Creative Writing – Journal 2
You may notice that there isn’t a 1st journal, this is down to the Professional Practice brief taking up majority of my time and many, many things were let slide and forgotten about.
So, were technically into the 5th week of creative writing as it currently stands. The first two weeks Char was ill and the 3rd week we had our first lesson. I missed the fourth, again due to Professional Practice and I literally forgot it was on! Then we come to this week.
So, I’ll start off on week 1.
I didn’t know what to expect with this elective if I am honest. I had a rough guess from the name of the course and I was quite far off. Our tutor is Char March. “She is well-known as a performance poet and her work has been published widely in literary magazines and anthologies in both Britain and the States. Grassroots Press (17a Bainbrigge Road, Leeds, LS6, England) has published four books of her poetry. She is also an award-winning playwright for radio and stage, as well as tutoring in creative writing, performance skills and reader development initiatives.” (Click the text to go to the page.) Straight away I could tell this would be a a lesson where I should be on my toes. Our first task was to continue on from the a beginning of a sentence she give us and write anything that came to our mind. The idea is to write, write and write more without thinking. This is something I can generally do alright, I ramble on enough in these blog’s so I have a bit of experience. We were also asked to go outside and write down different things we can hear, see, smell, sense, feel and taste. When we got back inside we were given a poem about a spider being trapped in a glass and asked to write a response from the perspective of the spider. I attempted a poem but failed due to me working out the rhyming words first and then making sentences to end up on that word. This meant I was working backwards a bit and the poem didn’t really make sense.
I can’t remember much more of that lesson if I am brutally honest, so shall go onto the next lesson.
I didn’t attend this lesson as I was working. 
3rd Lesson started off much the same as the first. We did another free writing task and this time we were all given a different opening part of a sentence. I didn’t manage to write as much this week as I did initially and I don’t know why if I’m honest, maybe I was thinking too much when it came to what I was writing, although the idea is to not think about what your writing. Char has her own rules when it comes to lessons, one being once we have written, to read it out we must get up and stand in front of the others and read out our own work. It’s quite a weird thing for me if I am honest. I’ve done presentations in the form of slide shows and playing my video work in front of the class before and never have I been as nervous as I was when I had to stand up and read out what I have just written. It’s like when you text into one of them ‘txt to screen’ shows on the music channels. You text in your message and after a while it might pop up on screen for a bit. Or it’s like waiting to hear your numbers being read out on the lottery, at least for me it’s the same feeling. I know, I am strange, but over time I hope to master it. 
Anyhuu..
After that Char taught us about character building. The concept she portrayed to us was as if they were icebergs. You only ever see a bit of the iceberg above the water, but bellow the water is a vast hunk of ice hidden by the water. The idea being that the part above water is the stuff you show about your character, Name, Age, Race, Employment etc etc and there stuff below are other random things right down to minisqule things such as how they might order their CD collection, if they love DVD’s or prefer good old VHS’s and such. The idea being you only show the small part, but as the writer you must know everything about your character to be successful in a way. After this we did ‘hot seating’, the idea of this was for someone to take the seat and be given the basic info about a character. It was up to us to ask questions to try and find out what the characters secret was. An example was the character was a 40 year old builder called Paul, that’s the basic info given but everything else was conjured on the spot to give this character more depth; depending on what question was asked. Eventually his secret was he wanted to create stain glassed windows (Like in Church’s). We then split into groups of three and did the same within our small group and had a chat after about who our characters were and their secrets and stuff. I was Sheila Walkers, a 40 single mum who worked in a café. The rest was made up as questions were asked.
We were also given home work this week, and from the sounds of last weeks home work (which I think I would of done quite well at or at least did my bloody best at!) is just as good. We have to develop our characters or, if their shit, make a new character. We then have to put them into a setting where they would feel very uncomfortable. As Sheila doesn’t like control (due to past experiences with men) and doesn’t like her mother (due to her mother being a strict Catholic, of which Shela rebelled against as a kid) some setting of which she hasn’t got the highest authority will suit, no idea where yet but we shall see. Or, I will make a whole new one which will be better! As already it is a bit hard to think of something for Sheila.
