Sunday
was an extremely hectic day but probably one of the best days of my
life!
I had YA book events from 11am to 5:15pm.
It was
hectic, it was inspiring and I loved every single second of it.
To
kick off my jam-packed YA Sunday, I attended the Emily Barr Creative
Writing Masterclass which was incredible and that's the event I'll be talking about in this post! I really loved The One
Memory of Flora Banks, so as you can imagine, I was ecstatic to meet
Emily and listen to her writing advice. I wrote several things I'm
quite proud of during the 90 minute workshop, I discovered some new
books I'm desperate to read and I got to meet Emily Barr, which was awesome. Sunday was a pretty good day.
On
Sunday morning I arrived at the area where the event was held which is near to where I attend church. So I spent twenty minutes in church singing some worship songs and then at 10:50 I walked to the
class. When I arrived at the door, one of the ladies said she loved the
colour of my nail varnish and that made me super happy (not that that's relevant to this post but anyway). It is a really nice colour – Barry M's Coconut
Infusion Laguna, if you were wondering. No, this isn't a paid advertisement for Barry M, I just really love their nail varnishes.
I
then walked up the stairs and I giggled, as taped to one of the steps
was a paper that said “No stilettos, please!” and I thought to
myself “Good thing you didn't wear your stilettos today, Kyra”
(not that I have any but minor details, minor details). The room
where the class was held was light and airy, with wooden floors and
tables and chairs arranged in a U-shape. By every seating place was a
Bath Literature Festival booklet listing all the events accompanied by several sheets of paper and a pen. My heart thumped with excitement
as I sat down, ready to unleash the maelstrom of words swirling inside of me.
Once
most of the seats were taken, Emily introduced herself and dove
straight into teaching the class. She gave us a 10-minute warm-up
exercise that sounded quite hard but very intriguing! We had to write
a 26 word paragraph and it had to be in alphabetical order, so the
first word had to start with A and the last word had to begin with Z etc.
I was super excited to dive right in but simultaneously I cursed
myself for not reading the dictionary and familiarising myself with
more words that begin with an X and a Z. I knew that would've come in handy someday! Anyway, I managed to write something
and something that I'm strangely proud of and something that I'd like
to turn into a book one day. Maybe. Emily asked us if we were willing
to read our writing out loud and I so badly wanted to but I'm super
shy
about reading things out loud to people so I kept my hand down. I had nearly mustered up the courage but then we were onto the next exercise and I was chiding
myself for not putting my hand up, making an oath to myself that I
would
put up my hand after the next exercise and read out what I had
written.
After we had done reading out (or not reading out our pieces) Emily
Barr then presented her top writing advice to us which was...
- Don't make the characters perfect
- Show don't tell
- No cliches
- Work to make your reader sympathise
- Don't let the characters glimpse themselves in the mirror (I mentally giggled at that because guess who's guilty of doing that? Yes, me!)
- Motivation (what are they characters' motivation?)
- Minor characters are important (write them well enough that people would actually want to read a book about them)
- Character consistency
All
brilliant pieces of advice and I'm definitely going to try to keep
those in mind when I start writing my new book! Emily Barr then read
us the first page of Northern Lights/The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman as she stated he superbly demonstrates the majority of those points in the first
page of his novel. And wow,
I'm questioning why I haven't read his books before? I was so
intrigued by that first page alone...I'm dying
to read the book for myself now!
I guess we know who's heading off to the
library tomorrow.
She then gave us an exercise where we had fifteen
minutes to write about a character that is in a place they really
shouldn't be in. I managed to write a lot
in those fifteen minutes and I also got a book idea whilst doing the
exercise! Emily Barr then asked us if we'd like to read what we'd written out loud and I DID. I'm literally so proud of myself. I
blushed pretty much the whole way through but I did
it.
Go, me.
The
talented authoress then went on to talk about writing characters with
a darker side: accessing those darker parts of ourselves and putting
it into the characters we write. She then read an excerpt of We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson which also
sounds like a really interesting book to read! She then gave us
another fifteen minutes to write about a character who was doing
something bad; something that was against the law. I'm not so keen on
what I wrote but as I was getting to the good part, the time was up.
I might also continue that story as I really liked my protagonist!
The
class then sadly came to an end (time flew by so quickly!) and we had
some extra time to ask Emily some questions. It was so interesting
hearing more about Flora Banks and Emily's writing process! I then
met Emily and got my book signed which was lovely!
I
absolutely adored the class. I feel liked I learned a lot, I walked
away with several book ideas and I feel like I can
write again. It sounds strange to say this but I haven't been writing a lot and before Sunday there
was a part of me that was worried that I'd forgotten
how
to write (I know that sounds stupid but hey, who ever said I was
logical?). I thought I'd include the things I wrote during the
workshop as I don't usually put my writing on my blog, but it is
something I'd like to start doing...so why not start now?
The alphabet warm-up piece:
A
boy called Dog evidently faced ginormous, humiliating incidents,
jokes, kids leering, mockery...name? Odd. Preposterously. Quiet,
racing, stolen tears. Understanding? Viciously wished. Xenophobia,
your zest.
