Writing Groups...Remotely

“Thanks for joining this morning. [It] was really nice to see everyone who made it, and so lovely to do some writing and laugh and share ideas.”

“Thank you so much for joining in with today’s writing session in your various ways. It was wonderful to write in your company.”

Group leaders, David Marshal and Alison Jermak, sign off at the end of their respective writing group meetings. At a distance. It is lovely to write and laugh and share ideas. It is wonderful to write in the company of others.

I feel sure that many of you will have sought out a time during the day when you are able to write. We are discovering, in new ways, the power that writing can have in our lives; the way that writing works within us and takes us beyond ourselves. We are also discovering the great need we have to be in touch. In touch. We may not be near, or even touch, especially if we live alone. But we may be in touch. And the great pleasure of written and voiced communication is brought into sharp focus when closeness is denied. Alison and David are among a growing number of NWP group leaders who are finding ways to create writing workshops, writing meetings that allow us to hear our words, and the words of others, on the air.

These two leaders have been able to use Zoom to create their groups. Simon Wrigley, I know, ran his group last Saturday through e-mail. Alison accommodated both.  I envy those who are able to hear poems and prose read aloud and to share the thoughtfulness and the laughter. I have loved the group contact that is generated and the conversations that have arisen. Several weeks ago, a long-standing writing group to which I belong was cancelled for non-pandemic reasons. On the verge of lockdown, I think we felt the loss keenly. Rather tentatively, I began a virtual writing weekend, imagining the arrivals, the crunch of wheels on gravel, Radio 3 in the lit kitchen, our host asking whether we would like tea, or are we ready for a beer? I set writing prompts at appropriate times. During the weekend we quietly exchanged e-mailed conversations. We exchanged writing. Friends who would not have been able to be there in person were able to join us. Those of you who belong to writing groups know just how nourishing and inspiring they are. They are deeply human.

What next?

You could initiate a group, a trio, a pair of you, who would write together. Start with some shared prompts and see where this takes you. Alison and David kept to the pattern of regular groups: words, a short writing activity, a longer more considered piece of writing. If you are starting a new group, you may like to begin with just one short starter and then time for a longer piece of writing. You can decide. There are daily short prompts on this website. There are many more ideas in the Exercises section and in the archived, original website which you can access on the home page. Alison and David drew upon some of the brilliant resources that are available to us on line. David used a session from the Arvon 5 day short story challenge.

Alison chose a poem from Anthony Wilson’s wonderful website. If you are not already signed up for that, I recommend it.

Blue sky between clouds

I have been thinking of all my writing friends – those that I already know and those I am yet to meet. I am hoping that you are well and that you have managed to allow writing to be present somewhere in the new rhythms of your life. I find that, even if I simply write down the bare bones of my day, it helps to anchor me when all else seems adrift.

Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary: “I think it is true that one gains a certain hold on sausage and haddock by writing them down.” Writing the everyday and the ordinary, captures for me the extraordinary.

And this morning a writing teacher sent me the link to Kate Clanchy’s poetry prompt of the day on Twitter. Frank O’Hara’s poem Today just hit the spot: that celebration of the things that populate our world:

Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all
the stuff they've always talked about

still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
even on beachheads and biers. They
do have meaning. They're strong as rocks.

There is a sudden proliferation of such prompts and you will find those that work for you. I am reminded that it is nearly April and that it is the poetry equivalent of National Novel Writing Month. It is worth a go at http://www.napowrimo.net.  

There is so much to talk about!

What I really want to think about this week is the blue sky. The opportunity that stands before us at the moment. Last week, as I thought of teachers stepping forward to prepare work for children at home and to care for others at school I began to wonder what I would have done with my own children, if they had been directed to stay at home. I am not sure they would have taken kindly to daily maths and English.

What would be important? What would I be wanting them to learn? The general coverage of what is beginning to be called ‘home schooling’ reveals a conceptualisation of education, of what school means, that fills me with dismay. That sense that it is ‘done unto’ children rather than children being willing partners in the venture.

In many homes children’s experiences will be rich and challenging. They will have the chance to take hold of their own education and to interact with adults in important ways. Many more will have a different experience. And gaps will widen.

