the end of term.

For the past ten Mondays, I’ve been teaching a first year undergrad creative writing class. It’s been amazing, and kind of surreal* ...and that’s the semester finished now. [Insert comment about how quickly time passes]. On the final day of class, none of the students stood on their desks to say ‘O Captain! My Captain!’ (alas). But I quite enjoyed teaching them. Hopefully they learned a few things. 

The class was on the foundations of fiction, so we talked about things like: characters need to want something (that they can’t easily get) in order to be compelling; stories without conflict aren’t really stories; conflict doesn’t necessarily need to be uber-dramatic, sometimes silence says more than shouting. We talked about setting and how to involve the reader in the world of a story by building a strong sense of 'place' (which doesn’t generally mean: write a ginormous paragraph describing the surroundings in precise geographical detail. More often it means: drop in a few ‘telling’ sensory details – the dust specs that catch in the evening light, the peeling paint on the walls of the bedroom, the metallic heart-beat sound a train makes when it’s rumbling over a bridge – and then leave room for the readers’ imagination to fill in the rest).

‘The job of a writer,’ I kept telling them, ‘is to capture (or try to capture) in language what it feels like to be alive. And to do that – you need to practise the art of paying attention.’

Write down the details. Write down the conversations you hear on the street. The strange words people use. The way light hits the trees on your walk home. Work out what that taste in your mouth is when you hear bad news. Write it all down. Pay attention to it all.

Pay attention to your life. Pay attention to your life.

They probably got a bit sick of me saying that. But that – aside from the unglamorous task of sitting down and just getting on with it – is the most important thing a writer can do, I think** (perhaps one of the most important things a person can do). It’s something I’m continually trying to teach myself. I go on about it an awful lot, but I keep forgetting to do it.

 

♥

Footnotes:

*It was surreal because: it was only five years ago that I was a nervous 18-year-old going to my first creative writing workshop, not imagining that a few years later I’d be up the front teaching one. (When you’re quite unambiguously introverted, standing for two hours in front of a group of twenty students every week is a definite leap out of your comfort zone. But a good leap, I think. I would like to keep doing it).

**Probably the first place I came across this idea – that writing is about ‘seeing’ and ‘paying attention’ – was in an essay on writing by Kate DiCamillo which I read over and over as a young teenager. 

‘What I discovered,' DiCamillo writes at one point, ‘is that each time you look at the world and the people in it closely, imaginatively, the effort changes you. The world, under the microscope of your attention, opens up like a beautiful, strange flower and gives itself back to you in ways you could never imagine...’ 

It’s a really beautiful essay – whether you’re a writer or not. You can find it: here. I read it out to the class before they packed up their bags on the last day.)

Pictures are by Clare Elsaesser. You can find her: here.

awaken.

Over the summer, I helped to steward a conference (run by the Professor of Poetry at Strathclyde) around the subject of ‘ekphrasis’ (put simply: writing about art). One thing that stuck with me from the talks I heard was the idea of developing an ekphrastic gaze (I think it was the plenary speaker, Cole Swensen, who talked about this). What I took this to mean was: looking at ordinary life, and seeing it as a work of art. And then responding to that ‘art’ in writing.

  

This idea appeals to me, and I think that’s often what I’m trying to do through my writing. Trying to train my eyes to focus instead of just skimming surfaces. Trying to pay attention. To see with words.

With this in mind, I thought I’d pop a few of my favourite ‘noticings’ on here from recently. (Often when I’m feeling a bit uninspired writing-wise I’ll bring out my notebook and do some discreet people watching/eavesdropping – all in the name of art, of course – so here are a few from my green notebook):

one.) Observed from a coffee-shop window while waiting for a friend:

Two old ladies, in matching black beret hats, walking arm-in-arm up Buchanan Street: feet dragging, not talking, leaning on each other for support. They look identical in almost every way: the same ankle-length straight black skirts, the same comfort-fit chunky shoes, the same stout build, the same hair (white, cotton woolly). The only difference is the colour of their coats: one is bright pink, the other green, like a leaf. 

They remind me of two brambles.

two.) overheard on the train home:

‘The game’s a bogey, Mum,’ she shouts down the phone. Her voice rings out over the rumbling train, the crying baby, the rustling crisp-eater, the coughing granny. ‘I used t'be with Orange, and then it was that "EE" company. But m’phone’s been useless since it switched over to – eh – since it switched over to – eh – to - eh, what’s its chops.’

