05 October 2020
Posted by Matt L T Smith
If you had to carve your week what tools would you use? A hammer and chisel against marble? Against stone? A knife against wood? Did you slice with precision or chip away at your week? Was it a labour to get to the heart of it? Or as easy as a knife through butter? Our week is carved from bread, but not bread toast, a toastie, but not a toastie, more a puddle of bread and cheese. Our week is made of limestone, dead things from the sea. Our week is soap carving ASMR. Our week is carved from candles, a sea of wax colours. Our week is a little wet squirrel carved out of butter.
Welcome back to the Mayflower Creative Writers weekly blog. I hope your week has been a pleasure to carve and there wasn’t a splinter in sight. Today we are carving from our own memories. Antosh guides us to write down a memory, write down the details that we can recall. “Now rewrite it, but fictionalise it, change details about the memory, either how it plays out, changing person/perspective, you could change it into a script, stage it, rewriting a shot list for it perhaps?” “This is a gauge for how comfortable you are editing things from your life.” Antosh says. “If you’re working maybe more in poem, look at the feelings, look at a particular scent, extend beyond what happened. Some of you might radically change the setting.” And so we get to work, shaping and reshaping our memories.
Antosh asks us for the next editing exercise to address the text to a You, in second person. “When the text is addressed to someone, sometimes the ‘you’ is really vague and sometimes it’s hard to know whether the narrator is talking to themselves or someone else.” Antosh says. “How do you control what kind of messages go through. Who is talking to them? (the audience) Am I just chatting as me? Or am I chatting as a character of me? Fictionalising yourself. All these intricate little steps you can take when you choose how you narrate. What I want to try is this idea of ‘Who is the You?’”
You write the end of a blog post. You stare at your week, words carved from mouths and chiselled into liquid crystal displays. You marvel at how somewhere in the infinite permutations of the alphabet was a carving of this week and every week to come.
You will be back here next week.
Archive
Junior & Young Writers Week 3: Return From The Magical World
Junior & Young Writers Week 2: African Mythology
Problems, Problems, Problems...
Cautionary Tales & Christmassy Opening Lines
You've Gotta Have Pace, Pace, Pace
Junior & Young Writers Week 1: Alien Encounters
Junior & Young Writers: Week 5 - Play on Words Pt. 2
Junior & Young Writers: Week 11 - end of term showcase [build a bard workshop]
Junior & Young Writers: Week 10 - Greek Theatre - chorus stories
Junior & Young Writers: Week 9 - Greek Origin Stories - Spring
Rubber Ducks & Writing Festivals
Junior & Young Writers: Week 7 - Greek Hero Stories [the 12 labours of Hercules]
Junior & Young Writers: Week 12 [Wild Words] - Stuff & Things
Junior & Young Writers: Week 11 [Wild Words] - World Building 2
Junior & Young Writers: Week 10 [Wild Words] - World Building
Junior & Young Writers: Week 9 [Wild Words] - Mystery & Choose Your Own Adventure
Junior & Young Writers: Week 8 [Wild Words] - Spooky Sequels & Potion Poems
Junior & Young Writers – Week 10 (Writers’ Inspiration) – Final Showcase
Junior & Young Writers – Week 9 (Writers’ Inspiration) – Editing & Performance Tips
Junior & Young Writers – Week 8 (Writers’ Inspiration) – Cuteness
Time goes on by Tavinder Kaur New
Junior & Young Writers – Week 7 (Writers’ Inspiration) – Natural Solutions
Junior & Young Writers – Week 6 (Writers’ Inspiration) – The Language of Fruit and Veg
Junior & Young Writers – Week 5 (Writers’ Inspiration) – Adventures In Space
Tinklebobs and Bedraggled Angles
Junior & Young Writers – Week 4 (Writers’ Inspiration) – Our Environment
Fortune Tellers & Future Letters
Junior & Young Writers – Week 3 (Writers’ Inspiration) – Home
Young Writers - Week 10 (The Art of Writing) – Final Week Showcase
Junior Writers - Week 10 (The Art of Writing) – Final Week Showcase
Young Writers – Week 9 (The Art of Writing) – Choose Your Own Adventure
Junior Writers – Week 9 (The Art of Writing) – Choose Your Own Adventure
Young Writers – Week 8 (The Art of Writing) – Sequel Stories
Junior Writers – Week 8 (The Art of Writing) – Sequel Stories
Young Writers – Week 7 (The Art of Writing) – Picture Prompts
Junior Writers – Week 7 (The Art of Writing) – Picture Prompts
Young Writers - Week 6 (The Art of Writing) - Script-writing & Dialogue
Junior Writers - Week 6 (The Art of Writing) - Script-writing & Dialogue
Junior Writers – Week 5 (The Art of Writing) – Poetry
Young Writers - Week 5 (The Art of Writing) - Poetry Potions
Edward The Martyr - A Competition!
Mood Boards and Postcards from Space
Young Writers - Week 3 (The Art of Writing) - PLOT
Junior Writers - Week 3 (The Art of Writing) - PLOT
Moomin Stories and Hollywood Pitches
Young Writers - Week 2 (The Art of Writing) - Genre & Setting
Junior Writers - Week 2 (The Art of Writing) - Genre & Setting
Prompts, Dialogues, and Cliché
Story Structure Part One: Exposition and Beyond...
Young Writers - Week 1 (The Art of Writing) - Character
Young Writers - week 4 - Nature Writing [animals & wildlife]
Junior Writers - week 4 - Nature Writing [animals & wildlife]
Young Writers - week 3 - Nature Writing [trees/plants/flowers]
Junior Writers - week 3 - Nature Writing [trees/plants/flowers]
Young Writers - week 2 - 'fractured fairy tales'
Junior Writers - week 2 - 'fractured fairy tales'
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