'Tis not enough to help the feeble up, but to support them after

- William Shakespeare

Funnily enough, just before notification of Helen MacKinven’s latest blog-post popped up in my in-box, I was browsing through this year’s little brochure for Arvon Foundation Creative Writing Courses. I’m too late to get on anything this year, but there’s one particular course I’d have loved to go on, tutored by Malorie Blackman (‘nuff said), but as I am currently unwaged (by choice) I’d feel guilty spending such a lot of money. The same goes for a creative writing MA, which I’d love to do.

Helen’s blog asked:

    Was your creative writing course worthwhile? Do you feel the need for support from a writing group? How do your family and friends support your writing ambitions?

It made me think. I began to write a comment to add to her blog, but it grew and so ended up on my blog instead!

I’m very lucky with my family support, especially that of my husband, who is tolerating my unwaged state and giving me room to try my hand at this writing game. My wider family also provide support and are proving to be valued readers and marketers of my books. Their clamouring for the sequel to ‘Witness’ has given me confidence that my writing has wide appeal, as I know they wouldn’t bother with it if it were not their sort of thing.

My family support!

As to creative courses, well, I’m a teacher, of course I believe you can be taught something. You can be given the skills, then let loose to see where your creativity and determination can take you.

In July 2009 I went on an Arvon course led by the authors Jill Dawson and Kathryn Heyman. I found this exceptionally stimulating. What gave me the biggest buzz was living and breathing writing with a group of like-minded people. This group proved to be of great support in the ‘you can do’ style of things, and we still meet up a couple of times each year, which has the effect of spurring me on, especially since a couple of folks (Deborah Meyler, Cherise Saywell) have now published great books.

Two life changing decisions came directly from doing that creative writing course. I resigned my job as a deputy head and took off in a small van on a tour of Europe with my husband and dog. At the same time I was mentored by Kathryn Heyman as part of  the Gold Dust mentoring scheme for writers. Jill Dawson likens Gold Dust to a fast track MA in creative writing. I can’t say how true that is, and there’s an interesting blog about it here, but Kathryn certainly taught me much about structuring a novel, tightening up the writing and strengthening the characterisation and dialogue.

I think it’s possible to teach yourself writing, but I am also certain that you can get there by a less tortuous route with a bit of well-placed tuition/direction/mentoring. Someone pointing out the plot holes, the clichés and, in my case, quite how often your characters wink at each other, keeps you on a better writing path.

At the present time, much of my writing support comes from the ‘Writing for Children’ branch of the Cambridge Writers Group. This group is good at critiquing work, and I value their excellent commentary. They also spread the word about writing events in my area and it’s more companionable to attend events with a few familiar faces.

Not all writing groups support in this way, I know. The last group I attended (OK, ran) had less experienced writers as members, and we were rather more the blind leading the blind. Even so, we did writing exercises each week, and that in itself was incredibly stimulating for me and I produced a lot of writing which led to short stories and starts of novels (to be continued at a later date!)

Pieter Bruegel's 1568 oil painting, often called The Parable of the Blind,

Perhaps it depends on your personality. Some people get on better working in their little garrets, agonising over their writing until they produce masterpieces, others find their ideas flow better when they have someone to talk to. I think I am the latter type of writer. As I spend a fair amount of time on my own, sat in my study, I am considering trying to build more online writing support for myself. My writing group meets monthly, and in between sessions I could do with more than my husband to bounce ideas about with and to comment on chapters. He’s a fantastic proof-reader, but he concentrates on the linguistic side and I need people to get into the story. I’ve not found quite what I’m looking for as yet, but hopefully I’ll know it when I see it. Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Guided Visualisation

Doing my writing warm-ups, in the form of ten minute object writes, reminded me of a workshop session I ran for a writing group a few years ago and have also used with classes of children to help them explore their use of the senses in creating writing.

We tried something called ‘guided visualisation’, following a series of exercises based around a tray of 15 random objects I had gathered together.

The exercises invited no-pressure, anything-goes writing and the value of them was that each writer brought unique experiences to the object.

Some writers love these prescribed types of exercises, and others hate them.  Whatever your feeling, it’s worth giving it a go once in a while, because sometimes the results can be exhilarating, sending your stream of consciousness into a completely unexpected direction. 

