A Writerly Life - A Publishing Idea 4/4

I attended a teacher writer's retreat at the Q Station in Manly some time ago and as a way to publish writing from the event we were asked to put together some pages for a zine. These are the two pages I created with my photograph, illustrations, and four short poems.

I love the concept of zines and have purchased many from the Sticky Institute (currently running a 'Quarantine Zine Club' while Covid 19 restrictions are in place) and I treasure them. Zines remind me of my high school art teacher's worksheets - images cut and pasted, titles printed from Word, bubble writing, handwritten notes. There is something about the handwriting that I especially love. Maybe I should dig out some of the worksheets I created in my first few years of teaching and turn them into a zine...

A zine can be as simple or complex as the maker wishes. It provides an opportunity for a piece of writing to have some finality and seek an audience. The Sticky Institute accepts zines and will sell them on your behalf if you would like to take that route or perhaps you could leave a copy on a train seat or at a bus stop with a pebble on top.

Here is a great guide on creating a zine from The Creative Independent and a guide from Vice. If you would like to embark on zines in the classroom there is a peer reviewed article available via JSTOR - Zines in the Classroom: Reading Culture.

The Writing Teacher – Maintaining a Writing Life

When consciously thinking of our health and possibly how much exercise we are getting we often think of incidental exercise - parking the car a little further from the office or grocery store, walking to the local shops instead of driving, digging out the bike from the garage... when thinking about creative pursuits though, it is evident that many do not have the same strategies for 'incidental writing,' or 'incidental art.' 

I have given some time to thinking about how I can be more tactical in ensuring I spend some time on creative pursuits that bring joy into my life.

1. Paper

Take a journal with you to jot down ideas. An A6 journal will fit into your pocket and so will a little pencil or pen. If you use a paper diary or organiser for work or life perhaps you could pop a few blank pages into the back and these will serve as your 'on the go' place to record ideas.

2. Notes (now, I mean, electronic Notes... don't you love how we name electronic things after their analogue variety?)

If you use Apple devices it is possible to set up a Notes page in your iPhone and attach it to cloud storage and this is when things get a lot easier. Linked Notes accounts allow almost instantaneous syncing between iPhone, iPad, and MacBook, etc. so regardless of what you are doing you can write down a quick note or continue to work on a piece you started at an earlier time. Your limerick will be across all devices before you have even had a chance to finish editing!

3. Shower Notes 

In a media rich world, quiet time to reflect is hard to come by. Many creatives state openly that inspiration comes to them whilst showering but it is not great for your notebook or smart phone to be smashing out ideas whilst dripping wet. My partner bought me Aqua Notes a few years ago and they wait patiently in the shower cubicle until genius strikes. Also handy for grocery lists.

4. Writing Goals

I set a personal challenge this year to write a poem a day (I am having varying degrees of success with this commitment). I figure that even if they are short or remain perpetually in draft form (very draughty draft form) it is still work that I would not have if I didn't set myself a challenge and hey, you can't edit a blank page.

5. Don't Make it into Work

I often set projects that soon become another thing on my to do list and instead of being a source of joy they become work. If time limits, word counts, and other such restrictions make your creative pursuits into work, leave them!

6. Morning Pages

Angela Cameron’s The Artist’s Way is a very well-known text that provides a range of ideas and provocations to nurture and revitalise your creative approach. One of these is Morning Pages – three A4 pages of writing first thing in the morning. I got my husband onto this bandwagon as well and each morning for several months we made cereal and began writing. After about 25 minutes our pages were done, we would file them in an envelope and continue getting ready for work. I attribute the ability to move through some very difficult situations in my life to the catharsis of Cameron’s Morning Pages. I need to tweak my morning routine somewhat to get them back into my life. 

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Playing With Poetry with A.F. Harrold

I went to the 'Playing With Poetry' session with A.F. Harrold at the Sydney Writers Festival last weekend and had a fabulous morning banging out some poetry in response to the provided prompts. The other joy, of course, was hearing the writing of the other attendees - one of whom was just 17 years old - what a talent!

I happily scooped the hours up for my Maintenance of Accreditation at Proficient (thank you SWF!) and thought some of the activities would be great in the classroom! If you see A.F. Harrold out and about in Australia - try to get your students to his workshops as he writes for young people and runs school workshops, in England.

Nursery Rhyme Lipograms
Writing an entire novel without the letter 'E' as Ernest Vincent Wright did with 'Gadsby,' would be quite a task, but a Nursery Rhyme? Way more feasible! Nursery Rhymes are not exactly common childhood fodder these days, so mind that not every student will be able to recall one - in the session we couldn't either so we did a quick brainstorm and shared ideas. Several of us ended up writing the same Nursery Rhyme but this was fun when it came to reading out our verse.  This got me thinking about why the Nursery Rhyme worked for this activity - they're short, have a simple rhyme scheme, and utilise techniques like repetition. Students could possibly use the chorus from a favourite song.

1. Choose a Nursery Rhyme.
2. Decide which letter or vowel could be removed. Encourage students to challenge themselves - if there is only one 'U' in the entire Nursery Rhyme, for example, well that's no fun!
3. Write the Nursery Rhyme - give students the option of sticking closely to the original in rhyme and rhythm or keep some aspects if possible.

