The Writing Workshop
Every fortnight here on Sleep is for the Weak, I run a Writing Workshop.
Each workshop I give you a bunch of writing/blogging prompts, something to get you thinking. How you respond to them is entirely up to – there are absolutely no rules and it is open to anyone who’d like to take part. The aim is to provide you with a touch of inspiration and an opportunity for expression, to help you make some connections you might otherwise not have discovered and create something unique and personal.
You can write about real-life experiences or try your hand at some fiction, express yourself through stream-of-concious writing, or have a go at at writing in some form of poetry. I will usually give you some ideas to get you started but you certainly don’t have to use them. You could use photographs that reflect the prompts to help guide your writing, or news paper articles, or songs, or poems, or find an object that seems to represent the ideas we’re talking about and write about that. Do ANYTHING you can think of.
Be creative, be brave, be honest. Those are the only provisos.
And remember! We’re not looking for perfection here! Just have a go! The best way to get better at writing is PRACTISE. All the best writers aren’t afraid to write badly. So turn your inner-critic off for a while and just see what words come out. And if you have a thought about what to do for future workshops, I’d really love to make use of your ideas so please please get in touch – you’ll be credited of course.
The workshop has been running, on and off, for two years now and I’m hugely proud of how much it has driven and grown my own writing, and that of those taking part. Something quite special can happen when you give yourself permission to write without constraint.
Try it. x
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Note: I’m told Blogger does something a bit funny with the code so you’ll need to copy and paste it and then retype the quotation marks (“) as Blogger changes them for some reason.
‘Escape’ Writing Workshop Contribution – by @theghostshirt
A contribution to this week’s Writing Workshop, by David, @theghostshirt Escape When I was six we ran away from home my older brother and I, together defiant. We ran, we walked fast, we escaped, off to the duck pond, aggrieved and angry. The duck pond was too far for me, a place not on the list of those I was allowed to go. I turned back alone, my brother older and braver, he went on without me, as I slunk home I managed to sneak in, the door was open, quick to my bedroom, I hid under my bed. My brother returned, I heard...
read moreWriting Workshop – Escape
Howdy lovely people, so sorry this is late up. Having a really rough few days (again, bleugh) so I’m going to have to post the linky and come back and add my own contribution later in the week. Thanks for taking part! _______________________________________________ Leave your name and the URL to your post in the Linky below (the URL should be to your post not just to your blog) – it’ll be open til Sunday night so if you haven’t had chance to respond yet, then you’ve got plenty of time to join in. Don’t forget...
read moreWriting Workshop Prompt – Escape
A new writing prompt for you. Sorry I didn’t manage one last week. Ready? For anyone unfamiliar with my Writing Workshop, you can have a read all about it and browse old workshops here, or if you’re an old hand at this you can started. Prompt Running away is our theme this week. You could tell me something you once ran away from, or find yourself often running from, or write about something you wish you could escape. Or tell me what/where you wish you could run TO, what would be your sanctuary? Perhaps imagine yourself free of...
read more‘Picture Walking’ Writing Workshop Contribution – by @theghostshirt
A contribution to this week’s Writing Workshop, by David, @theghostshirt Christ of Saint John of the Cross by Salvador Dali, 1951 His face, holds it a smile or frown? What does he think as he looks down? On fisher folk of old below Their lives so simple, as we know Perhaps a smile for plain sweat ‘n toil Warm mirrored eyes for a mortal coil * But now, many torrid centuries on, how does he feel as he looks on? A frown, I reckon, these days he shows As he looks down, on us below We pollute the oceans and kill the fish And...
read moreWriting Workshop – Walk through the Wheat Field
I fell asleep with my head on the open book, the day enveloping me like the kind of blanket that’s held down. Breathing slowing, vision hot, I fell some more. Down and IN. It was the smell that woke me. The kind of earth that smells like death and life at the same time. Carbon-rich, thick and damp – I could feel it seeping though my jeans, the heels of my trainers half-sucked beneath. I lay on my back, thick grass like ribbons in my hair, my hands instinctively reaching to my eyes to rub before realising my fingers were coated...
read moreWriting Workshop Prompt – Picture Walking
This week’s writing prompt! Fancy a go? For anyone unfamiliar with my Writing Workshop, you can have a read all about it and browse old workshops here, or if you’re an old hand at this you can started. Prompt I’ve been studying perspective and composition in my degree this last couple of weeks, learning to ‘walk around’ drawings and paintings to work out why they’ve been put together that way. This is what I want you to do this week too, but in words. Take a photo, or use a painting or drawing, and use...
read more‘Second’ Writing Workshop Contribution – by @theghostshirt
A contribution to this week’s Writing Workshop, by David. Second @theghostshirt The mist swirled at the break of dawn. Somewhere, beyond the veil cast by the trees around the clearing, a cockerel crowed once, then a second time, chest puffed out, its wattle vibrating like a red warning on this, the most final of days….for someone. How it had come to this was truly beyond me, but here I was, ready to ensure an outcome. The looks between them bred their own kind of venom. Like vipers cursing each other at the apothecaries store as...
read moreWriting Workshop – A Second Chapter
For my writing workshop this week, I set the prompt ‘second’, and I thought that today I would share with you an except of the second chapter of a story that I’ve started working on again, after putting it down for a while. There seems to be a fair bit of interest in my writing at the moment which I need to make the most of, so I’m hoping to get this good enough for submission this year, if I can. I’m not going to tell you as single thing about what it’s about, what came before or what might come after and...
read moreWriting Workshop Prompts: Second
Hello there. Part of the reason this blog exists is to encourage my own and others’ writing and in all my distraction getting stuck into my art degree last year I managed to forget that a little. I feel strangely guilty, like the blog’s lost its way a little, and that’s no good. So, *best commitment face*, let’s get back to it. New writing prompts every other Monday, with a chance to share your work on the Monday in between. It turns out 2012 is going to be unexpectedly full of writing for me and I’m going to...
read moreWriting Workshop – The girl and the jam jars
A piece of creative writing for my free online writing workshop in which I describe myself sorting through aspects of my life both missing and lost, writing them out on pieces of paper and dropping them into one of two jam jars.
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