Penzance Writer's Cafe writings

Sometimes I go to the Penzance Writer's cafe meetings. I'd go more, if I wasn't doing a 9-5ish job. There's lots of enthusiastic writers, and coffee and cake. What more could you want? :-)

I did escape from emails and google docs for a couple of hours last week to listen to a Jane Moss from Lapidus speak. I think the idea of writing for wellbeing (which is what Lapidus is about) is interesting and makes a whole lot of sense.

Jane took us through a few writing exercises. It always amazes me how the smallest starting point can unleash so much, and also how much easier it is to write in a space with other writers, with a brief and with a set period of time to do it in.

Thought I'd share a couple of things I wrote -  unpolished, straight from the pen so to speak.



The first statement Jane gave us was "The first thing I remember writing"...

Right back in the beginning, before uniforms and lunchboxes, I remember trying to write my name and how I always struggled with the K. It always ended up looking like an H. Diagonal lines were tricky - like the kicking-out leg in the R for Rosanna, my twin sister. I wrote a K perfectly once during Sunday school and then lost the piece of paper before I could show mum and dad.

Granny and Aunty Olive let us write our names in their visitor's books. History tracked in names and addresses and a small comment about the weather, the walk, the dog, lovely food, 'must do it again soon'. Over time our letters shrunk until they stopped escaping outside the lines.

Writing "properly"... would have been in a pink exercise book in Mrs Cook's class at St John's Primary School, Basingstoke. Reception, I guess. Something about the weekend - going to the park with my Dad and sisters. The beginnings of me marking my story.

We then had to pick a colour out of a big stack of colour samples that Jane had taken from Homebase! I went for the usual turquoise shade that I love. It was called 'Planet Earth. We were then given the statement

"I remember"...

Like the visitor's book, we've all left our tiny marks as we've passed through. I wonder what the earth remembers. I suppose it's hard for her (him? it?) to forget. Everything makes a mark. And yes we fade from dust to dust, ashes to ashes... but we've moved molecules, and water and air have been flavoured by our bodies and there might be a footprint somewhere.

Or, there might not. Who am I fooling? We are only small, here and then gone in the blink of an eye. Some remembered, some forgotten.

PS I'm sorry I haven't saved your rainforests, like I said I would, in a pink exercise book once upon a time.

So there you go, a window into the thoughts that spring to my mind in a writing session! We wrote longer pieces about walking in someone else's shoes, which was a cool way to see life from another perspective and also afterwards to hear about the different feelings it evoked in people, depending on who they'd chosen to write about. Maybe I'll share that one another time :-)