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