A travel writing class

So why not take you right through the two hour creative writing class that went so well (mentioned last week)? The subject was travel writing. Here goes...
On my class plan (I always write one out, to keep me focussed and on track), I listed the following Learning Outcomes/Objectives:

• To list and develop travel writing ideas
• To consider outlets & styles of travel writing
• To practice vivid sense-experience travel writing
• To begin a travel article

P.S. You should know that I write those objectives AFTER I have thought and doodled up my ideas for filling the 2 hours with a good pacing of exercises, interaction and straight lecture. Once the draft ideas are tightened I can see that they add up to sensible "objectives" (teaching jargon..., but actually, it helps)

5 mins to intro myself and what we will do and ascertain that they do have a break, when & how (as a substitute I wanted to fit into their patterns, not impose mine -- might make them unhappy...)

Jumped right in and gave them 5 minutes (or less) to LIST 5 PLACES YOU HAVE BEEN TO AND WANT TO WRITE ABOUT... that is, would like to share, tell people about. Someone asked, and my answer was, Yes, as well as holiday places they might be a place you know well, like one you used to live in or visit every year; can even be places right here in your own home area.

When I glanced around to see that most had a list, or at least a list of 3 places, moved right on to CHOOSE ONE, one that speaks to you right now, and SHARE WITH YOUR NEIGHBOR for 5 minutes, then SWAP AND THE OTHER SHARES for 5 minutes. The task each time is for the listener to ASK QUESTIONS. Note-taking isn't necessary, but do, both of you, notice what questions are asked... what do people need and want to know?

The numbers were initially uneven, so I partnered a young woman who had been to Jerusalem just this Christmas. I didn't get to share my Nepal trip with her, because a latecomer arrived and became her partner. It can be hard to join in a chatting exercise as tutor because half your attention has to be on the rest of the class and the clock... Got to remind all to swap roles midway.

Then, 5 minutes for REFLECTIVE NOTES. Pulling them back from the chatter is a challenge! But, hey, they're having fun. This is a little space to calm down and jot down what you spoke of, and to note the questions and what your listener wanted to know, what you wanted to know. (I didn't get round to mentioning it directly, but this brings out the famous 5 Ws of journalism -- Who, What, Where, Why, When -- the keys to clarity and communication.)

It's about 20-25 minutes into the class, and they are well 'warmed'. I'm feeling comfortable and they are fizzing with thoughts. Time now for me to talk at them.... but this blog has gone on long enough, I have to get on with Ephraim (and my morning caffeine fix), so the Travel Writing Lecture, on openings and styles, will continue next week...

Postcards for the edge

The substituting for two classes last Tuesday went really well!

In fact I will be so unblushing that I will here quote a comment made in the class at the end of the session by one of the 13 students in the course which has been running since September:

'I think this is the best writing we have all done in class this whole year.'

What a fine compliment. 11 of the 13 read out, and all were good, with a handful so rich and smooth they were publishable; the others were excellent starts just needing to be finished. Sometimes magic does happen.

I think I will make you wait for details on what I did (and what they did) til next time. Instead: the other class, which was a workshopping class. Well, good thing I did bring a 'just in case', as I said last week, because, as opposed to the team leader's assumption, the 2 hour class was not in the habit of workshopping for the entire 2 hours.

So, after the one scheduled writer's slot (that was fun; as well as two stanza'd poems, she'd done a page of 8 haiku, as happenstance has it one of my special areas of knowledge), I provided a stimulus for writing. Introduced thus,

'I suppose you've done lots of excercises with postcards in this class.'

This met with mystifcation -- no! Strange, I'm not sure how you can inspire writing without postcards somewhere pretty soon along the line. I'd chosen some of my weirder ones, assuming they'd have done character and senses work using postcards previously.

The task was to use the picture to write a character's dream. I had been going to do the Postcard Ambush (from my book -- you drop a second card on them as they are mid-flow, to additionally weave into or shift the dream, as dreams do...). But as this was all new to these students, it would have completely thrown them, so they had a one-picture dream.

Of course a dream can take you anywhere -- and so these did, from a fast-running river to a dentist's chair, from a castle garden to a 5-door'd hallway...

Eeek, substitute teaching travel writing tomorrow

Ooops, got so carried away with the successful outflow on my great grandfather Ephraim's story that I forgot to blog here this weekend. And now my team leader has just rung to ask me to substitute two classes tomorrow.



Fortunately one is Advanced Workshopping, so I am presuming no prep -- but maybe I'll bring some postcards along for a simple stimulus exercise, in case I'm wrong about that... or in case the workshoppers fail to bring work.



