Finding Your Muse Class #1

So I’ve started taking a creative writing class with the Alexandria Writers Centre (http://www.alexandrawriters.org/). The class is called “Finding your muse”. I decided to take it hoping to give a bit of a jump start to my creativity. Had the first class last week & it was fabulous (class #2 this week was postponed on account of snow). First class was talking about a lot of writing theory & just how/where one gets inspiration & such. The Alexandria Writers Society subscribes to the ‘free fall’ method of writing where you try to turn off the internal editor & just let things flow out. The idea is to turn off the critical side of the brain & get the creative side going & spilling out. To illustrate we did a writing exercise in class where the instructions were to start with the phrase of “I remember when” and then just keep writing for 15 minutes without putting pen down, or pausing, or trying to come up with something. Just relentlessly put down on paper whatever came to you next without trying to force it. The hope is that in the creative outlet you find nuggets (i.e. gold) that you want to hang on to & build from.

So, this is what came out in my first free fall session:

“I remember when” is apparently not a phrase that triggers anything specific. Instead there is the jumble of thoughts. Memories of a boy in the prairies, some my own, some the imagery of the idealized prairie life… open fields, the wind in the wheat, great seas of grain whispering with the voice like the sound of many waters, stillness, blue/clear sky, open as far as the eye can see. A small stand of trees, Savannah-like. And now the trees come into focus, standing shade, gnarled branches, arching out & up from their base making lazy journey to the sky, hands reaching upwards in beauty, grace, praise and quietness. Going nowhere important but speaking in the silent hundred years journey from seed to sapling to tree to old growth, ancient with the knowing of years beyond what we can measure or hope to see. Long forms leaving marks of shadows on the earth around them, bringing shade, comfort, home, shelter for birds and animals and the occasional boy looking for place, for purpose, for home & belonging, and path & place. And so the dialogue begins between man & tree, pen on paper, whispers of wind through leaves, the ancient speaking without words to the finite, limited, sand through hourglass , days of the racing clock man who has not seen the summers and winters that shaped these branches to their open handed pursuit of sky, or the twisted turn of trunk to bend, move, embrace the path of time ahead, always moving forward, relentlessly, unchanging in desire for growth, to reach for sun, to sink down deep for moisture and nutrients, to find food rooted deep in soil and find a mirror through ground; reaching down as far as up. Sky & earth meeting, joined in union by one tree that embraces both worlds. The world of dark, dense, rich soil and the world of seemingly empty, open sky.


So, funny thing is that as I’m going along in this, I’m thinking, “wow, I sound like I’m on crack, talking to a tree. I so need to pull this back on track to something that makes more sense.” But I just kept trying to be ‘faithful to the work’ & put down on paper the things that came to me next.

And yeah, I’m pretty proud of the above. Not that it’s something I created exactly, I was just conduit. I just scribed down what I was seeing/hearing. Honestly, the above is teaching me a lot and I’m now contemplating a lot the ideas of the hundred(s) year perspective and wrestling with my perspective that the hourglass sand of my life is draining way quicker than I hoped vs. this idea of the slow ripple effect of a life that can impact generations to come. I’m also thinking lots about the idea of us as ‘anchors’ & ‘mirrors’ – embracing heaven & earth like the trees do… Anyhow, lots to think about & I was ready to not write any of this ‘cause I thought it sounded dumb.

Next writing exercise was just fun. We had to write down 3 descriptive phrases on a piece of paper. Then we pass the paper to the left & the person on the left picks one of the phrases & we include that phrase or something about the phrase in our writing. We write for 1 minute & then the next person reads a phrase & we have to keep the story going using that phrase. Kind of makes the writing a bit forced & contrived, but it’s amazing that you can actually get a half decent little ‘tale’ pumped out under pressure creativity. The other people in the class had way better stories than mine, but here’s mine. Oh & note the 4 phrases we had were:
- heartfelt wishes
- cabbage soup
- a grumpy old dog scowl
- the cactus garden

Her smile said more to him than words could ever speak. The way her eyes looked gently at him, embracing him without a word, speaking that she delights in being close to him hearing his words. /their hands touching, memories of his grandmother’s cabbage soup, the aroma, smell, the rich red reminders of home and family; the soup dark, red, like blood in veins, the flush of cheeks on a cold winter day. His grandmother, her scowl like a grumpy old dog, yet somehow beyond the scowl, worn from years of hard life, there was love. And so here, by the cactus garden in the zoo, this woman, once stranger, felt suddenly like home.