(What’s its chops. Ha! I smiled.)

three.) observed while reading in the library:

A little girl wearing a headscarf sits cross-legged in the middle of the children’s section, flipping through a picture book. Her scarf is long with purple sequins, and reveals the smooth shape of her bare head underneath. She looks up when she sees another little girl come into the library. This girl - dressed in pink with stripy tights - has a long blonde ponytail, and she is making faces at her baby brother as her mum pushes his pram.

‘Hi Eve!’ the first girl calls from where she's sitting, and the girl in pink turns around and waves. Her hair bounces when she runs over.

The two of them wander round the early-reader shelves, chattering away to each other and looking at the books. At one point, the first girl turns her back to her friend and – ‘Look, Eve!’ – shows off the long tail of her sequined scarf. It flows half way down her back and swishes when she moves her head. 

She flicks Eve’s ponytail with the back of her hand, and then does the same flicking motion with her own scarf. The two of them laugh, and I now realise that the scarf has also been tied back in a ponytail, like a ponytail.

A little way off, the girls’ mothers stand watching them: hands pressed to their mouths, the baby brother crawling on the carpet by their feet. They don’t say anything to each other. They just watch. But... it’s something they’ll tell their partners about later, when they get home. After dinner, probably, when they’re doing the washing up

(‘-and I just felt really sad about it, you know?' Cutlery clinking against glasses. 'I think I could have cried.’)

four.) seen and heard while walking to university.

A motorcyclist at the traffic lights, waiting. Black helmet. Leather coat. Under the rumble of engines, the purr of his bike, I can hear him whistling. As I walk past, I hold my breath, trying to catch the tune. A smile of recognition. He's whistling ‘La Vie en Rose’ (and quite nicely as well. With soul).

The lights change. Red–amber–green. And he is gone.

Walking along the street, I find myself wondering: does he keep whistling, even when he can't hear the sound of the song?

(On a related note: I like Priscilla Ahn’s cover of that song. You can hear it: here.)

five.) experienced in the cafe:

There’s a gentleman in work – a customer – who often comes in with his friend for lunch. He always wears bright Pringle jumpers: red, green, mustard yellow etc. And he has a well-trimmed beard and a curly head of neat white hair. Both the jumpers and the beard give him the impression of joviality, so every time he comes in I expect him to be funny. I expect him to be one of those old men who smile and wink and make little joking comments when ordering their food. (‘I’ll have “le soup de jooor” as they say in France.’ ‘If I order the Seniors’ Fish Tea, do you need to see my bus pass?’ etc). But he’s actually quite surly. Serious. Even rude, sometimes. And I’m always taken aback.

I’m forever fooled by his friendly facial hair.

(The lovely pictures in this post come from: Liekeland.)

♥

Morning Fog

I found this today (by Brittney Lee, an artist for Disney) and loved it. Enjoy! (Her blog is: here). 

♥

I really am jealous of other people's talent sometimes...

chalky fingers

Here are some rather nice quotes and typographical beauties I found on Molly Jacques website. I'm involved in a design project as part of university this semester (we're creating a 'literary journal'), which means I've been spending a jolly lot of my time looking at fonts, photographs, logos and illustrations (...possibly too much of my time. Something I've Noticed About Procrastination Fact #343: it is wily and mustachioed and disguises itself as work). 

...on that note, I'm away to work on my essay on Lolita (I'm taking a class on Nabokov this semester. What an amazing writer! And also, what a disturbing book. But still... what an amazing writer. And yet... this could go on for a while. See you later).

'I am half sick of shadows...'

I've noticed that I’ve not written anything on here for quiteawhile!

I’ve also noticed that I like Tennyson’s poetry (especially 'The Lady of Shalott') that the Christmas lights are up in George Square, that by the end of this week it will be December, that I seem to be getting progressively less organised with age and this trend must end, that my friends are very funny, that I drink on average about eight cups of tea (if not more) a day, that The Importance of Being Earnest is still hilarious even if you’ve known it for years, and that I really (really, really, really) hate deadlines... which is inconvenient as they’ll always be there. This next year I’ll maybe try and make a friend of them...