A Writers' New Year Workout

Okay, 'tis the season of lists and resolutions.  Let's limber up to answer the Call of this year's Writing Adventure. We're a sedentary bunch, us writers, so here's an 8-step workout to try from the comfort of your desk – or bed even. Pick a few exercises and don't sweat it.

1. Warm-Up: Review 2017

Feeling a bit sluggish post-Christmas? Sometimes it's a morale booster just to recognise the time and effort you've invested in your writing practice over the past year. If you don't already keep a running list of acceptances, successes, publications etc. it's a good habit to get into. However small or great, these are worth recording. Very handy when you have to put together a biography for a submission or if you find yourself applying for funding or a writing-related opportunity. Note the month and which publication or event you were involved in. And give yourself a pat on the back for getting your work out there.


     2.  Set Timer for 2018 

 First up, fish out that new calendar, (courtesy of Leicester Writes website), and plot out those key dates. East Midlanders like myself live in a region absolutely packed with writers' events. But your area will have its own highlights. In March 2018 alone, I've just pencilled in the WEM Writers Conference 2018 (3rd March), States of Independence Indie-publishers' fair (10th March) and Cultural Exchanges festival (26th Feb - 2nd March). Then there's monthly dates for LeicesterWriters' Showcase events, as well as Novel Exchanges, and Shindig and WORD for the poets amongst you. And don't forget the Writers' Shed programme of Saturday Masterclasses kicking off again in February 2018.

3. Running on the Spot: Your Process

Every writer does it differently – but YOUR PROCESS is the one that gets the job done for you. If someone was to interview you and ask you how your writing happens, what would you say? Do you make a date with your writing everyday for however long? (a very good tip a writing friend once gave me.) Is there a time of day that works best for you? Or is that determined by work routines, family commitments etc? Is there a place or ritual that gets you in the frame of mind to write? Maeve Binchy lights candles. Some people put on music. Others prefer the bustle of a busy café. Know your own process and nurture it. It's where the magic happens.

4. Star Jumps: Your Brilliant Career

Maybe you're already published and you're managing the expectations of editors, agents and readers, whilst staying true to your own interests and writing passions. Or maybe, your family and friends think of writing as your little hobby. If you've committed to a writing practice, take the time to consider where you want to go with it. Be your own coach. Jot down where you'd like to be with your writing in a year's time. And in 5 years' time? Start to set yourself some goals for the next few months and ease yourself in with smaller targets for January. 

Talk to your writing friends about these goals - and if you don't have any, find some on-line or join local writing communities. I've benefited hugely this year from attending groups like Leicester Writers' Club, The Speculators and Poetry Stanza. Leicester Writes is an open friendly group that meets once a month in a city café and welcomes new writers for chat and networking. On-line, The Writers' Shed is happy to talk to you about your goals and how you can move towards them.

5. Skipping: Current Writing Projects

Take a good look at any current writing projects you're pursuing. What's working well, what are the stumbling blocks? Is there any research you need to do – whether on-line or visiting places or ordering new resources. If you're quite advanced with a project like a novel or screenplay or poetry chapbook, you might benefit from the input of other writers. See step 4 for writing communities. Consider working with an experienced mentor in your field. WEM has a scheme for writers to apply for or you can talk to people at The Writers'Shed about your goals and needs. The Writers' Shed also offers manuscript critiques for that book you're honing. At the same time, it's good to keep yourself open to potential new projects – jot down ideas that have been kicking around in your back-brain for a while.

6. Forward Lunges: Up-skilling

No writer has to do it all alone. Why re-invent the wheel when you can borrow the expertise of people who've been there already? One thing you can do to take your writing to the next level is invest in a course that addresses writing skills you're trying to improve. These could be one-day courses, weekend retreats or a longer course, such as:

• Arvon Retreats have a good reputation. They offer tutored retreats for 4 or 6 days. Courses are also available. Look at who the tutors are first. They're not cheap but you can apply for a grant.
• WEM – Writing School. This writing school has been running in Leicester for over 60 years with an excellent track record of supporting developing writers. It now runs courses taught by published professionals in Nottingham too. I'm teaching a 6 week course on 'Building Your Poetry Collection' from mid-Feb. 2018 onwards on Sat. mornings in Leicester. But there's something there for everybody whatever your genre. 
• The Writers' Shed is a new service for writers, based both on-line and in the East Midlands. Pitched at writers who are wanting to take their work to the next level, we offer manuscript critiques, one-to-one mentoring and a series of Saturday masterclasses on key skills to build towards publication. There are also free on-line resources to dip into. Pop in and browse our shelves. 