(I realised twenty minutes after the exercise had finished that I
should probably have substituted “A” with a nationality foreign
to the UK such as Arabic, Asian etc. Reading it now, I also think I'd
change it to “preposterous” instead of “preposterously but I still quite like what I wrote!)
Character
who shouldn't be where they are:
Josephine
stole through the shadowed archways, skipping over the silver rays of
moonlight pooling on the floor. She arched her back against the wall,
weaving her body through the thicket of shadows languishing in the
courtyard and tiptoed towards an overgrown, leafy shrub with veins
running through it, veins as black as her heart, she supposed. She
startled as she heard the signalling gong of the clock that stood
tall; a dominant figure. If she stretched out her neck a couple of
more centimetres, she'd be able to see it from here. But she wouldn't
do that, someone might see her and the she wouldn't have a
neck by the time the next full moon came around. Her breath stuck in
her throat and she had to force herself to not choke on the passage
of air bubbling in her throat. She could hear them. Their heavy
footfalls, the clanging of armour and, strangely so, the deathly
silence of unspoken words tearing through the air. Her eyes widened
as one of the fighters came impossibly close to her. She gasped,
crawling into a ball, hoping with a feverish passion that the plant
would cover her. It must have. The footsteps continued past.
A
shout rang out through the night, she heard the stamping of feet.
All
was silent.
And
then it wasn't.
She
peeked over the branch, viciously untangling her black hair from one
of the shrub's branches but she quickly stopped. As, just like the
last time, and every time before that, her eyes were enchanted. She
watched them, their black clothes covering them like a second skin,
the way they seemed to be carried on a gentle wind. The silence as
they struck the killing blow. She watched as they stabbed and
parried, danced a breath away from the edge of a sword and jumped
into the air – high enough to touch the moon. They were training to
dance with death and fight with grace and protect with terrifying
silence.
Her
destiny was to be married off to a rich man and sit on a
jewel-encrusted throne. But she wanted to breathe fire and smoke and
dance a merry dance with a sword in her hand and a war cry in her
throat.
Protagonist
breaking the law:
The
night was on her side. The clouds huddled together and not a single
beam of moonlight caught her quickening steps through the mostly
deserted streets. She clutched her tool bag tightly to her chest, her
eyes darting from left to right. There was no one about. Except a
drunk man who was snoring on the pavement a few metres away, an empty
brandy bottle clasped in his hand. She stared at him for a few
minutes and a sadness seeped into her heart. She never thought she'd
resemble someone like that. A growl from her stomach penetrated her
thoughts. Now wasn't the time to lament all she had lost. She stole
quietly through the night, avoiding the shockingly bright glow of the
street lamp. She passed brick walls and stray cats, crumbling fences
and untamed gardens until she turned into the palatial surroundings
of Meadow street.
Slightly wealthier than middle-class, but not wealthy enough to worry about security gates and alarm systems.
Wealthy, but not wealthy enough, to worry about people like her.
Slightly wealthier than middle-class, but not wealthy enough to worry about security gates and alarm systems.
Wealthy, but not wealthy enough, to worry about people like her.
They
should have worried about people like her.
She
forced down the sickening sensation of guilt that bubbled in her
stomach. Mrs. Atkins had been good to her. Kind. But that was her
fatal flaw: she trusted too easily. That was a lesson she had learned
painfully: you couldn't trust anyone, not even yourself. With another
chorus of hunger echoing throughout her stomach, she grabbed the
crowbar from her bag and fitted it into the small window opening. She
strained and pushed and pulled until finally the window opened. She
paused to give herself a mental high-five and then placed her feet on
the windowsill and slunk through, landing noiselessly on the other
side. Her heartbeat kicked and hammered and tore in her chest. But she
ignored it. She jumped lightly onto the floor off of the counter and
headed towards the lounge. She took her cloth bag out of her pocket
and inched forward, casting glances over her back. She removed the
iPad from its charging station and the golden candelabra from the
mantle of the fireplace. She swiped the China plates that were on
display and as she was reaching for the crystal ornament that Mrs.
Atkins had told her was worth a pretty penny....a light switched on
behind her. She froze in her tracks. Her eyes widened as she dropped
on the floor and crawled to hide behind the couch.
“I
knew she couldn't trust you and look, I was right.”
She
peeked her eyes over the arm of the couch. Johnny. Mrs. Atkins son.
Nineteen,
infuriating. And supposed to be at university.
He
was leaning against the counter top and munching on a spoonful of
coco-pops. Her mouth watered at the scent. He looked at from under
his floppy brown fringe that was sticking up in all directions.
“You
could've chosen a less obvious time to ransack the place.”
She
stood up, her vision going slightly black at the edges. She braced herself against the couch and gritted her teeth. She couldn't faint
now, it would shred any last piece of dignity she had left.
Which
wasn't a lot.
I hope you guys enjoyed reading about the creative writing class and I hope you liked getting to see some of my writing! Did you like any of the pieces I wrote? Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year? Let's talk!