There will be no exams and no testing. Things will not fall apart. We can get to the nub of things. What do we mean by education? What will benefit us all, adults and children, wherever we are in the coming months, and then, maybe, beyond?

Let us seize the chance. Let’s think about what our vision is for the education of children. We have the opportunity to consider it anew; to think carefully about how children might best spend their time. We can think about the children and young people we teach, whom we know well. What are the things that will enrich their lives; help them develop; be fundamental into their becoming the persons they have the capacity to be?

Despite the circumstances, this seems exciting to me. If I am to understand this correctly, no one (except teachers) seems to be expecting any teaching or learning to be going on. So here we are. 

What is it about your own discipline that you love and wish to share with those you teach? What would you like to include, freely, in your teaching without having to squeeze it between the cracks? Perhaps we can begin with writing. 

Now is the time to re-imagine education. 

A Good Time To Be Writing

Welcome to the website and to this, newly formed, Director’s Page. As you may know, we have had to create a new website to support the activities of NWP members and all teachers who have an interest in writing.  Theresa and Stephen, our trusty editor and website manager, are migrating the old site to the new and in the meantime you can still access all the resources on the original ten-year-old site.

At this moment, with the world turned upside down, writing is more important than ever. Writing has always been a source of solace and reflection. It allows us to remember and to record the moment. We find solutions to problems when we write and we discover ourselves. It is a distraction and it brings sharp focus. It is a way of making sense of things when that seems well-nigh impossible. It helps us find a way through. Writing puts us in touch. It puts us in touch with ourselves and in touch with others. When hugging is out of bounds and we are placing ourselves at several broomsticks away from each other, writing has the capacity to bring us closer.

Writing also may have a meditative quality. With that in mind, we are going to post a prompt a day, just to help you establish a daily, nurturing writing habit. There are so many ways in which writing can work wonders for us as individuals and as members of a community. I thought we might begin with thinking about a journal of the times we are living through.

Recently, a writing weekend with beloved friends was cancelled and we conducted a virtual weekend. During the weekend, one of our group, who was able to join us from France, responded to some Natalie Goldberg prompts and it struck me how useful it was for her individually, but perhaps even more so for those who read her work. It seemed to me that we can begin to make sense of what is happening through writing.  And that some kind of record of what are being repeatedly called ‘unprecedented’ [that word is driving me to distraction] times would be worth having.

Here is Monica Melinsky on the contents of her freezer:

We can't live without 

The well-stocked freezer: celeriac and pea soup, chicken curry with the spices carefully ground, two always popular orange and almond cakes, gluten free, garden tomato soup ( it was a glut crop in...2017..oh dear... ), figs pureed and more figs roasted, haricot beans, more figs, chestnut purée, more soup, useful items in boxes with sadly no longer any labels, must chuck now. Frozen egg yolks saved from the meringue last summer? I think I can live without them. Enough to fill our ark- for how long? Let's just hope it doesn't come to that.

And a more personal response to the same [Natalie Goldberg] prompt:

What I can't live without

I couldn't live without a cup of china and Darjeeling tea. Apparently as soon as my daughter heard my key in the door my first words were, 'Put the kettle on,...'

But I can't live without Whatsapp. We are now all confined: in three countries with European borders closing today and all flights cancelled. Never before in our life-times. Outside my window the village is silent, no traffic passing, no planes, neighbours indoors, no social contact permitted. The world is drawing in. Life is changing forever. We are still a family. But I can live without them if I can still speak to them.

It made me think of the Mass Observation project which collected information about the lives of men and women from 1937 to the early 1950s and then again from the 1980s. 

http://www.massobs.org.uk

It seemed to me that we could write to record these times that we are living through and capture the varied, unexpected ways in which we do so. 

And we are teachers. Here is an opportunity for us to allow ourselves to write, just for our own purposes. No guilt. We are teachers. Through writing for ourselves we will continue to learn about teaching writing; about writing alongside our students; about how we can best work with them as they write and how what we say and how we respond can help student writers  grow.

However you choose to write, I wish you well. It seems to me that writing, and drawing, are essential human practices which will enrich and expand our lives. And perhaps steady them.

Jeni Smith