7. Dumb-bells & Resources

Yes, your shelves are groaning but there's always room for one more essential writing guide or must-read book. If you appreciate the craft of modern short stories, I can recommend the sumptuous anthologies produced by Dahlia Publishing (who are also running the Leicester Short Story competition again this year.) On my own wish-list is a new 'How to be a Poet' handbook from Nine Arches Press editor Jane Commane and the inimitable Jo Bell. If you're wrestling with novel plotting or screenplays, I'd always recommend Robert McKee's 'Story' and a friend has lent me Christopher Vogler's classic study of  The Hero's Journey. 

Of course, January is the month of overdrafts and tax returns. So this month, I'm also hoping to dip into on-line resources from authors including Niki Monaghan, Damien Walter and Rod Duncan. Duncan is offering free pod-casts on 'Selling Your Novel' covering everything from cover letters to synopses. Find links to these at The Writers' Shed. And don't forget, apart from the world wide web, there's your local library. I happen to know Leicester's Central Library has an excellent creative writing section. Use it while it's still there!

8. Cool-Down with a Good Book.

Well, that's the heavy lifting done. Now for that tottering pile of To Read books by the bed. Two favourites from 2017 I'd recommend are the gorgeous 'What We Thought We Knew' by Mahsuda Snaith and Jeanette Ng's delicious gothic fantasy 'Under the Pendulum Sun.' And I can't wait for a new Gas-Lit Empire novel from Rod Duncan, 'The Queenof All Crows', out this month. Why not get a bit of light exercise re-shuffling that pile and then curl up with a book you'd quite forgotten about? It's what the dark days of January were invented for. 

Postcards from a Digital Dug-out

August is a strange month to be sitting in a locked room. Curtains closed to keep the blaze of sunshine from the obscuring the computer's glare. Half-starving, shivering in trenches (imaginatively) whist outside summer burgeons and allotments fatten. But I was excited to be leading my first digital writing residence and for seven days, it felt as if the flickering screen was my patch of sky. When I wasn't googling research sites, jotting exercises or tweeting about it, I was waiting for the cheep of e-borne post. The residency was commissioned by WritingEast Midlands in conjunction with a national body responsible for organising suitable cultural commemorations of WW1. Someone in 14-18-NOW had the idea of a unique 'memorial of words' from today's generation and nationwide, schoolchildren, pensioners, squaddies and civilians, writers and other artists, were drafted to pen a Letter tothe Unknown Soldier of Paddington Station.

 

He's an approachable soul. When you get above the height of the marble plinth, he looks like an ordinary young man from your street. In the bulky uniform of a WW1 Private, he wears a voluminous greatcoat and a non-regulation knitted scarf. He is reading a letter and the 14-18-NOW project invited us to write that Letter From Home. But we had seven days to play with so I devised exercises each day on themes around the Paddington statue - or 'our friend Tommy' as we came to call him. Moving through reflections on the STATION, BOOTS, LETTER, HELMET, SCARF, GREATCOAT and MEMORIAL, we edged further and further into his nightmarish world of troop trains, trenches, shell-holes. It was impossible not to be disturbed, horrified and deeply saddened at the industrial slaughter and daily privations these Tommies suffered.

For me, the experience was lightened by the beautiful writing and enthusiastic engagement of the week's work-shoppers. As it turned out, these included some experienced writers, already knowledgeable about WW1. Each day along with writing prompts and exercises, I posted videos, images and web-links garnered from a wide range of on-line sources. We explored the WW1 'field' postal depots and a French cottage industry producing silk  embroidered postcards on a huge scale for soldiers to send home. We wrote about trench foot and shell-shock, about Boy Soldiers (Britain's 250,000 underage recruits) and dawn executions. My 'posties' delivered witty, insightful and moving accounts of desert bombing raids, 'Munitionettes' and life on the Home Front too. After all, this 'Total War' not only spanned the globe but revolutionised social and gender relations as well as the technology of killing human beings in unforeseen numbers.

A century on, a digital writing course is probably a fitting venture for 2014. The unpredictability of who and when was a challenge for me but the flexibility was appealing to workshoppers. With open access 24/7, they could pick through which of the resources and exercises they wanted to tackle and post when they were ready. An attempt at 'live workshops' faltered – it proved better for people to work at their own pace. But they could share the 'texts' they produced – poems, stories, dialogue fragments – and converse with each other via forumthreads. I critiqued each piece posted but also found their feedback invaluable on my own attempts at exercises. So fruitful was this, that subsequently I have drafted a dozen 'Unknown Soldier' poems. An unexpected bonus.

