Creative Flow Writing Workshop
The post on Facebook about Creative Flow Writing Workshop
jolted me to participate in it because the title itself bore quite an
interesting topic on which I thought that it would be very beneficial to
freelance writers or literary enthusiasts. The event was on 30th of
April.
For them, it was a good chance to meet a talented writer
from South Africa. This workshop was done at Parami Institute in collaboration
with Gothe Institut, Sylt Foundation, and Short Story Day Africa.
On reading about her short bio created and posted by Parami
Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences, I figured out that her first novel Gem
Squash Tokoloshe(2005) was shortlisted for the prestigious literary prize
called Whitbread First Novel Award, and The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and long-listed
for the IMPACE Award. And then, the published novel called Sister-Sister (2003)
was shortlisted for the University of Johannesburg Prize and The Herman Charles
Bosman Prize, and was long-listed for the Sunday Times Fiction Award. She has
been conducted this workshop called “Short Story Day Africa.”
On the workshop day, I went to Parami Institute of Liberal
Arts and Sciences; I figured out that her first novel is Gem Daing Flyover.
Rachel Zadok was waiting for the participants who would join
the workshop. Happily, I met Moritz from Gothe Institut, because he would
attend the workshop, too. I met him on the occasion when the book named “PIX”
for the theme “Inclusion” was launched in Myan/Art on Bogalayzay Street last
month. He is a nice fellow, depicting much interest in current art and
literature of Myanmar.
Rachel Zadok seemed really happy to conduct the workshop
with the support of Gothe Institut when she saw nearly twenty participants were
already seated in their respective tables. They seemed really eager to take
part in it.
Rachel seems in her mid forties, but I am not sure because
this is my guess. She has some tattoos on her arms. She is a bit like bohemian
in style, but she knows her art and craft well because when she starts to
distribute the handouts to all the participants, explaining what she wants to
do to them.
The first handout she gave us showed that the introduction
to Free Writing. She explained us about how writing should be, and the creator
self is better than the editor self. She really encouraged us to free writing
and later she gave us another handout in which the extracts from “My Mane” from
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.
We had to write about our name: what the meaning of it in terms
of each letter, its related belief, history as a whole, etc. It was our first
lesson of writing. She gave us five minutes to write about it.
When I looked at the class, all of the participants were
keen to compose about their names. After five minutes, each participant had to
read the writing from their paper, sharing it with their co-participants.
The next exercise was more challenging, because when she
gave us the third handout, it contained lots of unknown words to us. But, she
explained us that she wanted us to use them in our writings although we did not
have any clues about the meaning of them. She told us that we could check them
on later in the dictionary if we liked to do it.
She enumerated us that in writing a piece of literary work,
sounds of the words we use could give something interesting and exciting to the
ears of the readers who tend to like the literary piece by the sounds of the
words the writer uses. It is quite an interesting exercise because we could use
the unknown words. I thought that she was so clever to ask us to do this
daunting task.
The next exercise she gave us was that she asked us to
compose a poem titled “A Magic Box” into which we could place things we liked
and fancied. The questions we had to ask for writing about it that we had to
know what types of material we used for it, what we would put inside it,
actually the long lists of things. She gave us the lists of things we would put
into that magic box. It was quite a fun to write about it. She unleashed the
incredible way of taking out as much imaginary talents we got.
On handout six, she let us read “On Writing” by Stephen King
who is well-known for his mystery novels. After that, she asked us to take out
the photo we took for this workshop. Based on the photo, we had to write about
it. We could compose where we took the photo, what the photo was about, why we
took that photo etc.
It was like we were racking our brains to make a link with
our past memories which would be alive again in our writing. It was a kind of
doing a good exercise because we normally store our best memories in our brain.
And, we would see what things would be after composing our
pasts. Some people said that to overcome the trauma was to forget the memories.
But, for the authors they live on their memories. Only when did they have their
memories, and they could write better. It might be wrong to some people, but I
believe in it.
I normally experience writer’s block which is all the time
on the writing career. It is very important to overcome with it if not
frustration and fatigue would stymie the literary career. On this issue, I
think, she gave us the best answer by giving us the exercise in this way. We needed
to take out three or five lines from the writings we did, we had to write them
deeper and deeper.
By doing this exercise, I believed that I could write more
than I expected for a certain chapter because we could edit on this new piece
we made later.
On the last lecture, she explained us that it took her two
and half years to complete her first novel and for her second novel it took her
five years. I was amazed when she told us about how long she took for writing a
novel. And it was such an inspired utterance to us all.
Like the workshop title itself, we seldom stopped writing;
we took a short break for coffee and refreshments. Then, we continued our
workshop until it reached the final time. It began at 3 pm, and finished at 7
pm. It gave us the experience and new ways to look at creative writing. The
memories will live us until they change into writings again.■
San Lin Tun
(This
article has already appeared in 2017 June Issue of “Professional Today
Journal”.)
Photo Credit to Parami Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences
No comments:
Post a Comment