The Proverbial 
Having fun with words can come from engaging with well known proverbs.

1. Choose a proverb.
2. Change one of the words.
3. Consider the impact of this change - perhaps laugh or consider the profoundness of the new 'proverb.'
4. Remember, don't put all of your enemies in the one basket.

'An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in...'
 An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in London is described as part documentary, part poetry, part catalogue recording the events of a weekend in Hackney. The focus of 'An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in London' is to capture the small details of the moment. Recording, memorialising, appreciating what we would probably not notice.

1. Choose a location for a 15-minute writing sprint.
2. Give students the option of writing free verse or perhaps begin with a list poem to locate students in the concrete detail before they move to abstraction. It maybe that they begin with a list, then edit with a focus on adding a simile and a metaphor or another rhetorical device.

The Story of a Button
The last activity in the workshop involved an object. We all closed our eyes and were handed an object. It was amazing just how much story was inspired by a little, tiny button.

1. To begin, hand each student a button. Ask them to consider how it feels, what it looks like, where it may have originated.
2. Zoom in on the button, describe it in one sentence.
3. Where is the button located? Move from concrete to the imagination. Write about what the button is attached to in three sentences.
4. Zoom out again, consider who is wearing the item or where the item is located. Write six sentences.

It was a fabulous morning all in all. It never ceases to amaze me how a blank page becomes a piece of creative work in just moments (first draft, obviously!). If you are interested in seeing A.F. Harrold's wonderful work, visit his website here.

Writing about Reading Books about Writing #2 'On Writing' - Stephen King

The bookshelf that holds my growing collection of 'books about writing' has started to bow so with renewed determination I have begun adding them to my GoodReads account - surely if I populate my 'To Read' list with their titles I am sure to read them, right?

I am drawn to books about words and the people who write them. I have been thinking about why I enjoy the genre and I have reached a conclusion - I am intrigued by the way the creative process plays out differently for each individual - and I like the life story tucked behind. What I have found in my reading so far is much more than sets of writing rules. There is a sense of the person who has grappled with imposter syndrome, self doubt, incredulity from friends, and possibly family, as well as contended with the ebb and flow of imaginative energy to embark on the creative life.

So this brings me to my latest read - Stephen King's memoir 'On Writing' which is featured on every online list of writing advice. The memoir is significantly shorter than King's works of fiction and was published in 2000, which I initially figured wasn't that long ago, but one can quickly become deluded when they reflect upon how long ago it was since they sat in a high school classroom. I read Stephen King voraciously from Year 10 through Year 12 - my late teens were the apex of my horror reading. I sometimes wish I spent some of this time reading the books all English teachers have read by the time they leave school - but alas I did not have that reading list, and I am still yet to find it - so 'K' was the section I hung around in the Laurieton Library.

I found solace in school, and reading and whilst I cannot exactly recall where I was when I was reading - was it on the school bus? Or was I lugging tomes of horror to roll call? Who knows. I just know that 'Cujo,' 'It,' 'The Shining,' 'The Stand,' 'The Dark Tower Series' and 'Black House' (which was co-written with Peter Straub) allowed me to escape into the deep to become entangled in plot lines twisting around upon themselves and to lose everything in the languishing accumulating detail that characterises many of King's works.

In reading the opening chapters of 'On Writing' I was struck by King's sense of humour but also some of the difficulties he faced at different stages in his life. Here was the tale of an author writing demons whilst gripped in the fight against his own. I think most whom have a penchant for capturing what it is they see in the mind's eye for the page, or canvas, or other medium, know that the process of creating is an act of vulnerability but one that is inherently important - 'Come to it anyway but lightly. Let me say it again - you must not come lightly to the blank page.' I took my time with 'On Writing.' I added notes to my Common Place Book and spent time ruminating over the messages to determine what could possibly apply to my writing and the way that I set up the practice of writing in the classroom.

Here's thirteen extracts that resonated with me:

1. '...stopping a piece of work just because it's hard either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it...' - sage advice.

2. '...it behooves you to construct your own toolbox and then build up enough muscle so that you can carry it with you.'

3. 'Unless he is certain of doing well [the writer] will probably do best to follow the rules.' - this gem from William Strunk (The Elements of Style is on my 'To Read' list).

4. 'Paragraphs ...are maps of intent.'

5. 'If you don't like it later on, fix it then. That's what the rewrite is all about.'

6. 'At its most basic we are only discussing a learned skill, but do we not agree that sometimes the most basic skills can create things far beyond our expectations?' - I think this would make a great poster for the classroom.

7. 'If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.'

8. 'I like to get to ten pages a day, which amounts to 2000 words.' - routine and commitment a prolific writer makes.

9. 'One word at a time.'

10. '...you must be able to describe it, and in a way that will cause your reader to prickle with recognition.'

11. 'Talk, whether ugly or beautiful, is an index of character; it can also be a breath of cool, refreshing air in a room some people would prefer to keep shut up.'

12. 'The most important things to remember about back story are that a) everyone has a history and b) most of it isn't very interesting.'

13. '... you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will.'

As King states, 'Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around' for without art, what is there?