Tag: Creative Writing

One Sentence

I’ve referred every so often in these posts to writing prompts, or words and phrases that might make good ones. I then ask myself whether I’ll ever use them, but I don’t. If I’m honest, every time I mention one, I know full well it won’t see the light of day again. I don’t know whether that’s because of laziness, a lack of confidence, or the absence of a good idea, but whatever the case I don’t push it. It’s in those situations that I wonder what I’d write if I was put under pressure to come up with something, as I have been on occasion. Two weeks ago, I was tested in exactly that way when I attended a writers’ group at a coffee shop in Winchester.

It’s a place I’ve been a loyal customer of for a number of years now, but until that day I’d had no idea that they met in there. I approached them tentatively, notebook and pen on my lap. Unlike some of the others – including an ex-diver working on a memoir about his time exploring underwater caves in Mexico – I had nothing to share, because this was my first week and I needed to establish the lay of the land. Don’t get me wrong, I was still an active participant, but I kept relatively quiet, only dropping in the odd nugget of feedback here and there. This back-seat approach paid dividends, because it quickly allowed me to feel comfortable around the others and in what I was getting myself into. It wasn’t long before I was scribbling away without a care in the world, which is where the aforementioned prompt comes in.

“What I want you to do,” said the lady leading the session, “is to find the last message you sent on your phone, take it out of its original context, and use it as a starting point for a piece.” All I’m going to do now is present you with the line I found on WhatsApp, and the two-person dialogue that evolved from it. It’s amazing what you can manage when you’re given a little nudge in the right direction. In fact, I think it was enough of a nudge to convince me to go back again soon. Make of this what you will…

“Luckily, I won’t need it today, because I’m busy over lunch.”

“What are you so scared of anyway?”

“What am I scared of? What am I NOT scared of? This is huge!”

“It’s a coffee and a chat, and then you never have to see her again. My mother always said difficult conversations are best had quickly.”

“Or not at all?”

“Oh, come on!”

“It definitely will be difficult as well. She’s hardly the kind of person you can make small talk with. Everything’s either world politics or high culture, and there’s a time and a place for that.”

“Yes…”

(a beat, then the same character speaks again)

“So why did you agree to marry her then?”

Mason

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In My Lap

After a brief hiatus, I’m back writing for Details, and what makes that even sweeter is the fact that I’m doing so feeling creatively rejuvenated. That’s because even before our monthly editorial meeting, I’d already had an idea that’s a great fit. It didn’t need any crafting or developing – it was just there, and it naturally suited our theme better than I could ever have imagined. Up to that point, I’d already abandoned two potential articles because they just weren’t flowing, and if something’s forced, it isn’t sincere and certainly isn’t worth publishing. With that in mind, I couldn’t offer Caitlyn material that I knew would detract from the otherwise excellent quality of her magazine, but at the same time, I didn’t like missing all the fun. Details is a vital, colourful and inclusive outlet with an enormous amount of room to grow, and I’m determined to be a part of it for a long time to come. If you’re reading this, Caitlyn, the only way you’ll get me off the team is by firing me – and that’s a promise!

But I digress. My point is that sometimes, as I must have said before, the best ideas just fall straight into your lap. That’s a very welcome feeling at the best of times, but it’s especially satisfying when you feel like you’ve lost that drive to put words to paper. Of course, not only will Details benefit from that, but Third Time Enabled will too, and I look forward to sharing what I’ve written once it’s done. As things stand, I only have one paragraph at most, but I’m fairly confident that the rest will write itself. I hope so, anyway, otherwise those might be famous last words…

Mason

Operation Book Club, Part 6

I just thought I’d let you know that I recently decided to take a break from my book club with Lara and Nora. I did so halfway through Stardust, which I’ve told the girls they can go ahead and discuss without me. As it turns out, not being in that conversation might be a blessing in disguise, since I’d left the novel at a point where I was yet to write a single word about it in my lined red notebook. I bought it almost exactly a year ago with the intention of using it only for my literary observations, and while I had quite a few for the first couple of stories, my notes for this one currently consist only of its title, the name of its author, and the date on which I started reading.

It would be a shame to waste all that paper, so even though I might not have anyone to talk about it with, I’m going to carry on with Stardust regardless. In the absence of regular paid work to establish a 9-5 routine, it might be good to give myself that distraction. Of course, from a creative point of view, it’ll still get those creative juices flowing, even if there are only a few words or sentences. Sometimes the tiniest amount of input is enough to cause a deluge of inspiration, so by the time I do rejoin the girls, I might have more feedback than they bargained for. Beyond that, I’ve bought more than enough notebooks meant for one project that have been condemned to contain passwords and shopping lists for eternity – and I’m determined to save this one from the same fate!