Exercise 1: "Object Tray Game" – Uncover the tray and give 1 minute to try and take in as much information as possible. Write down everything you can remember in as much detail as possible. This is not ‘Kim’s Game’ though, so don’t just try and memorise the objects – you are trying to write details about each object.

Exercise 2: Ten lines – Choose one item from the tray. Look at your item until you are certain you have memorised everything about it. Then put it back and start writing. Do not look at it again until you are certain you have described everything about it in the best detail you can manage.

If you've done a good job of paying attention to detail, you should have no trouble writing ten lines or more on the description of a simple item. If you're having trouble getting that far, take a help card and use the hints.

Help Card

Use these senses – sight, touch, smell – and write whatever occurs to you.

What do you notice about the shadows the object casts?

What does the surface feel like?

What colours is it and what colours/images  are reflected in it?

Are there any marks on the surface? Any signs of wear? Any scars? Any engraving?

If it has several parts, how is it put together?

Replace the object with another. Again, look at the object, hold it in your memory, and write every detail of your chosen object, no matter how minute. When you've finished check to see what you got right, what you got wrong, and what you overlooked entirely.

Exercise 3: Take a picture of a character. I just print some random pictures from a Google image search. Imagine that you're going to have to identify them in a police line-up, or better yet, describe them to a police artist. Take in as much about them as you can in one minute, then put the picture aside and write down as much as you can about the person.

Repeat with another picture.

Exercise 4: Choose an interesting setting that you know quite well – the shopping centre, the park, an old Victorian house. Try and really pay attention to the surroundings. Do your best to notice everything, not just with your sense of sight, but with all your senses.

Exercise 5: You should have a good idea of a person, a place and some objects by now, so put them together to create a scene in which you use everything you observed. Put some action in there. Put dialogue. But your main issue in this exercise is to create an absolutely over-the-top all-senses-engaged presentation of two people and the space they occupy.

Same but Different

I like this writing prompt and had great fun using it with a creative writing group as a ten minute warm-up. It uses the same sentence starter, but puts it with a different image. The effect is to spark off a wider range of ideas.

She couldn’t count how many years they had hated each other…	She couldn’t count how many years they had hated each other…
The message arrived late in the afternoon…	The message arrived late in the afternoon…
She got out of the car and strode purposefully down the High Street…	She got out of the car and strode purposefully down the High Street…

Reworking Fairy Tales

The park and ride bus into Cambridge yesterday made me think about that old writing prompt, the reworking of a fairy tale. The teenager next to me was reading a book where the heroine was called Ash and had a stepmother. Sounds familiar? I’m not sure if it was the book ‘Ash’ by Malinda Lo. If it was, the twist in the reworking has Ash ending up in a lesbian relationship, just one of endless takes made on this particular fairy tale over the centuries. With the current young adult interest in the supernatural, reworking of fairy tales is selling books, films and TV. A recent addition, proving to be very popular, is the American fantasy-drama, Grimm. I have not caught the series yet, but I like the premise of detectives investigating crimes based on fairy tales.

Reworking fairy tales is an idea I’ve always enjoyed, but then I have always loved the original fairy tales. One of the books I liked to read to classes of junior children was Kaye Umansky’s ‘The Fwog Pwince - the Twuth’, and I have used the reworking writing prompt in various guises with children and adults. The year 4 team I worked with in Leicestershire had great fun producing newspaper reports based on the events in nursery rhymes along the lines of ‘Fairytale News’ by Colin Hawkins, which has a mini-newspaper insert full of reports based on fairy tales.
 
