Saturday, July 14
Elizabeth and I finally engaged in our first writer's workshop last Friday night. Meeting to write and critique each other's work once a week as our own little Bloomsbury is a goal we set for the rest of the summer. (Training for a triathalon will have to wait until late August!) Initially, Elizabeth had brought strawberries and a few beers for the experience. Ben noted that there were semi chocolate morsels that existed in our pantry and we spent an hour wolfing down chocolate covered strawberries in the kitchen before retreating upstairs to my yellow, typewriter room. The beers were completly forgotten as we immediately launched into writing-ness, sharing the words we had been stringing together for the last week. It felt absolutely wonderful to elaborate, chop, and, of course, write.0 comments
I have enjoyed writing since I can remember. When I was young and writing moral stories about horses, I would sit at the kitchen table and illustrate each page. Often I would paint or sketch each character (including character family trees) at least five times until it was perfect. Afterward, I usually hung them next to my little Apple computer for reference. As I drove to work Friday morning, I thought about this activity of literally drawing out my characters- I remember them becoming so vivid. Writing about them was easy and obvious when I spent so much time creating and looking at them. I wondered what effect it would have on my writing today if I grabbed my sketch book and shared the same kinesthetic and visual awarenss of each main character.
At the end of our writer's date, Elizabeth and I paged through the hundreds of pages I have written over the years- mostly the high school stuff where I thankfully moved away from horse stories. A lot of the stuff we howled and laughed at- hot makeout scenes fit for an Anais Nin novel that I would have never recognized as my own. Mostly, however, I became inspired by my own voice. Unfortunatly, I lost several stories when I lost my little apple computer and every once in a while my heart aches at my written voice being somewhere far, far away. I look forward to Elizabeth and my writer's challenge and am so thankful for the support (thanks Lisa and Brian!) I hope to share some snippets here in the meantime. Have a beauty-ful Sunday.
posted by Jenny Saturday, July 14, 2007