Mason

Details

You may recall that in a recent post, I alluded to a new writing project that I wasn’t quite ready to talk about yet. Well, I just wanted to update you on exactly what that is, especially because as I write this post, I’m working on my second contribution to it. It’s none other than the excellent Details Magazine, founded and run by Caitlyn, a fellow Winchester student due to graduate this year. Aimed at women aged 14-20, it contains stories from a wide variety of voices and walks of life which always fit a given theme. In the case of the March issue, in which my first piece appeared, the theme was ‘let go and grow’, which we were all free to interpret in any way we wanted.

Naturally, given my current circumstances, I chose to focus on the whirlwind of emotions that letting go of an old job and searching for a new one entails. Beyond that, though, I wanted to emphasise how the written word had helped me to stay focused and develop creatively, particularly through the medium of blackout poetry (which you can find out more about here). As it was my Details debut, I was nervous about how it would be received, and I wondered if my link to the theme was too tenuous, but I needn’t have worried. It went down a treat with Caitlyn and was duly published – and let me tell you, the thrill of seeing my name on a page attached to something I’ve written isn’t a feeling that anything can ever diminish. It only increased my hunger to get involved in the forthcoming April edition with something else that could appeal to an audience beyond the target demographic. As I sit here typing that very thing, I can only hope that I’ve succeeded, but I’ve certainly got a good feeling about it.

If you want to know more about Details, you can visit its website here, or check out its new podcast here. You’ll be glad you did, I promise. And I’m not just saying that because I’m biased!

Mason

Broken Record

I’m always thinking about what I can try on this blog that’s new and different – even though you might not think so, given that the material never strays far from what’s going on in my own life. Every element of it has been carefully considered in some way at one time or another, from the text, to the imagery, to the design of the site itself. Unfortunately, none of the vague plans that exist in my head have come to fruition just yet. I haven’t even used that aforementioned imagery nearly as often as I should, but that hasn’t stopped me creating little quirks and continuities that might have passed you by. Up to now, at least!

There are things I’ve become quite fond of including over the last couple of years in particular. I treat them as private self-deprecating jokes, and by that, I mean really private – between me and myself, to be precise. I realised one day that I’ve developed two accidental habits while writing these posts, and the first is my tendency to contradict myself. This most often happens when I announce my intention to focus on or pursue something, only for it to be mentioned once months later or simply never again. The second habit is my continued use of the phrase “…as I’ve said before”, or variations thereof. At first, this appeared genuinely innocently, but I eventually realised just how often it popped up and decided to keep it in. It’s arguably also there to save me having to rifle back through to the previous post where I mentioned the thing in question, but it mainly makes me smile, even if nobody else notices or appreciates it. Whatever the case, it demonstrates how not everything in life can be linear. We all make mistakes, and we all contradict and repeat ourselves now and again, so sounding like a broken record sometimes can’t be all bad, can it? The world is full of these fluctuations, so I’m embracing them in my own little way, and giving this blog a discreet and somewhat ironic pair of stylistic hallmarks in the process.

Mason

Operation Book Club, Part 4

As I’m sure I’ve said before, it’s nice to peel your eyes away from a screen and take in some proper paper pages every now and again. The book club I have going with Lara and Nora was meant to facilitate that a bit more often, of course, but that seems to have stalled somewhat for the time being. We were meant to finally discuss A Natural History of Dragons earlier in the week, and confirm Nineteen Eighty Four as next on our list, but thanks to me that plan fell flat on its face (although it should be easier to schedule now that I’ve finished work for Christmas).

Lara’s generosity, however, means that we might have something else to talk about in the meantime. She’d been buying all of my books for the club anyway up to this point, but outside of that she also decided to buy one for each person in our friendship group, after making sure we hadn’t read it before. Ben was thrilled with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which I also enjoyed earlier in the year, while I received The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, the second in Sue Townsend’s series of books about a teenage diarist navigating the numerous challenges of adolescence. I’d read the first of those in Winchester too, and was pleasantly surprised to find that while it appeared to be aimed at readers of a similar age to its protagonist, it also contained a lot of humour that adults would appreciate – and that would go right over kids’ heads.

I reckon everyone else in our group might enjoy it. I don’t know if they’ll all read their respective books from Lara, but I hope they do. Not only will it allow them each to discover something new, but it might mean we can collectively review a number of different titles together – and aside from Ben, I don’t know what anyone else got, so it’d be interesting to find out. What’s more, by the time we finish them all, maybe Lara, Nora and I will at last be able to progress to George Orwell…

Mason

Sartorial Iconoclast

Someone else wrote the sub-heading, so ‘sartorial iconoclast’ isn’t mine. I like it though – it rolls off the tongue!

