Creative Writing Project

From January to March this year, a class of year 9 and a class of year 12 students had the opportunity  to work with two writers to develop their creative writing skills.  Alison White and John Siddique ran a series of creative writing workshops on Tuesday morning which allowed the students to explore their own imaginations and how they express their ideas in writing.  Alison and John were able to provide the students with a new environment and focus for their writing, which took them away from the sometimes restrictive exam requirements which can dominate these year groups.  The purpose of the project was for the students to develop a fresh enthusiasm and confidence in their writing and we believe that it was highly successful.  All staff involved were impressed with the quality and range of writing produced, and a number of students were surprised at their own ability to create exciting and original poems and stories.  The students took to the project with enthusiasm and demonstrated a high level of maturity when working in mixed year groups and sharing their writing with others.  Below, Alison White writes in more detail about the way the project unfolded.

Don't Forget to Pack Your Toothbrush

Writing at school is very different to writing creatively for yourself.

Usually, when you write at school, you are given the destination you must reach.  It's a bit like being told how to get to a new friend's house – you take the Number 47 bus from outside the newsagent, turn right at the park and it's the house with the green door.  However, when you write creatively, the journey isn't as predictable.  Should you put on hiking boots or take the high speed electric train?  You could set off trying to write a poem about your family and end up with a short story about a cat on the roof of a skyscraper!

That creative journey can be exciting or frightening - what will come out when you put your pen on that blank page?  Will it be a return ticket or will you never come back from the trip your pen takes?

Magical things happen when the page fills up with your words.  There is the physicality of the writing - the page gets dirtier with your ink, the pages mount up, they demand some space in your bag, your bedroom.  But then there is the other dimension that the writing creates.  It happens first in the writer's head.  It starts with a virtual moment in a virtual world - you can see a place, a character, a situation - and they are as real to you, the writer, as the chair you are sitting on.  I remember the first time that virtual world became real to me.  I was co-writing my stage play The Hanged Man and spent an entire evening on the phone debating why the main character, a scientist, would be fascinated by a man he meets who claims to have x-ray vision.  To anyone listening to the conversation, they would have assumed we were discussing a friend we knew well.  An entire evening of my life was consumed by a character who didn't even exist in the real world! But it is that absorbing effect of writing that the writer falls in love with.

But, if setting off on the journey is daunting as well as exciting, there are things that the writer can learn that will help them create pieces of work that will please him or her and other people.  Think of it as equipping yourself for the journey - whether that journey is a bike ride through a dark forest or walk on a beach in December.

It was this equipping themselves for the journey that Years 9 and 12 were able to do during the early part of the Spring term.  They worked with two writers, John Siddique and myself.   So, what  did  we  ask  the  students  to  pack and did we take them on a military yomp through their own creativity or did we provide for them a walk in the park, complete with a halfway picnic basket packed with ginger beer?

The truth is that we probably provided a bit of both.  We wanted to walk the students through their own creative natures.  To do this, we helped them understand the use of the ideal reader and the use of different voices in writing.  We played with the use of time and the use of space in writing.  Sometimes we just played.  Sometimes we enjoyed words in their most naked form - just the sound of a single word or the look of it on the page. 

The places visited on these excursions could help in understanding some of the more complex ideas, concepts and emotions we come across in everyday life.  In writing, it is possible to end up in the living room of despair or the shed of happiness.  And we can bring back new understanding to the real world.  Much better than looking up definitions of despair and happiness in a dictionary and then dutifully copying out the definition into our exercise books.

In the end, you can't go with a writer when they set off on their journey. When I run a writing workshop and the students are moving their pens across the paper, I know that in their heads, they are far away in different times, places and spaces with a myriad of people in a myriad of circumstances.  It is only later that I can see and hear something of where that writer has been - when they share their work.  But by then, the writer is probably sailing off on some other adventure with the pen. 

An anthology of the writing that the group of students produced is currently in production. Look forward to reading some of the adventures...

Alison White