FutureLearn - Start Writing Fiction

Several years ago, I came across a site called 'FutureLearn' where you can enrol and partake in free online courses (FREE!). I searched through and found some on literature and writing and I enrolled. I didn't end up completing the courses at the time but I recently enrolled in another and realised, because they are all online, they wait for you! I am working through 'Start Writing Fiction' now, which is designed to get you writing.  So I am collecting activities to use with my creative writing group at school (smart preparation!) and hopefully also improving my writing in the process!

Activity 8. Imagining Writing Spaces

Ideal

The night owl sat, a blanket around her knees. She wished she was a little smaller so the blanket would ‘throw’ over more of her but it didn’t matter really. Maths, year 10, maybe year 11. ‘When studying, have everything you need right there, everything. Water, tissues, pens, highlighters, paper, your textbook, a blanket if it is cold. Don’t make any excuses to get up.’ She wondered if the sage advice helped or hindered her writing process as now she felt compelled to get up about 7-8 times to collect every single item that may be needed in some bizarre scenario. A pile of equipment surrounded her as she peeled open her laptop and opened up her ‘Ideas’ folder. ‘Ideas’? This was only so her students didn’t question her file names when she used her laptop for her lessons during the day, ‘Misssss, what is in your ‘My writing’ folder? Can we read yours before we do ours? Pleeaaaaasssseee Missss.’ Ideas. It was easier. She tied her hair back and found the document she was after. The night was a vignette around her, the cold leeched through the window at her side but she liked intermittently looking out to the glassy streets outside, pondering whether anyone else was awake as she wrote.

Bizarre

She hit the ‘OK’ button on her phone, again. How many alarms were set this morning? Five? Six? She simply couldn’t get herself out of bed a moment before she had to. She read 7.17am. Ahhhh, 19 more blissful minutes. 7.36am gave her 20 minutes to be ready and out the door to be at work by 8.01am. She sucked in a quick breath and sat up suddenly. Oh! Writing. She hadn’t been thinking of ‘the year of making her dreams a reality’ when she was hitting that damn snooze button. A wave a guilt spread over her, sweat prickled at her hairline. It was a New Year’s Resolution to get herself out of bed to write before her day begun. What a start.

Activity 2. Keep Track of Useful Details

He sat, glancing at the pages. I caught myself. I was looking at him like I would gaze at a creature in a zoo. Behind the glass absorbed in his own world, a shopping bag sat in front of him and he read. Page after page. I noticed illustrations on some of the pages, a bright splash of colour. The corners of his mouth twitched with a smile. Did his neck hurt from leaning over like that?

The bread was soft in her hands. She was looking forward to finishing the sandwich so she could put the rubbish in the unused packet. Public spaces. She needed to attend to her work in a place away from home but there was something unsettling that invoked slight nausea about sitting where others sat. She wished for a place only she had sat, clean, well lit, with a storm outside. The ideal conditions for peace, for clarity, for focus and motivation. The most distracted person in the world. Was there something wrong with her? Probably. But what could she do? She could only visit the public spaces, ignore the turn of her stomach as she ate her lunch and try to find her groove so she could get it all done.

I stood next to her, trawling the shelves for the latest issue. C’mon, it had to be here, I could hardly wait to read the next volume… the gigantic robot, did the small boy bot really create the monster that destroyed the world? A sudden movement caught my eye, her focused scrolling through pages her smart phone. I saw the familiar orange on the screen. She was looking for a cheaper version of the text in front of her. Wow… I thought I was the only one that did this. My rule was, half, half. Purchase half online and half in store – regardless of the price. Look after the book store and look after my pocket.

Burbury scarf, a well-tailored coat, thick Gucci glasses over her eyes. Skin clear, almost translucent, her hair a tumbling, layered cut swept across her forehead. Her shoes were suede, and clean, with laces that fell neatly each side of the bow. There was no bag by her feet, no matching luggage typical of those waiting to board as ‘Business Class’ or as I liked to think of them as ‘People Wasting Money that Could be Spent on Books’. Instead, she held a cheap, purple sleeping bag. A string of plastic, sans the cardboard tag, stuck out at the top near her hand and she tugged at the gently and repeatedly.

It was time, time to move to the next stage of the plan. Time to ditch the enormous purple (they told me it was blue and it bloody wasn’t) puffer jacket surrounding my being. I cannot fathom how ridiculous I must look but it didn’t matter one iota if this all worked out. If it didn’t, well, I was the lunatic sitting in the station for several hours doing my best Barney the Dinosaur impression.

He held his phone up to his mouth to speak and then moved it back to his ear to listen. Blerrrgggghhhh! Why! Why not hold it to your ear like a regular person? Seriously! Imagine conversing with that, ‘One second, just need to move the phone to my mouth to speak and then don’t answer straight away as I need to hover the phone around my ear in order to hear your response.’ What a dick. I can imagine the response…’cancer causing, brain cancer… blah blah blah.’ Yeah, the phone that you hold in your hand, made of flesh, that you dial with your finger, made of flesh, then you put it in your pocket, either near your heart muscle or your kidneys, or your reproductive organs. Give it up. The strange Voodoo of the modern world invoked a secret rage.

Activity 1. Fact and Fiction

Paragraph 1 One fact and three fictitious elements.

The rain fell in sheets, backlit by stark white. Surfmist. It reminded me of the colour we chose for our window frames, the garage door. We were young then, just 22 and 23, too young to enter into such a commitment. We should have been out exploring the world, not building a house and learning to despise and resent each other in the process.

Paragraph 2 One fictitious element and three facts.

She sighed, grief wrenched her usual smile into a tight grimace. Her lips were bare, there was no trace of her daily ritual of carefully applied lip liner and the garish red of the ‘Volatile’ colour she so loved. He shirt fell over her shoulder revealing the stretched elastic of a singlet that she should have thrown away years ago. The small, furry creature was limp in her lap as she stroked its soft, grey fur.

I kept trying to reach for something vaguely real when writing the fictitious elements in my paragraphs and it was such easier to write 'facts' and the context surrounding them because I was drawing on my own experiences. Perhaps a lack of imagination or that I reinforce fictitious elements with something tangible to make them seem more realistic.