 

When we emerged blinking from this digital dug-out, it was the 4^th August. We were posting our final Letters just as the nation marked the 100thanniversary of the War declaration. A sobering moment. But also the culmination of a week's creativity, exploring our own responses to war, and imaginatively re-entering that charged landscape of the past. I am grateful to WEM for the opportunity and to my 'posties' for their openness to writing challenges, their willingness to venture into some dark places and their companionship. I hope we shall see more of their WW1 writing but you can read their Letters to 'our friend Tommy' along with 21,408 others on the 14-18-NOWUnknown Soldier website. They will be available to read there until 2018 when they will be stored permanently in the British Library's digital archive. At which point, our voices and letters will merge into that polyphonic postbag that is our own 'history'.

Ear to the Ground: Water Poetry

Q:   If water was a goddess, how would she move?
A:   She would leap about and dance.

Q:   If water was a child, what would it wear?
A:   It wears bubbles and little fishes. Or it goes completely naked - it is wearing the air.

These are some of the things I learnt from the children of Kidgate Primary School in Louth in Lincolnshire. I was there for a day of workshops on themes drawn from the history of Louth's springs and streams, now hidden underground like a well-kept secret. But we teased out the song of that water in our first class poem which played with wonderful water words like 'gurgling', 'sloshing', trickle', 'dribble' and 'splash'. And that delightful closing couplet:

'It dances and prances, making us stare;
with no clothes on, it's wearing the air.'


Our second session took this class of 28 children - seven to nine year olds - out into the green space of the nearby Gatherums. Here Lucy Lumb from the Gatherums & Springside Regeneration Project related more of Louth's history to the children. The GSRP is a dedicated group of local volunteers and community workers who have transformed a rather muddy and semi-derelict area into a park with flowers, vegetable beds and paved play areas. As we walked down the ancient footpath of the Gatherums, past the site of the town's original sacred spring, the kids played out stories of John Jeffries, the town's Water-Carrier with his trusty horse. They revived the ritual of the Rag Tree, tying imaginary rags to wipe away sickness. And on the spot where the slum children of Gatherums once played by an open stream, they listened for the sound of water 'from a 100 years ago.' Never has a man-hole caused so much excitement as we all queued to kneel and hear the spring 'dripping and trickling ... like it was wriggling under the ground'. The wholehearted engagement of these  open-air poets blew me away as each child wrote their own line for a place-poem alive with the sounds of the past and present:

'Walking around, children playing beside;
walking around a beautiful place
walking along the invisible water
green and alive, we are thinking back.'

Remembrance continued to thread the day's themes as our afternoon session focused on their own memories of a childhood in Louth or elsewhere. Each small group delivered a verse with a rhyme about their shared stories. They were generous with each other and creative with their rhymes: 'sledging in winter - don't get a splinter!' Then in a magical moment, Mrs Rhodes put her hand up and the hubbub fell silent for a final read-around. Later I edited this collective poem into a 'Memory Quilt' patched with squares from each table:

'From Lincolnshire, Louth
or Fermanagh lanes
Japan and all over
childhood's the same.'

At this tender age their powers of memory are impressive. Asked what they'd learnt through the day, without notes they recalled the Great Flood of 1920, the 50 houses that once bordered the stream, the Wool Walkers of Queen Street and much more. Pleasingly, they also learnt that 'you can make a poem from anything', that 'some are funny' and 'poems don't have to rhyme'. Collectively, they penned three lively, poignant, thoughtful poems, which may yet feature in the on-going celebrations of the Gatherums & Springside Project.

For myself, I learnt a huge amount and like the children 'wish we could do this again!' I want to thank the GSRP for the invitation and Writing East Midlands for facilitating this visit. My thanks go especially to Lucy for being our guide and my right-hand with the marker pen while the children were brainstorming lines thick and fast. Also to Mrs Rhodes and Mrs Philips who welcomed into this beautifully run school and fetched us restorative cups of tea. Above all the day at Kidgate reminded me what a pleasure it is to work with this age-group, 'playing acting and making poems all day.'

Some feedback:

Teacher:   'A great day. I really liked the linking of history and poetry writing ... your given lines were a good starting point for the children'.

Project Organiser:  'It was wonderful to see the children in the Gatherums, talking about the history they had learnt ... their use of language was excellent, they understood what was expected and responded enthusiastically.'

Children:   'I found this lesson well today because I loved the poet writing the history and the little trip!!! It was great fun. I would like to do this again.' 

'My favourite part of the day was listening to the manhole water and writing poems about Springside.'

'I enjoyed doing the acting in my group when we got hold of each other pretending they were horses.'

'I liked listening to the drain. Also I learned that Springside has a whole history!'

'We worked well together. I have enjoyed finding the two lines and acting like the people did in the olden days.'

'I wrote my first poem and it was fun
and at lunch I had a bun.'