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Regular news and insight from our many poets, writers, educators and facilitators

18 January 2025

Posted by Susan L. Edser

Memory

Ali Sparkes is a children’s author who leads writing sessions for Junior and Young Writers every Saturday morning at MAST Mayflower Studios. To learn more about her, visit her website: https://www.alisparkes.com and click on her profile: https://artfulscribe.co.uk/facilitators/ali-sparkes

Susan L. Edser, MA graduate in Creative Writing and Publishing and winner of Bournemouth University’s prestigious Vice Chancellor Award 2024, is Ali’s assistant and writes the weekly blog. To learn more about her, click on her profile: https://artfulscribe.co.uk/facilitators/susan-l-edser


Today’s session was about memory, which helps writers tap into their inner resources and experiences and use them as creative material. Ali began by asking the Junior and Young Writers to warm up with the popular fill-in fun. Using Ali’s beginning, they created quick stories about two people meeting and remembering each other.

Ali then invited the group to look at 12 items and memorise them. They had a limited time and had to write down as many as they could remember. Can you do as well? Look at the photo and see how many you can recall under pressure. The writers were then challenged to write a poem that included as many things as possible from the memory list. They did impressively well.

Continuing the memory theme, the Junior and Young Writers shared stories about their most vivid or earliest memories of school, the sea, cooking or baking, and bleeding. The Junior Writers shared experiences, including:

- Being told off at school for being in the toilet for too long

- Receiving Star of the Week

- Being bitten by a crab

- Learning how to swim

The Young Writers shared experiences, including:

- Having their head bashed on a windowsill by ‘a friend’ (now an ex-friend)

- A jagged nail piercing their heel

- 10-foot waves washing the young person and their family out onto the beach

- Going into surgery and remembering the anaesthetic

The final exercise was to write the start of a story using one of their childhood memories, which they shared with the rest of the group. Pippa and Tilly did so well that they jointly won ‘Writer of the Week’ for their strong story openings. Well done, Pippa and Tilly! The Young Writers ‘Writer of the Week’ award went to Issy for her gruesome story, which was well-structured and vividly described. Congratulations, Issy!

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