21. I…
Lowry, B. (2008) juicy writing: inspiration and techniques for young writers. Crows Nest NSW: Allen& Unwin.
This book is aimed at young writers and can be used as such. Some teachers have used the ideas quite extensively and successfully with their classes. It is crammed with good, simple ideas and is a good place to begin. Sometimes one just needs a way of getting a workshop plan started.
I…
Play around with the following:
¨ I smell like (peanut butter and old roses)
¨ I sound like (crazy wind through rusty wire)
¨ I taste like (mud? melon and ocean?)
¨ I hear (elves chanting and windows creaking)
¨ My skin feels like (old velvet)
22. Etymologies
Maitland, S. (2005) The Writer’s Way Realise your creative potential and become a successful author. London: Arcturus Publishing.
This book holds a good balance between reflection on the writing process, ways of working and god workshop or individual ideas. Some books emphasise the short prompt and many people like those. Sara Maitland offers more extended suggestions for working which have a number of stages, including reflection. I like her emphasis on language and the nature of writing. Here is one example for you to try. I have chosen it for its brevity rather than as representative of her workshop style. I have cut some words, also for brevity’s sake.
Etymologies
· Find a dictionary that includes at least some basic etymology.
· Look up the following words [they all have some odd quirk of history] gossip, adultery, kangaroo, music, television, orange, sandwich, marathon, husband, lunatic.
· Since you have the dictionary out, look up ten other words that you have recently used in your notebook or elsewhere.
· Write a few sentences, or even, if you are enjoying yourself, a little story that reveals something about the origin and roots of some of these words while using them in a modern sense.
23. The Word Hoard
Morley, D. (2007) The Cambridge Introduction to Creative Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This book invites the reader to reflect on process as well as on producing writing. There are chapters on fiction, non-fiction and poetry and a good number of ideas for getting started. See also: http://www.davidmorley.org.uk/
Writing Game: THE WORD HOARD
Go to a shelf of books of fiction or poetry. Take one book at random. Close your eyes while opening that book and place your finger somewhere in it. Your finger will have landed on a word or words. Write the word down, as well as the three words preceding it and the three words following it in the text. You now have a seven-word phrase. Write the phrase in your notebook and once you have written it, keep writing for five minutes. There are only two rules to this game: you must not stop writing and you must not think. Try to write as fast as you can. You are not producing a work of art. After five minutes, you should have covered quite a lot of pages. Now read what you have written. Read it forwards, then read through it, word for word, backwards. Underline the phrase that strikes you as possessing any one of the following qualities: it has energy; it surprises you; it has never been written before in your language. The phrase must make a kind of sense; it must possess its own inner sense at the very least. That is, it must not be completely opaque in meaning. It might be a whole sentence, or it might be the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next. Now write a short story or poem in which this phrase occurs without it seeming in any way out of place. You might wish to place the phrase into the mouth of a speaker in the poem or story, for example.
24. Cinderella
Peat, A. Peat, J. Storey, C. (2009) 50 Ways to Retell a Story Cinderella. Biddulph: Creative Educational Press Ltd.
Here are 50 activities to promote story writing, much along the lines of Quenau, Exercises in Style. Each activity takes a different style, form or trope and applies that to the story of Cinderella as an example.
Cinderella: Alphabet of sentences
The alphabet of sentences is a form of acrostic in which the beginning of each of the 26 lines spells out the alphabet. Clearly ‘x’ can be problematic, so words with ‘x’ as the second letter are allowed.
So there you have it. The story of Cinderella in 26 alphabetical sentences.
25. Oral
Rosen, M. (1989) Did I hear you write? London: Andre Deutsch Ltd.
This book remains a very good source of ideas and thought about writing. If you know Michael Rosen’s work, you won’t be surprised to know that there is a lot here about performance poetry, about writing from what you know and in the ways that you speak. Good to have on your shelf.
Here are a few more ‘oral-based’ themes.
boasting
bragging you can do something but then you can’t
parental warnings
arguments about how to start a game
school dinner chat
what I think the teachers talk about in the staff room…
And so on… you get the idea!