Writing in the Margins
We’re into week 2, Patchworkers!
After our lovely session on Sunday, I am wishing I could find a way to make a full-time career out of writing, because office work just isn’t as exciting. (I say this with the knowledge of how privileged I am to have a steady job at a company where I can be out and where my disability is accommodated by allowing me to work some of my hours from home – I don’t mean to be ungrateful, and I know not everyone has this stability!)
Sunday’s Patchwork session really was fantastic. We started with a check-in, and it turned out that everyone (including me) had liked the Friday prompt but none of us had written on it. So our first prompt was 15 minutes spent writing “the sky.” Some of the writing produced was fantastic, and you can read one of the pieces later in this post.
Our second prompt was from Ursula K. Le Guin’s book Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew. Le Guin writes, “The sound of language is where it all begins and what it all comes back to. The basic elements of language are physical: the noise words make and the rhythm of their relationships. This is just as true of written prose as it is of poetry, though the sound-effects of prose are usually subtle and always irregular.”
We wrote for 15 minutes on Le Guin’s prompt, Being Gorgeous. “Write narrative that’s meant to be read aloud. Use onomatopoeia, alliteration, repetition, rhythmic effects, made-up words or names, dialect – any kind of sound-effect you like – but NOT rhyme or meter.”
Le Guin suggests that this is a very repeatable prompt and can be used as a warm-up when you’re having trouble getting into your writing. Put it into your writer’s toolbox, and take it out as often as needed!
Our third prompt was taken from The Pocket Scavenger. We sent our characters out to find “something with text on it.”
Scavenging, hunting, searching or questing – these are all the kinds of actions, each with its own particular flavour and subtext, that can move your story forward or give your character motivation. It can be as simple as looking for a pen, as epic as questing for the Holy Grail, or as esoteric as a search for knowledge, as long as your character is looking for something, they’ve got a reason to move forward and you’ve got more to work with. If you feel stuck in your story or you want to write a quick character sketch and need some motivation, consider playing fetch with your character.
We also talked about the difference between science fiction and fantasy when it comes to world-building, and the difficulty of writing speculative or fantastic fiction versus our enjoyment of reading it. I’ll do some more digging for us in this area – I’m well-versed in how to write creative non-fiction, realist fiction, and erotica but I’m learning along with the group when it comes to science fiction and fantasy.
Next week we will be reading a Maureen Birnbaum: Barbarian Swordsperson adventure, and writing our own pieces using Muffy’s adventures as a template. You’ll need to bring your favourite fictional setting – it could be from a science fiction novel, a fantasy novel, a mystery, a children’s book, it doesn’t matter what it is but you’ll need to have a good idea of how that world works and it needs to not be a world of your own creation. Then we’ll drop your character in, and see what happens!
And here, generously shared by one of our anonymous Patchwork participants, a beautiful response to “the sky.”
Peanut Sky
The sky looks like a peanut butter cookie – brown, cracked, unmarred by anything save its own surface. Not a universal favourite, this sky. Has been known to send some to the hospital.
It is not an all-natural sky, hugging closer to the planet than most like to imagine, clouds of brown and beige writhing into each other and amongst themselves – you can see them doing it, the part that most newcomers and second-gens find unnerving. In some places, writhing clouds mean an oncoming storm. Here, it’s Tuesday. Walk to work with a soft rumbling above you, your hand clutches your briefcase and you mull idly through your to-do list as, above you, the humped peanut hellscape strains against thin and fleeting physical bonds with a dream of annihilating you.
Poisonous suffocation, most often. Some settlements unlucky enough to get rain. Check your watch. I don’t understand these people.
A shuttle is perfectly capable of descending safely through the sky, with certain precautions in place. That’s how I arrived. The pricey facility of safe arrival has not drawn in a strong tourism economy, to say nothing of rmore than the barest in the planetary affirmation of political visitors. At the end of the tenth and final month of the year of my arrival, I was the fifth of five total annual visitors, and the sky roiled around me and pressed against the windows and swallowed me.
