There were three writers’ group members at this evening’s English in Toulouse meeting and we got to talking about the best way to arrange a writing session.

Last time I e-mailed out a suggestion to meet on Saturday afternoon, 27th September, I got three responses:

- Sept 27th is out for Magali
- Saturday mornings are best for Natasha
- Saturday afternoons are best for Saskia
- The rest of you were very quiet…

So, we have hatched a plan: make it spontaneous.

How it will work:

1. If you’re still interested to meet up occasionally, reply to this e-mail with your mobile phone number.

(If you don’t reply, I’ll assume you’re not interested and you won’t hear from me about the group again).

2. I’ll put together a list of your names and numbers, which I’ll circulate to the others.

3. You’ll keep a note of our names, e-mail addresses and mobile numbers and next time you fancy meeting up with someone for a spur of the moment writing session, give one, or all, of us a call.

Hope that suits!

Cheers,
Narelle
–

http://toulousewritersblog.wordpress.com/

It’s about time we had another workshop. I suggest mid/late September. What do you think?

Narelle

Address: 19, rue des Tourneurs, 31000, TOULOUSE

What to bring: Pen, paper, a finished poem, piece of prose or do one of the exercises below, and money for a pot of tea of course!

Suggested writing exercises:

1  Write a short story that begins with your character peering out from behind a curtain.

2  Write a one-act play about a family vacation at a beach house.

3  Write a poem about water without using the word water.

Details as follows:
Where: Bemberg Museum at Hotel d’Azzezat, Toulouse
When: Saturday, April 5th, 2pm – 5pm.
What: The outing will be completely free, funded by last
year’s kitty money, and you should do a 15-30 minute writing
warm up before you get there.

If you are coming, please e-mail or call me (06 98 51 10 88) in advance.

For those who haven’t done last month’s homework, for whatever reason, try this instead:

“Write a finished short story or poem (no more than 2,000 words) that starts with ‘On Sunday…’

Deadline: April 3rd. Send finished copy by e-mail to me at narelle@naryves.com. I’ll make sure everyone gets a copy and
we’ll then have a week in which to make constructive criticism on each story to offer at the next meetup.

Also, Lesley has already done her homework: The Stones by Lesley Hale.

Cheers,
Narelle

Bring a pen, notebook and a piece of poetry or an excerpt from a story you’ve written (maximum 400 words) to share with the group.

See you soon!

The Toulouse Writers’ Group is getting back together in January 2008!

Meetings will be held on the last Saturday morning of the month, 10am – 12noon, as of Saturday, January 26, at various venues in and around the Toulouse city centre. For details of where we’re meeting for each session, you must e-mail Narelle (narelle at naryves.com) at least a few days in advance of the next meetup.

Further details of the meetings will be posted soon. Watch this space!

So this is it for us, for a couple of months at least. We’ll be sure to post if we organise any impromptu meet-ups or come up with any interesting writing exercises. As I said in the previous post, feel free to get in touch if you feel a strong urge to write over the summer!

Until next time, take care and be happy

Exercise 1: “Details are who we are”. Write about some of the details that make you who you are.

Some interesting things came out in this exercise, but the overall consensus was that it is difficult to write about yourself. It’s definitely an exercise we’ll have to try again in the future.

Exercise 2: Word association. Start off with a random word in the middle of your page and end up with a web of words that are somehow connected in your mind. One, two, or more of these words will stay in the forefront of your mind. Start a story with them.

Everyone seemed to like this exercise and in fact we ended up doing it again last week. Saskia came up with a touching story about a homeless woman visiting a library. I won’t give any more away though, as she is going to try to develop this one. To give you an example of how the exercise works, “here’s one I prepared for you earlier”.

