Dip your pen in; writing's lovely

Alison Jermak, secondary English teacher, NWP secretary and NWP Wembley convener writes about her NWP journey and and the value of belonging to a writing group.

I have become quite determined to make space for my writing in my life, because it is one thing that I do for me – that was why I started writing independently at home again really, to make some time for myself between teaching and raising my children.

I write for many reasons: to gain clarity and perspective, to calm myself, to challenge an idea, to connect with people, to throw something out there and gauge the reaction.

Our NWP Wembley group grew from the Whodunnit group that I am a member of. I started the group because I was leaving my first teaching job and before leaving, I wanted to introduce my colleagues to NWP. Meeting regularly once a half term has turned out to be a good way of keeping in touch.

I value the support, the attention, the wisdom and the experience of my fellow NWP writers. We all bring so much enthusiasm for writing, the conversations are always rich and the reading recommendations are good. 

I write in a notebook – I normally have two on the go so that I write in one and then redraft in the other. I reread my writing a couple of days later and highlight anything that interests me. Some of it will then make its way into a piece that I type up. On my laptop I have collection of short stories, life writing and poems that I like to think are fermenting. I then revisit pieces that jump out at me and I will redraft and redraft.

Currently I write for at least ten minutes every day. I’m better in the morning, but I will squeeze it in where ever I can. I write in whichever room in the house I can be alone in; noise at home bothers me, family members – they normally want something.

There have been times where I have taken a short break from writing – a couple of weeks when nothing really calls to me or I’m stuck in a piece and I can’t see where to go next. When I come back to it, the muscle memory kicks in and I’m off again. Once you start, I think you can’t help but think like a writer. I have a notebook by my bed and phrases in the notes section of my phone that have floated in when I’m out and about.

I enjoy the process of coming up with ideas, the unpredictability of it. I like researching and coming up with new ideas for prompts to try out with the group. If it excites me when I try it out, then I know it will work. I’m curious to see how the writers will respond. The variety of writers’ responses is also interesting. I’d like to do some research into the benefits of writing as a group in this way.

Students I teach know that I teach writing differently. Some get excited when I introduce free writing, they enjoy the freedom of it and ask, “When are we going to do free writing again?” Some are confronted by the blank page: “Tell me what to say.” Individuals like it when I talk to them about pieces that they have written.

Being part of the NWP has kept me in teaching. It’s the type of learning experience that I had growing up and that made me want to become a teacher. It’s something that I have a genuine interest in, I can practise writing, begin to master it by myself and together with the group. There’s plenty about writing groups to delve into research wise, it’s unexplored territory. 

I would like to encourage more of the teachers in my department to give writing with NWP a try. There’s so much else that’s in the way, but I would say, “Dip your pen in; writing’s lovely.”  

Wellcome Celebrations

The Whodunnit group gathered at Euston’s Wellcome Collection for their regular meeting on Saturday 25th January - where their numbers were swelled by members of other NWP groups, and even some newcomers - to celebrate a decade of the project and to mark the stepping down (but not stepping away!) of one of its co-founders, Simon Wrigley.

Inspired by Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style coupled with a focus on voice - and then by the exhibitions at the Wellcome: Play Well, Being Human and Misbehaving Bodies - writing was, as ever, varied and distinctive. From Stanislavsky to snails, buckets to bathrooms, cancer to Argos catalogues, writers shared their efforts to say the unsayable. 

Perhaps the dynamic of writing in a space like the Wellcome Collection comes from the disruption afforded by the tension inherent in art and in good museum curation. A disruption that provokes interesting writing.

We raised the roof of the Wellcome’s reading room with diverse voices telling diverse stories on diverse subjects. They were by turns funny, frivolous, far-seeing and philosophical.

The occasion was all that the NWP embodies. It was about using writing as a way of understanding, to explore and to be playful, to permit and to be permissive.

Jeni Smith, the projects’s other co-founder and Simon Wrigley’s partner in crime (this was the Whodunnit group, after all) spoke movingly about Simon’s immeasurable work in setting up and sustaining the NWP: the thousands of miles traversed and thousands of pounds spent in setting up groups up and down the country; a determination to succeed borne of suppressed rage and sadness at the straitjackets imposed on writing teachers in the contemporary educational climate.

Simon was presented, fittingly, with a hand-bound book of writing: of poems, personal messages, stories, and anecdotes from NWP members past and present; each uniquely commemorating the love, esteem, appreciation and gratitude felt for the man and his work. 

So we walk away collectively energised to write - for ourselves first and foremost - and for our students; because the more writing we do, the better we get at writing with them.