Familiarity with the story is what makes this a good writing prompt and I have used it for a quick write, and for longer (homework) sessions with writing groups. What you are asking writers to work on is developing their version of a famous story, short or long, but with the aim of making it different and there are many ways you might do this. If you fancy having a go, think about one of the variations below:

1. Inject some local knowledge. Rework the fairy tale by setting it in a place you know well.
2. Bring the story up-to-date. How will you have to change the plot to make it fit in a modern setting? I think ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ would make a great basis for something set in the current political climate. Of course, reworking does not have to just be about fairy tales. ‘Gods Behaving Badly’ by Marie Phillips is about the twelve gods of Olympus, who are alive and well in the twenty-first century, unhappily crammed together in a London townhouse and holding down jobs.
3. Choosing to set the story in an easily recognisable time period also works well with reworking fairy tales. Victorian or Elzabethan London might make a good place for Cinderella to live, but then so would the Wild West. I’ve always wondered why the world around Sleeping Beauty never seemed to change much in the story. What would happen if she woke to the world of the 1920s, with flapper costumes and looser morals all around her?
4. Rewriting the fairy tale in a particular genre could bring interesting results. Ali Baba and the Forty Theives as sci-fi - or has that been done in the film ‘The Time Bandits’? What about Goldilocks and Snow White teamed-up as Philip Marlowe style detectives? Am I getting carried away here? Maybe I should stop watching all the Shrek films!
5. Rewriting a fairy tale as a poem can be fruitful. I stumbled across a website where the author has done just this (RewritingFairy-tales)  It’s certainly something which worked for Roald Dahl in ‘Revolting Rhymes’. If you haven’t read that, get down to your library straight away! 
6. You could try to write the story from a different point of view – first person is currently very fashionable, or do what Kaye Umansky does in her poem ‘I’m sick of that Hansel and Gretal’ (‘Witches in Stitches’) and write from the antagonist’s point of view.

There are endless variations on the theme of reworking an old tale and many bestsellers have been produced along these lines. A quick search will bring you up lots of original stories, but if your memory fails you and you can’t think of any off the top of your head, try some of the ones below. Above all, have fun. Right at the bottom of this post is a very short story I wrote after setting this writing prompt for a group.

Aesop's Fables The Ass in the Lion's Skin The North Wind and the Sun The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse The Sick Lion The Tortoise and the Hare The Boy Who Cried Wolf	Hans Christian Andersen The Emperor's New Clothes The Little Mermaid The Princess and the Pea The Snow Queen Thumbelina The Ugly Duckling
Grimms Fairy Tales Beauty and the Beast Cinderella Goldilocks And The Three Bears Hansel and Gretel Little Red Riding Hood Sleeping Beauty Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs The Three Little Pigs	Nursery Rhymes Baa Baa Black Sheep Little Boy Blue Little Miss Muffet Mary Had A Little Lamb There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe

 Trials of the Job

“Mirror, mirror, on the …”

“Get lost!”

          The mirror was entirely black. It wouldn’t even show Esmeralda her own reflection, let alone any magical revelations. Stamping her foot did nothing to galvanise the mirror either, though her broom began sweeping the kitchen floor, which was a small bonus.

                       

“I need to see what she’s doing.” Esmeralda did not usually resort to begging.

          “Phone her.” The mirror replied in a flat, arms folded across the chest kind of voice.

          “Why are you being so awkward?” Strangely, Esmeralda felt tears pricking at her eyes and turned away from the mirror before it saw her weakness.

          “I don’t like being used.”

          “You’re a mirror for God’s sake. What are you for if not for using?”

          Esmeralda was feeling cross now and yet she knew that it was no use arguing. She just didn’t have any threats to hold over the mirror short of smashing it and that was the one thing she could never do.

          “She’s never been in this situation before.” Esmeralda tried appealing to the mirror’s better nature. “It’s not really sneaking. It’s just showing we care.”

          A small glimmer of light began to flicker in the furthest depths of the glass. That had sparked its conscience and Esmeralda quickly moved to press her point home.

          “What if she’s in danger? She could be lying in an alley, her life blood slowly seeping into the litter strewn gravel.”

          Suddenly the mirror flared into life, becoming a multifaceted diamond scattering beams of light in every direction, before settling down to a street scene where a small red devil was dragging a mini-witch by the hand towards a house. The windows were festooned with cobwebs and on the front step a particularly evil looking pumpkin sat grimacing at passers-by. Knocking on the door, the two cried in unison,

          “Trick or treat!”

          Sighing, Esmeralda returned to her cauldron. She allowed herself the smallest of smiles now that she knew her daughter’s first date was running smoothly.

In the background the mirror chuckled gently as it whispered,

          “Ah, the trials of motherhood!”