Teaching creative writing — it’s fun, it’s nurturing others, it’s encouraging and supporting voices. So many ways to spark and fan the writing urge, and right about now you are planning your first day of teaching… your first term. Here’s support for you: 95 exercises and mini-lectures based on experience of teaching over 29,000 student hours of creative writing.
Also click here to see more at teachingcreativewriting blog
Catch a vision on BBC4 TV this Tuesday 9pm Utopia: In Search of the Dream. Amazingly it features haiku and a bit of me and other British Haiku Society poets. Over 3 programmes: Utopia for a fairer world, does utopian vision work, is it an inner state? Guess which is the haiku one. For me utopia could be a week’s writing retreat — already booked for it in Devon, Retreats for You. Meanwhile click here for BBC TV listing. And here for my most recent haiku.
Which way to go? This really IS a discovery draft. SO wanting to go back and make the scenes meet, connect the narrative flow. So many things to juggle, can’t hold them all in my head at once. But must-must-must go forward. The three glued sheets of timelines are helping but… then I get into one voice or the other. Or one storyline and get so into it that the rest doesn’t matter. But when I pull back the rest does matter. I have just finished a crucial scene: things are getting difficult between J and M. Interesting! So much unknown ahead, coroner etc…
The photo’s from a recent trip to Polperro, Cornwall. Wonderful country, as Poldark fans know.
Cat O’ 9 Teats
When in writing doubt, do something else creative! Try sticky-fingered papiermache. My group of makers, The PapierMachistas, are inspired by the Mexican Linares family. Our work on show this Sunday 2 July, noon, at the Cambrian Community Centre, Richmond, London — YOU are invited. It’s part of ArtHouse artists’ open studios. This is my Cat o’Nine Teats. This kind of creativity lets me speak without words.
Wonderful blue hydrangeas safely potted and surviving heatwave — thank you She Voices of Richmond for your thank you! May your writing flourish.
The view from my window is a city I have never seen before. It had a sunset sky last night of surpassing magnificance, mounds of gold and pearl cloud against pale blue, pink, lavender. We walked the calm streets and found a restaurant with marble tables set with lemon and tomato. I drank prosecco and he drank gin and tonic and the food was perfect fish. We wake this morning, this day, to this city to see a play about a virtuoso pianist who went mad for a while but then got better, at a place called Three Minute Theatre. This is not a fantasy, although I do often dream I am in an unknown city. This is Manchester. #TellYourStory 21 June 2017 National Writing Day @WriteDay
How do you write about a place you’ve never been to? How do you write about a time you’ve never lived in? Or how do you bring your writing to life? Come and hone your writing skills, and acquire new ones, with Susan Lee Kerr, local author, haiku poet and creative writing tutor. Susan, known to She Voices members, was born in West Virginia, raised in New York, and is now a dedicated Londoner. Her novel, The Extraordinary Dr Epstein, is the true life of an astonishing 19th century immigrant. As his great granddaughter, Susan drew on family tales, fact and imagination to tell the turbulent story that she draws upon in her workshop.
SHE VOICES WOMEN WRITERS welcomes newcomers to this workshop on Saturday morning 17th June 10.30 – 12.30 At Richmond Library, Little Green, Richmond Upon Thames TW9 1QL.
And I thank She Voices for this lovely opportunity!