It’s been a long time since I last wrote a post I would describe as really short – probably not since “you’re going to achieve grapeness” – but if anything warrants one, it’s surely this, my first ever byline in the January 2022 issue of Classic & Sports Car. It’s for an interview with a chap called Alex Riley, who co-hosts the ITV4 series The Car Years, in which he and Vicki Butler-Henderson dress up in period clothing depending on the year being focused on. This means he has a large vintage wardrobe, and that was the main area of conversation when we spoke. You might wonder what that has to do with cars themselves, but the interview was done for the regular Also In My Garage feature, where the subject discusses something else of particular interest besides classic cars – in Alex’s case, this was obviously his clothes, although he is also the proud owner of an immaculate Triumph TR7.

I was very nervous, since I’d never done an interview before, but Alex was a pleasure to talk to and had plenty to say – there was lots I didn’t have the space to include in the piece. It resulted in something I’ll always be very proud of, and knew I had to post here for posterity. In fact, apart from when I graduated, I haven’t been this proud of anything for a while, and it’ll likely be a while before I am again, so I’m savouring the feeling.

I’ll be sure to post a link when it goes online. Does this mean I’m a proper journalist?

Mason

Souligner!

You know when you make notes on something to refer back to later, but when you do they’ve been scribbled so hurriedly that they no longer make sense even to you? I’ve found that that’s happened rather a lot lately as I try to adjust to my new job. The notes have been growing by the day, whether I’ve been recording new conversations, methods or even interviews, but with every new scribbling has come the increased risk of confusion. Ironically, though, these may still be more of a help than a hindrance.

Back in Year 8, when I was doing French at school, I found myself doing pretty well (a few years later, I decided not to do the subject at GCSE, and my teacher was devastated after I broke the news). I could write it confidently and I wasn’t bad at speaking it either, with an increasingly accurate accent. There was, however, one small thing I couldn’t quite master doing work in my textbook – using a ruler. That wasn’t exclusive to any one subject – in every class, I thought the lines already on the page would be sufficient to keep my writing straight – but in French it seemed to be a particular problem for my teacher. With every passing week, it would slope further and further downward, and the same word would appear next to it without fail: “souligner!”

What does it mean, I hear you ask? Simple. “Underline.” It must have been there for weeks or even months on end, but I still wouldn’t make the effort to hold that ruler straight. When you have cerebral palsy, fine motor skills can be a tricky thing to master, but eventually, having seen one “souligner!” too many, I realised that particular ability was one I really needed to get on top of. Ultimately, of course, I did, and I’m willing to bet I did so much quicker than I expected to beforehand. I’ve never forgotten it, because it’s one of those tiny things that taught me never to be afraid of notes or feedback, regardless of how harsh they might seem, because at the end of the day they’re there to push you forward. That time in Year 8 taught me two things – a piece of French vocabulary and the correct way to use a ruler – and I’m keeping that in mind with every note I’m given in my new job. I’m bound to slip up mere weeks in, or even once I’m firmly established there, but what matters most is not the mistakes I make, but how I learn from them. Life is, after all, one big learning curve.

Mason

The Last Present, Part 2

You may recall that recently, I started an online BBC Maestro course in writing television drama, presented by Jed Mercurio, the creator of Line of Duty. I got it for Christmas last year, and until the end of September was yet to start it – but now, as I write this post, I’ve made my way through six of the lessons. Of course, I have the advantage of a Creative Writing degree that included modules in screenwriting, but even so, it was fascinating to see Mercurio continue to break each element of the development process down in a way that I could easily record with bullet points. These latest videos covered how to develop ideas into workable projects, and establish whether they are worth spending time on in the long run. Distinguishing between a concept worth pursuing and one I should consider dropping has occasionally been a weakness of mine, so such guidance came in pretty handy – as did the notes that accompanied it.

As I went along, taking in each thing he said, I was thinking more and more about how I could apply it all to a script of my own. I don’t have an idea for anything that might be suitable for the small screen at the moment, but it has got me thinking about whether I could adapt something to it. After all, I’ve written more than my fair share of fragments that have been abandoned largely due to my own insecurities over them, or that were made short but could be expanded in one way or another. Whatever happens, though, it’ll be a good way to distract myself from the occasional pressures of my new job. It’s been going really well, I’m very fortunate to have it, and I know it’ll be invaluable, but it’ll also cause me stress at times (because of my own inexperience, if nothing else). Apart from that, it’ll allow me to write other, non-car-related things, so that I can keep on working towards the versatility as a writer that I’ve always strived for. Now it’s just a question of knowing what to work on – I feel like a mind-mapping exercise might be in order…

Mason