of the lives and struggles during the early Norman period. Essentially it’s a love story, starting with Gunnhild’s escape the nunnery at Wilton Abbey and her elopement with Count Alan of Richmond.
The book launch was held at Cole’s Books in the delightful market town of Bicester. We stayed overnight in the Pentewan B&B a lovely place tucked away from the main thoroughfare – we even had a dip in the hot tub in the garden!
St Catherine’s College
The following day, we stopped in Oxford and Dave and I wandered through the grounds of his old college then spent the afternoon in the Ashmolean Museum. It was great! Now that I have membership at the Bodleian Library, I look forward to returning, research for my studies makes a good excuse.
Now in my second year of MPhil studies in creative writing, I face each residency with less trepidation. Last weekend was extremely positive. My creative writing supervisor, Stephen Knight, gave an analogy to the present state of my manuscript. Like a self-assembly chair, all I need to do is tighten it with an allen key. Feedback from my peers includes praise for the sex scenes (very worried about those) and agreement that the structure works (alternating narratives including the viewpoint of the main character as a ten-year-old and at 23). Phrases like ‘page-turner’ were even used!
So, with this encouragement, I press on.
I was delighted to have a story included in ‘The Best of CafeLit 2012’. The Shallows is a short story based on the experience of losing my son on a beach in France when he was three-years-old. Although the story ends well the ‘what if’ became the starting point for work on my novel Trying to be Brave. I’m so very pleased The Shallows found a safe home in an excellent print anthology. It is available for purchase from Amazon, click here for details.
While I’ve been hard at work on my novel, I haven’t made any submissions for publication so it was a total surprise when I found I had a piece of flash fiction included in the latest CafeLit publication. (A submission during 2013 was accepted, this time a piece of short fiction about a plumber and a baby.)
You can find purchase details for The Best of CafeLit 3 here.
Happy reading!
With other postgraduate students, I spent a splendid day at the British Library, getting acquainted with the amazing resources that are available. I hadn’t been aware of the digital collections that are held and to handle some of the manuscripts was wonderful. While I was there I was issued with a reader’s pass (make sure you take the necessary ID when applying – proof of address and proof of signature is necessary). I also made a reader room request so that I could have access to a play script of What Maisie Knew which I hope to use in my MPhil research.
Some of the resources presented at the workshop include: Read the rest of this entry »
