“It’s a feeling of happiness that knocks me clean out of adjectives. I think sometimes that the best reason for writing novels is to experience those four and a half hours after you write the final words.” Zadie Smith
One of the great pleasures of being part of a teachers’ writing group is hearing other people’s writing. Another, is experiencing the diversity of any group and all the many ideas and perceptions that arise from it: this reception teacher likes nothing better than to write alongside her class; that one has been walking and drawing maps and writing with her son; another is, over time, finding a way to write about a crucial relationship; this one loves a good list. I love the fact that we come to writing for different reasons and that when we share our writing and our approaches to writing, our teaching is the richer for it. This summer, Mikela Bond from one of our groups finished a novel. Amazing! She has written a blog about the process which we have permission to share with you. I think that much that she has to say will chime with you, even if writing a novel is the last thing on your mind.
What seemed most important to her was the finding of a ‘creative space in which none of the other day to day demands mattered.’ In the first instance, she writes, this was something to do with well-being in the life of a busy teacher and parent. And then the novel took over. I like the way that it came to her as fragments. First a glimpse of a woman washing up, sunlight on soapsuds. Mikela had to find the space, often writing on her knee while one child or another was busy with Beavers or swimming lessons. She joined a workshop run by the Unthank School of Writing where much of the hard work of reading and revising took place, but I will let her tell you the story.
Read Mikela’s blogpost here.
What strikes me is how much of what she says echoes through our writing groups: well-being, notebooks filled with fragments, reading aloud and hearing the work of others; researching through books and place, carving out a space. Now, on Zoom, we gather together and children hover around us. One of our Norwich group joins us from a swimming pool car park, her damp son creeping into the back seat towards the end of the session. What thrills me is that this is good for each one of us, and good for our teaching.