THE NEW AND
HOPEFULLY FANTASTIC
Creative Writing Society workshops.
Where, even when Corum is not here, we shall laugh at him saying ‘Cookie’.
Today, we’re going to think about
FREEWRITING. This is a technique used widely by failing Excuse me! …by widely successful
writers. When you get to that
point in life when you want
to give up on everything
you’re writing, you can use
this and everything you write
will be really crap. No!
…from your subconscious.
… This means that it might
be a bit weird.
Freewriting is the practice of writing down all your thoughts without
stopping, and without regard for spelling, grammar, or any of the usual
rules for writing. It might include a topic as a general guide, or it might not.
How to free-write
Using the method of
“clustering”, we are going to
write in the least constrained
way possible.
A cluster gives you a visual
map of your thoughts in
response to one word – they
are wholly personal, so what
you write is obviously going to
be completely different to
what somebody else will write!
For example:
ICE
Cool observer
Only the tip
of the iceberg.
So we have already
made one very loose
character outline: a
mysterious, aloof
protagonist
Why are they mysterious
and aloof; what made
them that way?
Polar bears
WHICH LEADS TO THE
HEART OF THE STORY
Fluff ?
So you can see how one thing leads to
another frustratingly different idea.
You probably hate Virginia Woolf
But her method of writing in
the style of a stream-of-
consciousness is sort of like
free-writing, in a way
“The sun beat on the crowded pinnacles of southern hills and glared into
deep, stony river beds where the water was shrunk beneath the high slung
bridge so that washerwomen kneeling on hot stones could scarcely wet
their linen; and lean mules went picking their way among the chattering
grey stones with panniers slung across their narrow shoulders”
That passage from the
Waves captures a mood,
as well as a concrete
setting
Zadie Smith’s N-W
Four gardens along, in the estate, a grim girl on the third
floor screams Anglo-Saxon at nobody. Juliet balcony,
projecting for miles. It ain’t like that. Nah it ain’t like that.
Don’t you start. Fag in hand. Fleshy. Lobster red. I am the sole… I am the sole author
This extract from N-W embeds
the dialogue of North London
into the passage itself, showing
that the confrontation taking
place is just a casual happening,
and mixing the thoughts with
the protagonist in with the
neighbours’ voices to overlap
them. It barely makes sense,
until you unpick it, see the
Romeo and Juliet reference on
the balcony, see how it doesn’t
fit in this context at all.
Exercise Number One.
Write one or two words on a piece of paper, bearing in mind that you will soon be passing it to
your neighbour. This is the centre of your cluster.
Some examples of concrete clusters:
Dollar, rose-petal, photograph album, washing-up bowl, tattered jeans.
Some examples of abstract clusters:
Fear, top of the world, suspicion, unhappiness, liberty.
Now, take someone else’s
cluster and write, for ten
minutes, the first words that
come into your head.
Now, for the next twenty minutes, write a piece
of prose, script or play using all of the images
conveyed (you don’t have to read it out, if you
don’t want to!).
And now we’re going to condense.
One of the most concentrated forms of literature is a
haiku, but if you don’t want to follow conventional rules,
writing a three-lined poem of your own is fine too.
Let’s see if we can condense the gist behind our abstract
crazy subconscious into haikus!
Fan-piece, for her Imperial Lord
O fan of white silk,
Clear as frost on the grass-blade
You also are laid aside.
It looks pretty simple, but as you all know,
none of that will be there by accident, as the
poet (Pound) rationed his word use…
Soft, sensuous, pure
A woman owned by a man
Direct, emotional “O” Spring - temporary
As temporary as a
woman possessed by a
man, romance and
sensuality, and yet now
she feels as easily
discarded, as laid aside,
as the silk fan.
CONDENSING OUR VERY CRAP WORKCondensing the crap out of our work.
My anxiety has got the better of me again but you can’t
see it but they can’t see it why can’t they see it, brilliant
they just think I’m making it up, they just think it’s in
my head, they think it’s in my head when you can see it
in my body, my body, my hands, you can see it in my
hands and on the sweat that drips everywhere – what’s
this sweat? It’s everywhere, on the steering-wheel, on
my can of Coke…
If anxiety is in the mind, not the
Body
Then what’s sweat on Coke-cans?
Let’s try condensing our work so that it saves the
meaning, but removes all that is unnecessary
(which will be a lot, as our subconscious is mainly
crazy).
Just a note,
Tomorrow at 5, in 0.01 in Clephan, there will be a book-release by Kathy Bell and other writers, so
come along! You don’t have to buy the book itself, but the anthology has been made to raise
money for refugees, and extracts will be read from it.
Thankyou for coming along and hope you enjoyed the class! xxx