Background: Creative Writing Group of Biblioteque Anglais Meyrals (BAM)
BAM hosts many diverse groups who use its facility in pursuit of many creative pursuits from Language groups to a knitting group to a topical discussion group. As libraries have for centuries, BAM in addition to being a well stocked library of english fiction, history and literature, is a center in the region for those who wish a supportive creative atmosphere.
The Creative Writing Group was founded by Jane Checkley, an artist and writer living in the Dordogne. The Group ultimately migrated to the English Library and the membership has evolved over the years. Two writers remain from the original group and carry on the process. Members come and go as their lives and interests permit. It stays fairly constant between 6 and 8 participants. Otherwise, it makes the reading part of the activity a bit too long.
Objective:
BAM and the group process provides a supportive and creative environment for writers to let their minds follow a path they did not know existed until they sat down at the table.
This is key, we know how the process works when we come in. The only surprise is what will be the trigger challenge around which we are to build our story or include a line or a verbal vision of what the trigger invokes in each writer. This is not a critique group. We all face the same challenge: to tell a story, from beginning to end, written in one hour.
The point is to let the story flow out and it will end as it ends and we will share a cup of tea and read our efforts to each other. An as with radio, the words flow out into the air around the table and are gone. Sometimes the muse strikes and sometimes it yawns.
The Process: Role of the “Trigger”
We come to the session not burdened with a preconceived idea of a story. We arrive and react to the phrase, photo, objects, sentences or a brainstormed list of words and thoughts, we know not what, until it is revealed by the member assigned to bring the trigger for that day. We have one hour to use the trigger to write our story.
You almost don’t have time to think about it. You start with the trigger and the words flow out. For me, I type my story into my computer, others write longhand. I begin by making a heading of date and writing group and the trigger. There is an artist who would always start a painting by putting his name on first. That is how he triggered the painting.
I use the trigger by beginning to think about who thought or said it or used it. When and where? Why did they arrive at this moment? Who impacted them and what is going to happen? What will be the outcome? All those questions need to be asked, but not at the beginning. You start with the first question and then the next and so on. This is not formalized but is the way I look at it. .
The best part is you get to make stuff up or not. Sometimes, the trigger can produce a visceral memory that just has to get down on the page. The point is we are writing a story for ourselves that we will read at the end of the hour We are just having some mental fun and not letting reality get in the way. It is a story, you have to tell in an hour. There is no life changing truth to be found. Yet, quite often, we do find wonderful nuggets of humanity and life and ideas flowing out. It is us when we are allowed to think freely inside ourselves.
Writing Hour- the experience
For the most part we write in silence, each swept up in the creation of the story almost in suspended animation, as you experience the story appearing before you on the page the rest of the world does not exist. You are in the world of the story.
And then a half hour is called and the silence is broken for a bit and you contemplate the characters and setting and where the story is and realize that now it has to move to resolution.
As in life, in this writing group, you really dont get any do overs. There is little time to go back and make a major redirection of the story. The characters move as you write them. There is no time to rethink so it plays itself out as it does. And resolution/ending has to come at the conclusion of the hour.
Since this is about writing a story, not about biography, the sessions are not about the writers personally. Of course we write from our personal experiences and dreams and history and background and interests and skills and language. So bits of ourselves or our prejudices are always going to come along somewhere. And sometimes a story comes out that is totally true.
Why do we do it?
At the end we have created a small world of words that did not exist before that moment when we sat down and wrote them.
Since these are personal stories, they are not written for profit or fame.
The BAM Writing Group provides a setting important to all creative activities:
- Fun in letting ideas follow their path
- Mental Challenge of keeping our brains active and stimulated.
- Joy in sharing an experience
- Satisfaction in have created something unique.
You have to let yourself fall into a world that is created in your mind, live there for and hour, and tell about it in words on a page!!
An Example of the Process: Words Worth-less
During one of the sessions, I wrote a doggerel poem about the process itself. Click on this title in the menu above and see it attached.