The other is Travel Writing as topic for a Ways In to Writing course -- don't know if they've had any input on it yet. Will assume no -- anyway, my intro to it will have my flavour, the regular tutor's will have had his. Yummy topic, no problems getting people excited about travel experiences... then just have to segue them into writing.



I haven't written/published travel for ages, no longer looking to do that, so I'd better glance at yesterday's travel supplements. And I just browsed through my mate Cathy Smith's Suite101.com site -- she's got 285 travel articles on it! Got to suggest students think about cyber as well as print markets, and maybe their own travel blogs.

Quart into pint pot challenge

Quarts into pints or litres into halfs, the challenge is to boil down or skim off a course-worth's material into a 45 minute class. I am substituting for a writer-tutor buddy who has asked me to tell her class about Hero's Journey/Writer's Journey.

Well, hmmm. I first devised the course as 6 one-day (10 am - 4 pm) workshops over an academic year. That is, first session class was on Hero, second entirely devoted to Thresholds, Guardians, Allies etc. It worked well and we had oceans (well, I am talking myth here) of time for writing and for discussion.

A couple of years later I re-jigged it as a course of five weeks, 2 hours per session. Less time to write and discuss in class, fewer readings out of material. But still, it works well -- that's the course I just finished teaching. To run again in November.

But in 45 minutes -- what to do? I don't want to drone (I mean lecture) on and on about the hero concept and its many parts. I am much happier -- that is I feel and see that I am reaching students with my teaching -- when they write and we interact. So I must work in one exercise -- which one? This class is pretty well established and most are engaged on a work in hand, so my standard Character Profile beginning does not feel right.

I think I have decided on Mentor, with my Serendipity Bag of odd items (some very odd indeed). It is a useful way for a writer to gain insights into a character she/he thinks they know already. It uses staged questions. I have done it with the class each time, and it has suprised and enriched me every time.

I met a mingling of two former Hero writing classes at the pub last week and sought the opinion of one writer-on-the-journey. She liked the postcard exercises most of all, but saw my reasoning and liked Mentor too.

I will let you know how it goes. Meanwhile, if you don't know what staged questions, character profile and serendipity bag are -- buy Creative Writing: the Matrix!

The Glastig and what she did

I substituted for my over-committted (a film script meeting!) teaching buddy again. Decided to KISS (keep it simple, stupid) after my last ad hoc was too complex for me to get across quickly. (see blog of 11/05/08)

Monsters and Fabulous Creatures was the subject. Using definitions from the Wordsworth Word Finder, a reference book I've had for years, a treasure trove of unusual and technically precise words arranged under categories.

Within an hour we had tall tales, a bizarre news report, strange experiences and -- transposing the stimulus -- a character sketch. The 'sharing the journey' issue came up (see blog of 11/12/08), so, yes, when asked, I read out what I'd done, and here it is. Just in time for Burns' Night.

The Glastig
How did I get here?
Winding roads, wrong turns,
my arthritis playing up and then
– the right way! She was so kind
and Celtic. That porcelain skin,
the dusting of freckles,
the lilt in her soft voice, och ay!

How did I get here?
Bloody hell, ten miles wrong,
my rucksack strap broken, blister
on my heel. She was so kind,
dressed in green, a local for sure.
When I looked back I saw her leap
up to a rock. Her laughter bleated.

KISS in substituting

Recently I substitute taught a general creative writing and workshopping class for a mate. I used some of the Present Tense material I'd successfully used (see recent past blogs). The session went fine... or fine enough. It was satisfactory, and what more should you expect, coming in cold to an existing formed class? But I love the feel of a really good session, and I missed that feeling. So I have come up with two lessons learned for myself when substituting.

1) Keep It Simple, Stupid. The class was of mixed experience and level and my exercise was multi-staged, designed for my group of known experienced writers. It worked for some of these unknown students, but left others flat. It was too complex. So: don't be tricky. When subsituting, do a simple inspiration stimulus, a word, phrase or story question. Or rely on the treat of writing from picture postcards or from objects from a Serendipity Bag.

2) Always write out a lesson plan and a sheet of tutor prompts for each stage of the session. I was a bit blithe about planning, thinking I'd remember all the stages of that exercise. I'd brought my Matrix book to use as prompt to the stages, but then didn't pick it up and use it -- it feels unnatural to teach direct from a book, even when it is my own! Instead, I should have done what I always do: scrawl on A4 sheets the steps and prompts when prepping each session.

By prepping in writing, my psychic energy, passion and voice go from me, to my pen, to the page of session plan and notes and then out to the students with confidence, authority, conviction and fun, because the lesson has become part of me. I have become the message. The opposite of this is flabby, lazy, didactic or droning teaching. From me, anyway.