I started out with the word ‘precious’ and stayed with two words: ‘stones’ and ‘skipping’. Here goes:

I’m skipping stones while Mumma moans. I can hear her, it’s deafening. She’s over yonder in the cabin with Doc Greenwood. I didn’t think he’d come all the way out here, but he did and I’m glad. I couldn’t stand it. I can’t stand it now, hearing her pain. Every now and then she screams. When I least expect it. And it hurts my ears. If it weren’t so cold out, I’d go for a swim to try an’ drown it all out. Damn Pa. He’s never around for the births. He never has to see what she goes through it seems like every damn year. And Mumma’s gettin’ old now and inside I can hear her gettin’ tired. 5 skips, not bad. I’m gettin’ better at this. Lots of practise. Once a year, skipping stones while Mumma screams and moans. Pa doesn’t even know that Liz is gone. Went quietly in her sleep like an old lady. But she wasn’t old. It ain’t right. Skip skip skip. It ain’t right.

I pick up another stone. This time it’s bigger, heavier, not smooth and flat and round like the others. This time it’s going down. I hurl it out as far as I can. It splashes loudly as it hits the cold surface and with a silent scream I imagine it sinking right down to the bottom of the lake. She’s screaming now. Shouldn’t this get easier?

I should be fishing. That’s what I should be doing. Fishing to feed us. Mumma will be needin’ her strength, not some sissy boy who can’t handle her pain.

Exercise 3: “Details are who they are”. Exercise 1 repeated, but this time writing about someone we know very well.

Narelle and I wrote about our partners; Saskia wrote about her eldest son becoming a man.

Exercise 4: Free writing for 10 minutes about how you feel right now.

This exercise helps with getting you focused and in that writing mood, so it’s perfect for starting up a writing session.

Exercise 5: You are presented with a picture of a cabin in the woods. Describe what you see, describe what you don’t see – the interior -, describe the person you imagine coming out of the cabin.

This was a great exercise that unintentionally brought me back to Doc Greenwood from the Skipping Stones passage.

Exercise 6: Along with Exercise 5, this task was taken from here. We had to choose between about 5 of the options presented.

Narelle chose #9, a dialogue between a cat and a caged budgie. Visit Narelle’s blog if you’re interested in reading her piece.

Saskia, Chris and I chose #4, concentrating on people’s feet. You can read my piece on my own blog!

Exercise 7: Repeat Exercise 2 – Word association.

Posted by Natasha.

It was around 30 degrees celcius and perfectly sunny this afternoon — one of the nicest days we’d had in weeks!

Chris, Natasha, Valerie and I arranged to meet at Prairie des Filtres, the park on the other side of the Pont Neuf which borders the Garonne river.

We settled on a wooden bench below a tall tree, with barely a metre of grass between our feet and the water. We wrote for two hours, side by side, slowly baking under the unrelenting sun.

As we wrote, ants crawled up our legs and ducks splashed about in front of us fighting for bread. At one point, a big black dog belly flopped into the river and later proceeded to stand behind Chris and shake off the water.

The focus was on exploring writing practice but there were too many distractions; none of us was focused. As a result, our writing was shallow and detatched. We had some funny moments, laughing out loud at the ridiculousness of what we’d written, but by the end I think we all left feeling quite bummed out with our efforts.

Next time, we’ll stick to our usual spot at the Crowne Plaza.

Here are the writing exercises we did. Please feel free to contribute your own writing in the comments section of this post.

Warm up: 10 mins free writing

Remembering the rules for writing practice, write for 10 minutes, without stopping, starting with: This morning…

Well done! Now take a break for 2 minutes. Don’t talk.

Now do the same thing, starting with: This afternoon…

Exercise 1 (From Natasha): 3 mins per paragraph

1. Write ‘When I was…’ on a page.
2. Beside that, write 3 different ages. (When I was 5, When I was 12, When I was 20, for example).
3. Now write a paragraph for each age, starting with ‘When I was’

Exercise 2 (From Natasha): 20 mins free writing
Start with a line from a short story and write and develop it in the third person.
Line: “Peter Dyson came home one day to find his wife dead in the garage”

From “The Turning -by Tim Winton”