Just Write, The Newsletter

(2024 - Edition 1)

I started this publication on 1 May 2023 as a personal challenge to write regularly and to be a little braver about sharing my words.

These occasional newsletters help me follow my own progress. I hope they also offer encouragement for other novice writers. I often hold back some of my words, not wanting to overload mailboxes with every twist and turn of my learning process. These musings have ended up being a collection of the ‘bits you might have missed’ as much as they are ever a round-up of ‘things I have learned’.

In the first newsletter of 2024, my thoughts will include some learnings from learning. I decided it was high time I invested in my writing, flying a little less by the seat of my pants and a little more with murmured asides from a more experienced co-pilot. I’m stretching the analogy to breaking point so I better get on with it.

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Photo by Johnny Briggs on Unsplash

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Notes to Self

I booked myself onto a course. January seems like a good time to stop assuming I can just fling words at a page hoping they’ll tidy themselves up and read like a Pulitzer Prize winner.

‘Write Beyond The Lightbulb’ is a series of online workshops run by

Matt Kendrick

. I signed up for ‘Colourful Characters’ and am already delighted that I invested in myself. Matt is a generous, knowledgeable, and patient tutor who has a keen eye for language and good writing. He has created a mighty resource bank to support the modules that guide you through a mix of micro-fiction exercises, reading, and written ‘final challenges’. Students submit work to Google Classroom, where Matt offers feedback and fellow attendees encourage and support one another.

It has been a while since I disciplined myself to learn. I probably have not been a great student in the past so I am curious about the process and my reaction to it.

I have found out some stuff

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1. Putting myself into a learning environment means I think more about my writing. This feels good.

2. Putting myself into a learning environment means I overthink my writing. This does not feel good.

3. Criticism is sharp-edged but learning through encouragement truly lifts folk up and helps them to learn. Matt is ‘encouragement and learning’ all the way.

4. I have done way more editing in the past week than usual. This is a good thing.

5. Writing well means reading well. The texts chosen to support the course are advancing my thinking about what creative, imaginative, and good writing sounds and feels like. That has to help, right?

6. I sometimes get distracted from the path the course sets out on because the part I have just worked through inspires lots of ideas. I think that’s okay.

7. I am generally very distractable. I need to set myself up a timetable or I never get things done. However, I am rubbish at sticking to a timetable.

8. I should either be learning or not learning. I need to clear the diary (see point 7 above) to avoid easy distractions.

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Learning never exhausts the mind

- Leonardo da Vinci

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Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

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But did you write anything, Barrie?

Okay, so I did. There have been a couple of micro-fiction exercises. I am wondering if they will feel a little out of context if I share them and, at the end of the day, they are just words. But they are words strung together through hard work and editing and a whole heap of surprise anxiety knowing they form part of the coursework. I didn’t expect to feel that way. Maybe it has sharpened up my writing. Who knows?

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Exercise 1

He crouched in front of the washing machine, eyes scrunched as tightly as his grip on the tee shirt he held up to his face. Every visit is the same, this return to a normality so far removed from the old normal. His eyes teared up, blurring the washing instructions. Age 3 to 4 said the label as if he didn’t know. His shoulders shook, his body wracked with deep sobs. He let the tears flow, soaking his son’s favourite shirt. Slumped in the corner, he felt the walls hug him tight. The tee shirt taunted him. ‘Daddy’s Best Boy’.

Exercise 2

The claustrophobic mustiness of the loft offered bales bound with twine and webs. Dust set off body-doubling sneezes, a painful workout for midlife abs. I arranged a horseshoe, straw piercing heavy denim threads. In low-lying winter sunshine, I laid a circle, rough rose-tinted Charantaise stone chafing soft hands more suited to laying words on a page. The bitter chill threatened my enthusiasm so I stacked wood, criss-crossing rough-hewn logs, and layering twigs. Splinters scratched at pale skin turned purple by the late-afternoon chill. Reluctant flames were fanned by a keen breeze. As embers dropped from twigs to logs, I reached in to stoke the pyre, absent-mindedly exposing my wrist. The acrid smell curled my nose a thousandth of a second before my skin screamed. Burnt hairs crisped like sealed baler twine. Flames leapt, sparks illuminating the gloaming. Warmth danced in my soul. Tears snuck past scrunched eyelids, though perhaps it wasn’t the smoke. It felt like home.

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“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader – not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

― E. L. Doctorow

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Over to you:

I would love to learn from you about the best writing course you attended or an invaluable writing lesson you constantly apply. Maybe there’s a course you would recommend to other aspirant writers.

Until the next time, happy reading (and writing)

Barrie

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