Sense-ual writing

Super to hear from Helen who had a great buzz in her class through using the 8 senses (see my blogs labelled senses) and pictures. Then -- O Creative One -- she went on to focus on senses and poetry, and she suggests an excellent source for poetry workshops. 'All the work's done for you, if you pick a good one!' she says. It is on the Guardian website, and the one she used was by Matthew Francis... I checked it out, YES! Here is the link http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/apr/14/poetry

So thank you Helen and thank you Matthew. If anyone else out there has useful, relevant resources to recommend and creative teaching variations to share let me know and I'll blog it -- one big happy creative mix.

Last pub-gather of my academic year this week; I have sent a reminder to all of my Hero's Journey/Writer's Journey writers. It is fun and rewarding to introduce the new batch to the previous 'graduates' and see this group of local writers build and encourage each other. I don't go every month (got my own bunches of writers to build and encourage me) but I do like to keep in touch.

Remember to encourage all your writers to enter competitions -- the Bridport deadline is in June... must be loads of others too. Make it an assignment: they all have to look up comps and bring them in to share -- online, in libraries, in the Poetry Library, in writing magazines. Like I said, one big happy creative mix.

Setting goals for writers

After tackling the Inner Critic in last week's class -- we each even interviewed our own, Jeremy Paxman style -- we ended with that Waterstone's story-on-a-(large)-postcard competition. Some felt pleased enough to read out; I hope they entered them!

Of course these in-class quickies do not suit all writing students, and can't be counted on to produce anything useable. But sometimes the rush is just the trick for a nearly-finished little piece. Or the results are worth further development.

Speaking of competitions, don't forget the Bridport Prize, deadline 30th June. Not for the slap-dash entry, encourage all writers to polish, polish, polish their up-to 5000 words (or 42 lines of poetry). This has major prizes (1st = £5000), major judges (Helen Simpson, David Harsent) and gets serious publishing attention. http://www.bridportprize.org.uk/

You can make a whole lesson, or series, out of competitions, analyzing their anthologies, determining the differences between 2000 word limits and 5000 word limits etc.

I usually issue a handout each term listing top competitions, heading it 'Set Your Goals'. Time to update it... watch this space.

Meanwhile, by the end of our Critic interviews most of us managed to get a grudging compliment from the monster.

Writing a novel, writing poetry

What to do when you're not teaching? Write, of course. Or get some juice by becoming a writing student -- that's what I'm doing this week.

Write-a-novel-in-a-month course -- well, not really, but we can dream, and generate lots of rubbish writing to then edit into something. This is a jump in and swim class a colleague has been teaching for a while. I don't have a laptop though, and prefer creating in longhand anyway, so I expect writer's cramp will be a main result of the five session course.

The other is a Sunday afternoon poetry workshop taught by an established poet. I love mucking about with words and shaping them.

Don't forget the Bridport competition deadline 30 June http://www.bridportprize.org.uk

Helpless without pc... my email decided not to send anymore, so off we go to my little computer shop. I hope it won't take long, it is such a big part of everyday life.